• When this article was written, Everything's changed, at the end of April 2023, our main  concern was the reorganization of a post-covid, post-lockdowns world.

    A thorough look at the Wikipedia detailed Timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2023 reveals a shift in governmental attitudes and Palestinian reactions since January 2023, with the will expressed in Tel Aviv to change the Disengagement Law initiated by Ariel Sharon in 2005, which had allowed the evacuation of 8,000 settlers in Gaza, and of a few dozens in four settlements of the West Bank, including Homesh.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict_in_2023

    All through January and February there was a dangerous escalation in attacks, car-rammings, raids, that culminated in the assassination of two Israeli civilians near Huwara, and the settlers' rampage that ensued, with a hundred cars and forty homes torched. The Jenin raids in January and March revealed a new situation, with explosive devices, and the intervention of a helicopter gunship in June, coupled with the firing of rockets from Gaza. At the time, the Gaza skirmishes were limited to the sole Palestinian Islamic Jihad, leading the Israeli military brass to the conclusion that Hamas was not interested in a conflict with Israel.

    Looking back, it's obvious things were simmering, boiling below the surface, in a way that had not been experienced since the Second Intifada 2000-2005), leading some observers to wonder if we were not witnessing a third intifada in the making. Settlers' "retaliatory" rampages, in Huwara on February 26 and Al Lubban on June 21, were something unprecedented in its scope and violence. Likewise, the incidents at Joseph's Tomb, next to Balata Camp, south of Nablus, remind us of the highly irrational basis of so many decisions and collective happenings.


    Joseph's Tomb : Torah autists vs Coran autists, or what ? Who has any proof that Jacob's son was buried there ? It is said that the monument was built two centuries ago, but that this place refers to a wise man from Islam, Sheikh Yusuf, a healer in his time. How far back do we have to go to live in the present ?

    Take it back to October 4 and 5, as far as I am concerned. I was to participate in several peace meetings in Jerusalem and by the Dead Sea, with Vivian Silver and all the other women in white (Women Wage Peace). October 6, on a Friday, I would have joined friends in Sderot, one mile from Gaza, and would have spent the evening and night in their home.

    October 7, shortly before seven, we would have woken up at the sound of sirens, and taken refuge in their shelter. How long did they have to stay inside ? Three whole days and nights ?

    On the morning of October 7, the police station of Sderot, less than a half-mile from my friends' home, was raided by Gaza teams, with RPGs and grenades, who slaughtered the eighteen men inside. 

    So Many Roads

    As of December 15, 2023, after two months of war in Israel and Gaza

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    To all our friends, passengers, visitors :

    2020 was the year nobody expected.

    It uprooted all our plans, habits, projects.

    The author of these lines caught the coronavirus, first in London in March 2020, then in Belfast, in December 2022.

    Worse, his mother died from it, in October 2022 (but things are more complex than that, you don't die from one single cause).

    *****     *****     *****     *****     *****

    I was obliged to get vaccinated, to be able to go to Brighton, in January 2022. My mother had been vaccinated too.

    Sadly, we realized that the vaccine (which is not one, strictly, medically speaking) was in no way preventive.

    Contrarily to all the other true vaccines.

    Following these three years of confusion, unprecedented chaos, our priorities shifted, on every level.

    Thus, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which we have been so deeply involved since October 2000, became something of a side-show.

    We all discovered other emergencies, much closer to home.

    The duty of solidarity still remains primordial, on all levels of human experience.

    The author of these lines has participated, as a volunteer, in a Social Grocery, related to the Food Bank in his region.

    In this grocery you see people queuing for low-cost products, who had no need of that before.

    Among them, a mother and her daughter, who owned a café, gone bankrupt after many others, due to the pandemics.

    How can we begin to evaluate the extent of all the social, human damage done ?

    More than ever, we need to rehumanize ourselves, smile through masks, and beyond masks, listen to each other, encourage each other, support each other.

    It's a long way to free ourselves from this long, vicious nightmare of the years 2020-2022.

    The peace we have been seeking since our birth as a humanitarian organization, will be found, built, and kept, in ourselves.

    ("Be the Change you Wish to See in the World")

    At that cost we shall survive, stronger, more resolute.

    "What does not kill me makes me stronger".

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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