By Ulf Tuell

First of all, it certainly has been an experience. We all need to experience – I mean while fully immersed – what it is like to live under the same conditions as our Palestinian friends. The local volunteers have been amazing and brilliant.

During my stay here I lost my cellphone in a taxi. The local volunteers were amazing. They found the taxi driver – a very honest man. And he taught me a lesson: to be more optimistic- “Life is always good!”.

The Hebron visit was the most shocking and I got some sense of what occupation looks like and what it really means – an unconditional subjugation under an occupying army.

The wall in Bethlehem shocked me as well: in the former interstate border between East and West Germany the fence was 5 meters high. Here, it is 8 meters high. Still in Bethlehem, in the museum of the wall, I listened into the standard message of the military “intelligence” prior to bombing Palestinian houses. I could grasp a sense of why people may suffer from PTSD in Palestine.

The Galil trip was, for me, the most interesting. I wouldn’t want to have missed seeing the border to Lebanon. The Jenin city visit was also very important and it is great to know these people. The Freedom Theatre project is a great one and gives me lots of hope for the young people.

Before having been here I may not have believed the kind of systematic oppression of a state imposes towards its second-class citizens. I would not have understood what it means to have, not one, but 20 checkpoints within 1 mile. I would not have understood what it means to become branded as a potential criminal or terrorist – not only as an individual but as a whole nation – and having to confront this daily, because I cannot commute freely. My standard reaction to unjustified allegations – outspoken or not – would be lots of anger, especially when I cannot understand any reason for when I feel treated unjustly.

The extent to which Palestinians are subjected to injustice and denial of human rights is hard to believe: being denied access to sufficient water (for daily hygiene), not for a week or two, but for all your life; being subjected to military law; having no security or certainty of justice, inside or outside your home; constantly being subjected to inconsistent and arbitrary behavior of IDF soldiers; the omnipresence of double standards, negating constitutional rights to half of the population of the state of Israel; the public control and scrutiny that should grant that equality of rights is not applied in all circumstances. Palestinian journalists cannot move freely, hence there is also no free press; even though almost every movement you do in the Palestinian or Israeli territory is filmed by video camera. The footage is always available when it could serve to sentence a Palestinian for a crime, but it is never used when it could prove the wrongdoing of settlers against Palestinians.

In short, when you are a Palestinian there are no checks and balances in place, and, in the case of doubt, the law will be used against you, certainly not in your favor.

Friends were made here and there was harmony within the group of internationals. I liked my group very much, I met great people and will stay in further contact with some of them.