After 50 years of occupation, our freedom is shrinking every day. But even if Netanyahu loses, little will change
When Boris Johnson announced his plan to suspend parliament, I was visiting Orkney with my wife, Penny. It was the last week of a month-long stay in Scotland, and it took a day for the news to reach us. We were having tea with some English friends on 29 August when they heard what had happened. They began to fume: he’s done it again. They worried how this would undermine their country’s democracy. It was a curious twist: I am usually the one bearing bad news about the state of my country. For a brief moment, we traded anxieties – although mine were of a more existential nature. Even in Scotland, the bad news from home was constant: the expansion of Israeli settlements, the threat of annexation, and the steady tally of death and injury in Gaza, all eating away at what remained of my Palestine.
A few days later, just after Johnson had expelled 21 MPs from his party, we flew home. The driver who picked us up from the airport took the usual circuitous route to get us to Ramallah, crossing three checkpoints on the way. At each one, we held our breath and hoped the soldiers were not in a bad mood. As always I felt the shock of returning home, seeing our parched hills at the end of summer and my noisy, crowded city; I had a sudden and pervasive sense of precariousness.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2M8s8iL
