Escaping Death

Escaping Death

Isn’t it time to reclaim the streets?
Isn’t it the time to make the change?

The sound of ambulances all over the place. wounded people here and there. this one is shouting and the other almost dying and its red, everywhere is full with blood. run fast, i heard them shouting, we need an ambulance, now now now. this guy is dying. please help him, please bring a doctor, give him pain killer. do any thing, just help him, the reaction is much slower than his painful shouts. they must check every one. they must decide who is more critical to move first taking the risk that someone may die before being checked. hundreds of people waiting on the other side. some people who been waiting since one month to go back to Egypt, Palestinians who entered to see their families and now they have no exit. others egyptions who went to visit Gaza and now they are stuck. but the most powerful of all, the palestinian mothers and family members who are watching the ambulances departing with their beloved ones and hoping to see them once again. they can never know, maybe they will die in the way, or they will have the needed treatment but then to get stuck in a detention center before they go back home. you can never know, in this place every thing is luck, or casualty. I said we have medicine to take to Gaza, they need it for urgent operations, they answered, well: many wounded people are now in Egypt, why you don’t give it to an egyption hospital". did they really open the border, who is going to be with the wounded ones, they will see no family before going back to Gaza. visits are very stricted, and you can talk to no one.

These people are escaping death, but to unknown disteny. they hope to find some mercy away from the israeli killing machine, they are in an ambulance to taking them to a hospital and they never know when they will return home if they will. how painful it is to be wounded, almost dying with no family around you, with no visitors. and how painful it is for any family not to be with their beloved ones while they are getting treated, or maybe living their last moments in this life. for some these last moments can be the only peaceful moments in their life, what an irony, you escape death to live your last moments dying away from your family.

The brutality of this occupation, that it is living in us, it is living every where, hunting us where ever we go. maybe some managed to escape death today, but death still hunting the rest in Gaza.

Isn’t it time to reclaim the streets? Isn’t it the time to make the change? How many more must die before we realize that our silence is just part of the story, that one protest is not the answer, that the life of many Palestinians depends on what the civil society may or may not do? Maybe it is time to get more radical. maybe the Palestinians will help us to escape death, different kind of death, the death of our humanity!!!!!

Saif AbuKeshek