What am I doing?
For the past few months, I’ve been planning a trip to Palestine. Specifically, I’ll be volunteering in the West Bank as part of an organization that I’ll leave nameless. All the work I’m doing is nonviolent and legal.
The green areas are what Israel and many other countries consider to be Palestine. I’ll be somewhere in the larger green area on the right side, the West Bank.
I’ll be doing what’s known as solidarity presence, sometimes called protective presence. The Israeli Occupation Forces (a.k.a IOF, IDF, the Israeli army) and settlers (people stealing Palestinian land) target Palestinians on a daily basis, at any time of the day or night. However, when internationals are present with Palestinians, the IOF and the settlers are less likely to attack. Because of this, organizations like the one I’m volunteering with work with Palestinian communities to organize us on the ground wherever Palestinians have asked for us. Solidarity presence can look like walking kids to school, helping with the annual olive harvest, staying up at night to watch for settler attacks, recording and documenting the crimes of the Israeli government, or anything else that assists the Palestinians.
A gang of settlers attacking a lone Palestinian man. Image courtesy of Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty.
Obviously there are some risks associated with this kind of work. International activists in Palestine have been abducted, arrested, deported, severely injured, and killed. None of these things are likely to happen to me, but they are all possible. But it’s important to remember: no matter what the risks are for me, I have a safe home to go back to. The Palestinians deal with worse threats than I will every single day, and running away would mean leaving their homes, families, and communities behind. These things have been forcefully taken away from the Palestinians for the past century, so as long as they’re asking for it and as long as I’m able, I’ll be around to help. I know I won’t fix the problem in the time that I’m there, but it’s worth risking my life to be part of the solution.
Assuming all goes according to plan, I should be leaving on September 26th and getting on a flight back home on October 28th. However, there’s a lot of points where my plans could change. You can find out about those changes in my future posts.
Free Palestine.