Guest Blog

by T. Shehadeh

I was 12 years old when my family forced to move from Hebron, on 1977. I don’t know if I was lucky or not as I was borne in this historical holly city, which located to the south of the West Bank (WB).

I was born in the old city, very close to the Abraham mosque. Immediately after the WB was occupied on 1967, the occupation government established the first settlement on the Hebron citizens’ land, which called Qiriat Arbaa. The majority of the settlers whom living there are American.

At early 70’s, the settlers in Hebron were less than 100. They became almost 8000 in Hebron these days. They never travel without their arms and the guardianship of the Israeli Occupation Force IOF.

The obvious thing I can remember at my childhood is the settlers attacks. They used to pass to Abraham mosque in troops under the guardianship of (IOF), hitting any Palestinian child in the road, destroying anything they see (windows, plants, etc.). I was struck several times by them… why??? Just because I am a Palestinian. As a child, I used to escape at the time I see them coming. Many families (including mine) forced to move from this area to protect their children from the settlers’ attacks.

After the Egyptian- Israeli (peace) agreement on 1978, the Israeli government started to increase the number of the settlements and the settlers in WB and Gaza. The same policy they did after the Oslo agreement. Gradually they started to change the demographic facts in WB including Hebron city with focusing on the old city, mainly the vicinity of Abraham mosque.

In the 70’s and 80’s, the settlers used to go to the mosque, doing their religious practices under the guardianship of the IOF until Ramadan of 1994 after Baruch Goldstein, who perpetrated the Abrahham mosque massacre (29 Muslims were killed and more than 125 others wounded during Al Fajr pray). After this massacre, the Israeli occupation gifted Goldstein and the settlers by dividing the mosque to two zones, for the Muslims and the Jews. After that it became very difficult for Muslims to enter to the mosque. It’s easier to pass through an airport than entering the mosque. The security measurements they use, include, ID check, physical check, passing through examination machine (the settlers are excluded).

The occupation PM, Benjamin Netanyahu announced 2 days ago that the Abraham Mosque And Bilal Mosque (in Bethlehem) are Israeli heritage sites.

Stealing the land, the history, and the heritage….... Is The Israeli key to peace in the Middle East

A negative thinker see a difficulty in every opportunity,
A positive thinker see an opportunity in every difficulty,
wish you an optimistic life

by Audrey Malabi

Hi! I’m Audrey and I live in Khayelitsha, South Africa and Anne has inspired me to write and have my own blog on The Open Mind. Anne, my friend, is the icon of LOVE and she is my angel of love brought to South Africa to open my mind to possibilities. It seems as if it is forever that Anne and I have known each other. She has brought light into my life and recognition of who I am.

She has made me realise that I have to love myself and accept love. That life is too short not to be happy and take a chance even if I am scared. She loves the unknown and is not afraid of it. They are adventures for her which makes me want to live my life as an adventure.

Life before Anne:

I did not really live it; I just took care of everyone else except for me. It’s not that I haven’t known this before but what was missing was the courage to create change. I was trying to make things right for my kids by doing what my family wanted me to do not what I was truly feeling was right inside. I will not be able to live by only loving my kids, that isn’t enough for me. Not anymore.

There was no passion in my life. I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do for myself, I felt like I couldn’t, that I was trapped in my current situation, I couldn’t see a way out. At the same time I let myself neglect myself, I allowed myself to keep repeating an endless cycle that I knew I wasn’t happy in and I knew wasn’t good for me. I felt alone. There were times when I felt like I did not deserve to live and that everyone would be OK without me.

Everybody has always told me that I’m a strong woman that I can do anything but I was never able to truly believe that until now. Now I am starting a new life and my writings here will take you with me on this journey into the unknown.

Let me start this blog with talking about LOVE. Right now it’s about me, me being able to love myself even my imperfections. To have love, you have to have honesty and right now I’m working on being honest with myself before I couldn’t be honest with myself because I was scared, I thought too much about other people’s expectations of me and I was scared that if they found out about the real me they wouldn’t love me. But now I’m not scared because I know me, I know who I am and I can’t care about other people’s expectations because they don’t matter, I can’t live my life for anyone else except for myself.

My biggest fear was being rejected, I used to lock myself inside my house and just stay in the darkness because I couldn’t face life but now I feel love and it’s given me courage to change. I was scared to show my own vulnerabilities, that I am human and can be weak just like everyone else.

What I’ve learnt is that when I feel vulnerable, it is a just another part of life, and a good thing, I have to go through these feelings. Now instead of being weak by it I am able to be strong with it, and I am able to see how to cope easily. Sometimes during these times all I need to do is cry to feel better because by doing that I release it and I become stronger.

Right now everything in my life is about change. Everything has already changed. I have ended a bad relationship and I feel sad even though I know that what I am doing now is right. The most important thing in my world is my kids, I love them unconditionally and I always will no matter what they become. Right now in order to truly give them the life they deserve I need to find myself so that I can be happy and so that they can also feel that happiness otherwise it is going to stay being a very, very sad house and I don’t want that for my kids.

I don’t want my kids to settle in life, I want them to understand what love really is and that love is something we all need in our life. I want them to learn about true love and what I am doing now is my way of teaching them about love that they have to love themselves so that they can truly love another.

What I have learned about love is that if I want to feel love, I have to be happy and that that means for me that I can’t live my life for anyone but myself. I have learned that once I’m happy I can make everyone else happy. Everything becomes easier...not always but I’m hoping...

These last two weeks I have found Anne, a new best friend and a sister who loves life and together we went out see my community through her eyes and I reconnected with my friends who I have not talked to since I was in grade 7. It had been so long since I’ve seen so many of them that I did not know what to say but you know, I have learned that when everyone see happiness in your eyes it draws them close to you. They want to know why I am so happy but I had no words for them the only thing I could do is to hug them.

It surprised me when no one would believe that Anne and I are friends and that they thought it was strange but we created a story where we told some of them that we were sisters and that we have the same father and as soon as we told them this story they would laugh their teeth out but I think that’s because me and Anne couldn’t keep a straight face, we couldn’t stop laughing ourselves.

Walking around with Anne made me wake up, like I said earlier I wasn’t living. We were able to see what the kids in my community needed & Anne is trying to help and this made me see what I didn’t see before. I used to be unaffected by what was happening in my own community because before all I did was go to work, come home, and stay there, I never checked to see what was going on around me.

When I was growing up there used to be a community centre where you could practice karate, dancing, singing and lots of other sports now there isn’t a place like this and if there is it is too far away for the kids in my section to reach it. Maybe I should explain what I mean by sections, Khayelitsha is divided into sections and each section is a letter in the alphabet all the way from a to z and each section is big, b section has about 810 houses and the others are almost the same. Both Anne and I stay in B section.

There are a lot of good things happening here and a lot of people helping but I think we should work together as a community more, which will bring real empowerment...I guess what’s happened is that since I’ve been walking around with Anne so many new thoughts have been coming to me but I’m still figuring out what it is I want but I’m excited about life and for the first time I see new possibilities.