Last week I had the opportunity to interview Elise, former coordinator of the Jerusalem Project at the AIC, and a part-time sociology teacher at Bethlehem University. She spoke to me about life under occupation, the importance of advocacy, and her students. Below is Part 1, in her own words.

“It is very difficult to speak about life under occupation for me personally, because it’s difficult to victimize yourself. Even when you simply speak about daily hardships, many people think that you are exaggerating or trying to make pro-Palestine propaganda.  Palestinians have talked a lot to the international community about their suffering. It sometimes gets tiring. It is difficult to expose yourself so much, when you know it’s many times not leading to results.

One integral part of occupation is one’s inner pain, powerlessness and humiliation. You have no control over your daily life and are often incapable of making change. At the same time you are all the time judged, exposed and watched. Everything is surveyed around you. If you want to move, you can’t because you have to be searched. If you want to speak out, you might be arrested. If you want to go out in Ramallah, you are confronted by checkpoints.

Occupation is the degradation of humanity and therefore I believe that resistance is holding onto your humanity. When you go through the process of occupation and all your resources are taken away from you, people start to struggle and compete for limited resources and this explains some of the inter-factional fighting.

The act of constraining the time and geography of Palestinians by surrounding them with walls should not be taken for granted. People feel chained and shocked by the rapid changes in landscape. Landscape transformation is one characteristic of life under occupation. You see the trees, but there is a wall. The sky [is transformed] too. And now there are tunnels, so even under the ground is occupied.

Sometimes you feel as if you have lost the vision or scope of what’s going on. Many times you feel frustrated and powerless. And yet sometimes you find yourself dreaming of a brighter future. Many times you see the situation giving your life a meaning and role, especially when you feel that death could be very close, which makes you appreciate life more.

In East Jerusalem, you feel like an immigrant in your home country and you don’t know when your papers will be seized away. Your space, your house might be taken at any moment. My parents were both born in Jerusalem and my grandparents came after the [Armenian] genocide, and I have many relatives who have been here for hundreds and thousands of years living in Jerusalem under Jordan and speaking Arabic. Now, when we go to West Jerusalem they look at us like “why don’t you speak Hebrew?” We hear the same discourse as if we are Moroccan immigrants not integrating enough. But people who came from Russia five years ago are treated as more Israeli than those who have been here for hundreds of years. We are treated like we are temporary, and they are eternal citizens.

One time I went to a store and I got a call in Arabic. When the shopkeeper heard me, she said “lo aravim po, get out” (no Arabs here, get out). So whatever you do, you are always confronted with the occupation and related power relations and your marginalization or demonization or inferiorization.

What makes me optimistic is first when I see my friends who are also trying to work on change and solidarity, when something happens to one of us, we share, we talk together, we cry together, we laugh together, we go to each other’s happy and sad events. When we are really depressed we sometimes have a party and dance.

When I see people challenging their inner despair, I become optimistic. When I see how the wall is turning into a site connecting people, how international groups come and see the occupation with masks removed, this makes the occupation less concealed. When I see how many people from abroad are becoming interested, who are challenging their governments, it also gives me optimism.

I think sometimes we are blessed to live under occupation, because you start realizing what matters to you most in life. An occupied body is being tortured, but you are also being challenged to hold onto both death and life. When you are challenging death you are holding onto life, and when you are holding onto life, you know the value of things more, because you feel life inside you.

I saw a little girl in Jenin refugee camp once. The whole refugee camp was destroyed by Israeli soldiers. She had lost everything. But she told me she had a dream that she wanted to become an architect and turn the refugee camp into a clean place with swimming pools and nice houses. This gives me optimism that people, despite everything, are having their share of little dreams. This gives me optimism to see that even in a refugee camp, people are singing and crying together and connecting to each other. It’s a special feeling.

As a Christian, we always have the feeling that eventually there will be justice. When you see South Africa, what happened in India with Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, you see that eventually there was some kind of justice, not total justice, but some kind of justice, and you hold onto that dream.”

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