This is an intention of quiet ethnic cleaning, the sort that can not be photographed, but is nevertheless devastating

Today, it was 8:30, 9:00, 10:00am, and still many staff members did not show up. Finally the office assistant shows up: out of breath with his nice shirt all dusted. When I asked “what’s wrong?” he started cursing “the separation wall!” “what do you think it is? It is their nasty, nonsense checkpoints or this new ‘Wall.'”

He loudly said “God, when will it all end? The wall is making our life miserable; I woke up really early so I could be the first at the checkpoint. I was the first, but still it took the Israeli soldiers over an hour to let me pass. They are doing things with the wall today, that’s why they took so long…” His family is already suffering from the wall. The Israeli government has asked him to move, because the wall would go through his house, the only property he owns. If that happens, it will take Ilyas not just few hours to get to work, but maybe a whole day.

That is just one of the stories of many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The wall represents a prison with no warden. It has forced many to simply leave their homes, and live somewhere else as refugees.

This has the intention of quiet ethnic cleansing, the sort that cannot be photographed, but is nevertheless as effective and devastating. It has exacerbated the severe economic hardship the Palestinians already face, causing a loss of employment and income by destroying shops, farms and factories.

If Israel would genuinely be interested in the security of its citizens, and in separation from the Palestinian people, it would have erected the wall on the “Green Line” (the border that existed before the 1967 war). But this is not the case. The majority of the planned wall cuts deep into Palestinian territory, incorporating into Israel about 10%-15% of the occupied territories, a huge portion of very fertile land full of olive groves, greenhouses, vegetable fields and water resources.

Here, politics are a big part of people’s lives. Even if one wants to ignore it, he/she cannot because the occupation controls every aspect of Palestinians’ lives. Every day at work, I hear a story of a staff member suffering from the wall, the

What amazes me the most is how determined people are. All the difficulties they face under the occupation do not stop them from working, or even smiling.