Israeli
border soldier stands guard during repeated clashes with Palestinian
demonstrators in the West Bank town of Qalandia in 2011
It is a new year in the West Bank.
And on Christmas, a rainy and
great wind swept over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Trees bent and
roofs rattled but the wind couldn’t carry away the suffering,
vulnerability and the long 365 days of humiliation.
In theso called Middle East’s only democracy, they do not do guillotines. But there are other innovative rituals of humiliation, designed to reassure the Palestinians that every New Year could well be their last in the land of olive trees. As the wind calms down everything returns to normal, but not for the Palestinians, they don’t.
Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem
may be best known for is its camera project, which started in 2007 when
the organization began distributing video cameras to Palestinians
living in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. These cameras
are often the only object Palestinians can “arm” themselves with in the
face of discrimination, oppression and violence waged against them.
In 2011, volunteers in B’Tselem’s camera project filmed over 500
hours of footage in the West Bank. These are two minutes they collected
and edited from it, depicting life under occupation and military rule,
as a way to sum up the year that passed.
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