What would you do if a stranger turned up in the middle of the day and bulldozed your home? Knocked it, and all your possessions, to the ground. Smashed the water pipes to your house. Tore down the electrical cables to your property.

What would you do if you were a farmer and strangers released sheep into your fields to eat your crops, or cut down your fruit trees? What if your children were harassed on their way to school by armed strangers?

Would you call the gardaí? The army? Would you call your local TD? Would you ring a local radio station? What if no-one turned up. No-one responded to your pleas for safety and your calls for justice.

Would you have the energy or resources to stay put and rebuild, knowing that the violence and destruction will happen again? Or would you leave? Allowing the strangers to steal your land to build their own homes filled with their families and their possessions.

It is hard to fathom how families in the West Bank in Palestine endure the unending harassment of Israeli settlers intent on stealing Palestinian land. Flying in the face of international law, Israel is planning 22 more settlements on Palestinian-owned land.

In the face of this infuriatingly unfair situation, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led organisation, appealed to international citizens to come, bear witness, and document the slow-motion version of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Israel.

Since 2001, ordinary citizens from around the world, so-called ‘internationals’, have supported Palestinian resistance by providing ‘a protective presence’.

The thinking being that Israeli settlers, army, and police won’t misbehave with the eyes, and camera........

© Evening Echo