In the Occupied Territories, the people I meet ask me many questions, but there’s one they ask over and over again: “Do they know? Do they know in Canada what is happening to us?” My answer is always no, but the more I see, hear, and experience of oppression, the more vehement my answer becomes: “They have absolutely no idea what is happening to you!”

“Then please tell them. Tell them what Israel is doing to us. Tell them how we live!”

For the last two months, I have been working at Amnesty International in London - where the world’s suffering is documented, where pain from every corner of the earth fills filing cabinets and hard drives; reports and affidavits; posters and press releases. The building spills over with it.

After a year of university, buried in abstract concepts, I went to Amnesty to learn about the actual realities of people without my privileges - my gender, my skin colour, my money, my passport, my luck. Despite six weeks worth of reading, researching and learning, one phone call showed me that I still didn’t get it. A Palestinian doctor’s stories of terror and atrocity tell me I have to go see for myself. And now I’m at Heathrow, waiting for my flight to Tel Aviv. Soon the pain will come off the page and I will see it with my own eyes. I wonder what the Israelis and Palestinians I see around me are thinking. Do they want to go home, or do they dread leaving the safety of this place? I can’t imagine feeling safer in a foreign land than in my own home. I can’t imagine having to leave home to find security.

I have arrived but it wasn’t so easy to get in. I was apparently identified as a possible human rights or solidarity worker so I resorted to my Jewish “half” to get through. The security officers were gorgeous women, mostly blondes. Was their strategy to disarm me with their beauty and charm, and then confuse me by repeating the same questions again and again? Despite my nervousness, I managed to be convincing:

“I’ve come to see my homeland,” I said.

“But why would you come at such a dangerous time?”

“I don’t think it’s as bad as the papers make it out to be,” I replied, trying not to grit my teeth.

I’m surprised how calm I feel in a place that has been illegally occupied for thirty-five years. Relaxed was not what I expected. So far, only one thing has really shocked me. Up the street from this hotel, a huge crowd of Palestinians is gathered. They’re waiting to renew their Jerusalem ID cards.

As permanent residents of Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinians have to renew their cards every month, or risk arrest and even imprisonment. This is the only renewal office in the Occupied Territories. Arriving the night before, the people sleep in the street with their families, waiting for the office to open in the morning. Work, school, life - all are put on hold as they wait for hours just to get permission to live in their own homes.

I speak by phone with Sha’wan in Ramallah. He is a human-rights researcher with al-Haq, the Palestinian human-rights organization I’ve come to work for. We discuss how I will get to Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem in the West Bank. I’ll have to take my chances with the military curfew that has been imposed on the city for the last four or five months. The curfew hours can change every day and are completely unpredictable. I will give it a try tomorrow.

When I leave the hotel, a bus is just loading for the Kalandia checkpoint. The bus fills up with locals, and I am frustrated that I can’t speak with them. In their sombre looks, I can see that they have stories to tell.

The bus lets us off a few hundred metres from the checkpoint, and I approach on foot. There are soldiers everywhere, behind concrete blocks, in towers, in jeeps, or just walking around. Concrete barriers litter the landscape. A group of Palestinians are lined up, off to one side. They look like ordinary people just trying to go about their daily business. Soldiers point and shout harshly at the crowd. I have been taught about hate and racism for as long as I can remember, but nothing has prepared me for its stark reality. The people are ordered about arbitrarily. Move forward ten feet; then, move back ten feet. The checkpoint is opened, then closed again two minutes later.

Soldiers pull barbed wire around the crowd. Then they open the checkpoint again, but only for women and children, leaving the men to bake in the sun. I am mesmerized by the way these conscripts, some just in their teens, flaunt their M-16 assault rifles. They can’t keep their hands off them. They hide their fear behind wrap-around sunglasses. They know what they are doing is wrong. I feel sorry for them, men my age raised to hate and oppress.

I get in line. Again they open the checkpoint, and people are called forward in groups of two or three. Each group is questioned and the people asked to show their papers. Some are pulled aside for further questioning. Others are told to pass through.

Then it’s my turn. “I’m going to visit my friend Mike,” I explain. The soldier looks at me, and then at my photo. “Do you have a gun in your bag?” he asks. “No,” I reply, surprised by his directness. He waves me through, and I’m in the West Bank.

Downtown Ramallah is full of people trying to do their errands before the curfew comes down. I meet Mike and he takes me to the al-Haq office. Just inside the building are the remains of the old front door, blown in by the Israeli army in the spring. Upstairs, the office door is in the same shape. Mike tells me that the army ransacked the office and stole documents and files, as well as computers.

I meet Sha’wan, who introduces me to Yassar, another al-Haq employee. Yassar was there when the army turned up. He was arrested and put in prison for two months as an administrative detainee. That’s a fancy way of saying he was never charged or tried for any crime.

I meet the other staff, and we discuss my assignment - editing English language documents and writing a report. Then we have to leave before the curfew comes down. We buy some food and head for the flat al-Haq rents for volunteers. As we walk through the deserted streets, a young man comes running towards us.

He says something in Arabic that I can’t understand, but his tone is ominous. I can hear the roar of diesel engines. Two armoured personnel carriers come down the hill towards us. Enormous loudspeakers blare out that the curfew is now in effect.

We arrive at the flat, which is much bigger than I expected. I’m the only volunteer, so I’ll have the place to myself. My landlord speaks good English and insists that I call her ‘Queen Elizabeth,’ much to everyone’s amusement. She shows me around and then we go out on the roof. The view of the hills is magnificent. Back inside, I ask where the Muquata, Arafat’s compound, is. “Right there,” Queen Elizabeth says, pointing out my bedroom window. I can hardly believe it.

It's evening, and the sun has fallen behind the dusty hills. Despite the curfew, children are playing outside, on streets scarred by the massive treads of Israeli Merkava tanks. They ride bikes and scooters, they play tag, and they fly homemade kites. Whenever the army appears, they dart behind their houses. The kites dot the sapphire sky and all I can hear are the cries of children and the rumble of tanks and armoured personnel carriers in the distance.

Tomorrow we will go to Sha’wan’s home in the village of Sa’ir.

Sha’wan and I leave Ramallah just past noon. In theory, the 40 kms to Sa’ir should take an hour. However, since the beginning of the Intifada, the trip can take up to an entire day, or can’t be made at all. Of course, Israeli civilians and settlers still travel freely and quickly via Israeli-only bypass roads.

Sha’wan doesn’t have a Jerusalem ID, so we have to go around the Kalandia checkpoint. We pick up a group taxi and drive to the outskirts, then continue along a makeshift dirt track and stop in a field where a large group of other taxis and people are gathered. Up the hill, I see another similar group, and people walking on a path between group. We follow them and come to a huge trench, choked by a massive role of razor wire. Planks of wood and other materials have been used to make a route over it and its deadly contents.

On the other side, we pick up our second taxi, which takes us on similar dirt tracks to the Jerusalem side of the Kalandia. We’ve just skipped the checkpoint, as thousands of Palestinians without Jerusalem IDs are forced to do every day. The Israeli army is fully aware of these detours. They often block the routes, but then sit back and watch while the taxi drivers, trailblazers of the Occupied Territories, create new ones. I realize that I - or anybody else - can take as many bombs into Israel as we want, anytime, any day. Are these checkpoints about security, or just oppression? A third taxi takes us to the next trench, another of the 120 roadblocks throughout , which make trips like this, formerly 45 minutes long, into three, five, or ten-hour treks. We trudge down a hot, dusty road, over one more trench, and into yet another taxi. This, our fourth, takes us through villages to a large olive grove. We walk about a kilometre through the grove, and cross another large trench and clamber over a huge pile of rubble, at least seven feet high. Then we pick up our final taxi, into Sa’ir. The trip has taken three hours, as fast as it can be made if you’re Arab or with Arabs. More often than not, checkpoints, roadblocks, curfews, incursions or god knows what, stretch the journey into an entire day.

In the evening, Sha’wan and his family take me for a drive. The dusty mountains glow like almonds in the sun, and terraces covered in olive trees line their sides. The orchards and crops run through the valleys between them like leafy green rivers.

In the distance is the glimmering surface of the Dead Sea and behind it, the Jordanian mountains, which, like an unfinished sketch, can be barely made out through the dust of the desert.

We drive to the home of the family of Osama, a sixteen-year-old boy who only a month ago was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers after he threw a rock at their tank. He was on his way to school. Needless to say, his family is devastated. Osama was a top student, loved by his family and his community. After the soldiers shot him, they denied him the medical attention that might have saved him.

We sit down in the modest living room and drink. Thick, flavourful Arabic coffee. The families talk quietly. Osama’s parents wear expressions of despair so intense that I can hardly look at them. I’m silent.

Osama’s family has made a CD-ROM in his memory. It shows footage of Osama receiving awards at school, of him as a baby, and of his funeral. Arabic music plays as the pictures scroll by. Osama’s lifeless body, wrapped in the Palestinian colours, moves across the screen in slow-motion.

Osama’s mother tells me that when he was killed, the world turned black for her. She wants more than anything to visit her own family in Jordan, but the Israelis won’t allow it; nor will they allow her family to come to her.

I realise that this is the first time I have seen what true suffering looks like.

In the afternoon, Sha’wan shows me his grape vines and plum trees, just down the valley from the house. Then he takes me to visit a friend in the next village, who keeps all kinds of birds, from chickens to peacocks to ostriches. I notice the massive bullet hole in his living room window. It was made by Israeli troops, who have a bad habit of firing randomly in all directions.

As we walk towards the car to leave, we hear gun shots in the distance. Using his mobile phone, Sha’wan discovers that Israeli soldiers have moved into the village. We leave quickly, hoping to avoid them. I sit in the back next to Manar, Sha’wan’s older daughter. We speed down a dusty dirt road until we meet another car. The men in the car wave frantically, telling us to turn back. An armoured tank appears at the top of the hill. I pull Manar’s head down with mine. Sha’wan turns the car around quickly, and we speed away.

Returning to his friend’s place, we discover that a curfew has been dropped on the area. We can’t go back to Sa’ir, although it is only one village away. The five-minute return journey from a visit with friends, has become the difference between life and death. We don’t know how long we will have to stay; it could be days.

We want to return to Ramallah today, but we get a call from Nasser, at al-Haq, who tells us that the Israelis have moved into Ramallah without warning, and are using tear gas, and firing live ammunition at people doing their morning shopping. We decide to stay in Sa’ir.

This is simply routine for Sha’wan and his family. In the blink of an Israeli general’s eye, we have a new destination - Hebron. We park the car at one of Sha’wan’s friends, who lives near the route to Hebron, now obstructed by a massive roadblock. A steady flow of people is climbing over the eight-foot-high pile of rubble. Some haul goods in wheelbarrows or carts; others pull children behind them. One group tries to push an old man in a wheelchair up one side and down the other. We climb over and find a taxi headed for downtown Hebron. We travel through fields and villages and make-shift dirt tracks.

The Hebron market is thriving, full of shoppers. Sha’wan points to the top of a small commercial building, maybe five or six stories high, which has an Israeli sniper nest on its roof that overlooks the entire market. The shops opposite the nest are completely covered in bullet holes. Their signs are barely legible, and their windows are held together with tape. Why bother replacing them? It will just happen again.

Zehi, a field worker for al-Haq, shows me around. The buildings in the old city have been occupied by Israeli “settlers” since the late sixties. Their windows are sandbagged, and a fortified bridge runs over the street, between buildings. We walk under a chain-link “ceiling” built over the streets as protection from the garbage and rocks colonists throw down onto passers-by. We walk past the point where a young boy once threw a rock at a settler, who then shot him in the face with a large-calibre handgun. The settler received a small fine. I’m surprised to learn that settlers (not just in Hebron) carry M-16 assault rifles or large hand guns at all times.

We walk through Hebron’s ancient covered streets and then take a cab to the remains of the largest Palestinian government complex, built by the British after they were given control of by the League of Nations in 1922. This used to be the bureaucratic backbone of Palestinian society.

It’s all been destroyed now, by the order of Israel. The mass of broken concrete and twisted metal could cover several football fields, and is at least nine or ten feet deep. The Israelis claim that the compound had some connection to terrorism. Are we to believe that the destruction of Palestinian society is necessary to stop terrorism? The windows of the school across the street have been blown in, and the classrooms are dark and empty. Collateral damage. The Palestinian flag flies sadly over the remains of the compound. I stand on the wreckage of Palestinian civilization.

Later, Sha’wan and Zehi take me to a nearby refugee camp, one of the many established in 1948, which has now developed into a small town. The squalor is shocking and the masses of children in the street are filthy. They surround our car to get a glimpse of me. We stop, and a group of nine or ten-year-old boys jump onto the running boards of Zehi’s old pick-up truck. They smile and laugh at me. One of them tries to grab my sunglasses.

They reach through the window towards my camera. Sha’wan translates as one boy lists seven or eight names of children, his friends, that the Israelis have killed. "We don't want peace," he says.

"We want to kill them, with their planes and their Apaches and their tanks and bombs and machine guns. We will destroy Israel." His eyes glare through me until I have to look away. It feels like this ten-year-old boy has driven a hole through my forehead. The boys ask me to take their picture. How many of these boys, I wonder, will be dead by the time the film is developed.

In the evening we go to Zehi’s new house to celebrate the fourth birthday of Madleen, Sha’wan’s youngest daughter. As we gather on the rooftop patio and light the barbecue, the younger of the ten children play and laugh, while the older ones try out their English on me.

Piles of vegetables and lamb are brought out and roasted. Arabic salads, breads, hummus, olive oil, and yoghurt surround me. Everyone gathers around the barbecue, and we begin a feast few in the Occupied Territories could ever imagine. There is no table or cutlery; we eat right off the grill, and it’s delicious.

We are quiet while we eat. Then, at the approaching sound of a large diesel engine, Sha’wan turns and mutters something to Zehi in Arabic. “What is it?” I ask.

“Tank,” says Sha’wan. Everyone continues eating. No one skips a beat. This foreign occupation has become so normal that a father doesn’t even reach to protect his children when an enemy tank interrupts the family barbecue.

We’re past the second consecutive day of 24-hour curfew in Ramallah. It’s been fifty-five hours since we could leave our homes without fear of being shot. Alone in my flat, I’m really starting to feel it. I watch the news over and over again. I try to read. I call Canada. I eat a lot and take naps. I clean the flat. If only I could switch myself off. I’m suffocating, and I’ve only been here for a few weeks.

Queen Elizabeth comes by to bring me some good Arabic food. Today it’s rice and meat with spices wrapped in grape leaves. When I go down to return the plate, she invites me in for a drink. We talk about the Occupation and how it has effected her family. She sighs the heaviest sigh I’ve ever heard, and tells me about her broken dreams and about her children, who have no future. Once again, I’m silenced by grief. There is nothing I can say.

In the evening, from my roof, I watch the neighbourhood. Heavy-machine gun fire interrupts the Beethoven violin concerto I’m listening to on the portable CD player. Below me in the streets, children ride bikes and scooters and play ball. A kite passes overhead, its tissue-paper tail billowing in the wind, saying ‘shhhhh!’ Two Israeli helicopter gun-ships appear overhead. The children rush to find a kite, then pull it powerfully into the air as if to do battle. The gun-ships continue to circle. The sun is on its way down, and the white of the stone houses turns from gold to peach, then pink. Not far away, in the remains of Arafat’s compound, I can hear tanks and armoured personnel carriers moving around.

Suddenly, a diesel engine roars much closer. An approaching tank slows as it turns onto my street, its turret swivelling. The children dash down steps or duck behind houses. I’m shocked that they smile as they run. How exciting!! they seem to say. They peer out as the tank rolls by, shouting and clapping and waving their hands. The crackle of gun fire fills the air.

Darkness falls, and Israel sparkles, but it isn’t beautiful. Sitting with the warm Middle Eastern wind on my face, I think of Sha’wan and try to imagine his life in the Israeli prisons, where he spent eight years without being charged or tried. I imagine the look on his face when he was released from prison, and then when he saw his first-born son a full year after birth. I remember watching Sha’wan’s daughter, Madleen, playing with ducklings in the garden. I remember her, in the yard, playing with the ball I gave her, while Israeli fighter jets flew low over the village, again and again, like the jets that killed nine children in Gaza only a few weeks before. During the past two years, the same military has killed two thousand Palestinians, almost a quarter of them children.

Madleen hardly seemed to notice. When will we decide that the plight of Madleen and others like her deserves our attention? When will we give the children of the Occupied Territories a chance to play under a sky free of menace? It’s time.

Peter Trainor is in his second year at University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He remains in contact with the people at al Haq. This article is a condensed version of “Witnessing,” originally published in The Coast, a Halifax weekly newspaper (Vol. 10, No. 25, November 21 - 28, 2002).