We are fighting against efforts to eliminate us.
Deep down, every Palestinian knows it’s not solely about the “occupation.”
Every day, Palestinians face the threat of being arrested and imprisoned indefinitely, killed or displaced from our land. Our experience tells us that our existence is a threat to Israel.
The only “solution” to this danger is to get rid of us.
During June, one of the young men from our community of al-Tuwani raised a Palestinian flag from a tree in our village. Days later, Israeli military forces launched a violent raid to take the flag down.
Israeli soldiers pointed their guns at me, my friends and my family members. Effectively granted immunity from prosecution by their state, they pointed death in our faces.
It can feel like only luck separates the living from the dead in those moments. After all, the sole purpose of the Israeli soldier is to eliminate the native people – by taking our freedom or our lives, through expulsion or forced integration into the settler-colonial system.
…Erasure comes in many forms.
