As I walk slowly towards [the hill] I realise that the hill I was hoping to find now looms to my left. Alluringly bare, it wears a meandering pathway on its far edge, the beginning of which is opposite the settlement’s gates. I step calmly over and keep walking on up the hill without glancing back or taking a breath. I’ve got to try it. I climb steadily but cannot shake a sickening degree of anxiety which is also fitting to given what I know to be true. It’s only days since nine people were killed on the Mavi Marmara (part of an aid flotilla for Gaza in International waters), forcing on the world a glimpse of everyday reality here inside the Occupation. I know the well-documented history of shootings and massacres, the bottomless impunity of soldiers and settlers. Settlers who are watching, perhaps readying to shoot me now as I walk up a hill that I’m forbidden to approach. I feel exceedingly exposed to their mercy; a very strange sensation.
In Ramallah Running by Guy Mannes-Abbott