I'm sitting in the Friends Hostel in al Khalil. We just finished a big demo - even though al
Khalil is a Hamas town, there were the yellow flags of the Fatah and plenty of Palestinian flags which had been absent from demos in Ramallah.
Myself and Abu Sara found ourselves carried along in a big chanting crowd.
When we paused to get a better look at what was going on, the big women's contingent caught up with us, and I got talking to Amina. Dressed all in black, as a symbol of
mourning for the deaths of innocents in Gaza, she was demonstrating for freedom.
Like other people I've spoken to over the past few days, she is not a supporter of any party.
She refused to carry a Hamas banner someone wanted to give her, but admires Hamas for starting this revolt. She struggles for Palestine. This mother of six is one of the
few women who joins the young men in hurling stones against the bullets of the soldiers.
She talked to me about her feeling of being trapped. Unable to travel, to visit al Aqsa, Haifa or the Dead Sea freely. The indignity of being searched and touched and
questioned at checkpoints. Even a trip to another town in the oPt is complicated and difficult. She would like to be able to go sleep without preparing her personal belongings
in case the army raids her house in the night.
When she saw the news about the breakout from Gaza, Amina couldn't believe it at first. She put down her phone and went back to sleep. Once she had assimilated what was going
on, she felt joyful. We got into a conversation with several other people, all of whom were passionate about explaining how unliveable the situation is in Gaza. The pressure
of the long blockade is too great, people can't live like that.
"We are not criminals", she kept repeating to me, "Israel has wronged us, the settlers attack us constantly, they are everywhere."
"Tell people, we don't want war. Look, none of us here have weapons, but we need to be free"
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