It's hard to believe that a month has passed. It would be easy to fill this page with descriptive words about what I have done in the last month and for those of you that have been following my activities, it would just be a colorful and unnecessary recap. While I can't help but smile as I think about some of the more extravagant and extraordinary events that have occurred here in my last month like winning the Palestinian Championship in Basketball and appearing in or on several Arabic media sources, I still squirm nervously in my chair as I think about actually putting down some of my emotions and perspectives on paper.

I have done things I never expected in the last month; I have seen things I can't possibly describe and I have kept quiet in an unprecedented way given my motor-mouth history. It's hard to see the injustices committed everyday right beneath my very eyes and not say anything. It's difficult to stand underneath a WALL meant to exclude and oppress people, to pass through checkpoints meant to control people, to experience a new kind of poverty.

The situation here is very different from what I expected.

When I lived in Guatemala for the better part of three years, I saw children playing in the garbage strewn across the countryside, alcoholics passed out in their own filth on the streets and families barely being able to get by on less than a dollar a day. Even recently while traveling in New Orleans I saw the remains of the 9th ward, forlorn homeowners sitting, vacant eyed, outside their gutted homes still marked with a big X. The poverty that I have seen here does not compare; its not poverty in the way that I am used to. While equivalent situations to those mentioned above exist here, they are not as apparent everyday as I walk down the streets.

It's a poverty of the spirit, an imposed poverty.

In the refugee camp where I am living it is a different kind of struggle that grips the people and extends out into the barren rocky countryside. The suffering manifests itself as the multi-headed hydra of a Palestinian refugee camp. One head is the unreliable water supply that is bought in from Israel, an essential resource for all humans that can be cut off for days and days. Another controls the sewage system that periodically erupts in the center of the camp and sees rivers of raw filth cascade down the streets of the tightly packed buildings. The biggest head of all represents the illusion that this is a "temporary" camp, as temporary as you can call Dheisheh since it was established at the end of 1948. The people here are not living on their own lands and in their ancestral homes. So while I don't see here the poverty that I had become used to, the majority of people are not starving, are clothed and have a roof over their heads, there is something else just as powerful working in the streets and the hearts of the population.

Occupation is really the only word that can describe the imposition; prison is more what it feels like and, I can't help but say, not just for the Palestinians. While that population faces the most discrimination, its hard not to look up at the fortified wall-encircled settlements set high on the hilltops or see the massive concrete structure around Jerusalem and not feel like the Israeli population is imprisoned as well. The various "settler-only" roads carve through the dusty rock filled valleys and isolate Israeli's from the bleeding hearts only a few minutes away. They never have to see or be a part of the rest of this tiny world if they don't want to and, sometimes, they are prohibited from even thinking about it.

Along some of the roads you will see big red signs written in Hebrew, Arabic and English banning Israeli citizens from entering an area. I have heard that if you talk to some of the Israeli citizens in Jerusalem, which, in many ways, has turned into another Israeli settlement, and ask them to point out the direction of Ramallah, the West Bank Palestinian administrative center that is only 15 minutes north of Jerusalem, they have no idea. Ramallah lies on the other side of the WALL, out of sight and out of mind from the holy city.

I can't quite imagine this country as ever being in one piece. I can't picture it without the WALL that defies the International Court of Justice's 2004 ruling that it is contrary to international law, the WALL that continues to be under construction. Each day the construction pushes farther past the green line that, in 1949 became the internationally acknowledged border for Israel. Palestinian villages and especially agricultural lands are ruined and annexed in the process.

Many see this physically dominant structure as security, as protection from suicide bombers. Others look upon it as a symbol of apartheid, of separation. Still others see it as a representation of the non-physical separation and oppression that has been happening for years and now has a face that the international population can see. It's hard to look at this structure as holding a flicker of hope in any sense of the word. I have looked upon this monstrous cold epitome of mingling and conflicting perspectives and I have seen how it carves up the land and divides the world.

I mean, I don't deny that all people deserve to have their own land but that right should not come at the expense of others. I have met many Palestinians who are willing to live and work peacefully with Israeli's in one state, an equal state. That sounds like a far-fetched dream right now.

Will a one state solution work? I can't envision that while looking at the settlements that sit on formerly Palestinian land, thinking about the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their homelands, gazing up the immense height of the WALL and wondering how much more it would cost to tear it down, hearing about the sewage being dumped by Israeli settlements onto fertile Palestinian agricultural land, the bulldozers ripping out the olive trees in droves...my mind flies around a sharp corner and spins out of control, causing me to have to hit the brakes.

Is a two state solution the answer? I can't answer that either because it wouldn't be two states, not with the settlements that break up the West Bank slicing it into smaller and smaller parts. And would the Israeli military tear down its eagles nest military perches on top of various hills and leave whatever was determined to be the Palestinian state? Would Palestinians be permitted to return to their homelands, to rebuild their family homes that some of them still hold the rusted keys to?

I cannot propose a solution to these issues yet; I know that I don't know enough. I know that I may never know enough. What I can do is encourage people to find sources; any sources on both sides, to read about this issue and just discover more information.

I'm still on one side of the WALL; it's hard to remain neutral when I live and work constantly in the shadow of the occupation and with the suffering that Palestinians go through daily. Yet, I still keep thinking about the holocaust and discrimination that Jews have faced for so many years. I will cross the WALL and talk with others; I will meet with Israelis and see what I learn.

But even as I assure myself of that, a sound haunts my thoughts, emerging from my experiences waiting and watching at the Israeli checkpoints especially the one that is fondly referred to as "The Container," located within the recognized Palestinian territory. These checkpoints, the soldiers, and the long hours that my friends and I spend waiting and wondering if we will ever make it home have been my only encounters thus far with the Israeli population, aside from the immigration officials at the airport. While I realize that the soldiers are in no way representative of the majority of Israel's citizens, they are agents of the STATE that endorses the oppression of the Palestinians, backed by my own tax dollars. I can still hear the echoing of the soldier's boots as they clomp down the aisle of the bus, with fingers creeping dangerously closer and closer to the triggers of their M-16's. So many hours wasted, waiting, in fear and yet, knowing that I have the security of an American passport. Most of the other silent passengers on the bus have no such security; their lives can be uprooted and thrown in jail within the blink of an eye.

Even as I write these words, a party blares on for a twenty year-old woman, just released today after three and a half years in prison. The festivities are marked with bright lights, waving black, white, green and red Palestinian flags and flurries of multi-colored fireworks on one rooftop in the camp. These parties are an all too common event in Palestine, a celebration of a type of freedom, freedom from the horrors of Israeli prisons, horrors that I have heard stories about that include torture and violence. And yet, these celebrations are a reminder of the people who still suffer behind bars, the families who wait with their hearts in hand and the enduring monotonous throbbing headache of a people under occupation.

The WALL, checkpoints, prison, oppression, occupation...How can so much pain and injustice exist in one place and more people not be crying out?