By Don Bryant
I arrived at the Jordan-Palestine border on March 13, 2025. Apartheid Israel’s border control can be challenging. I deactivated my social media accounts and removed apps from my phone days before. I answered questions about my purpose for traveling – tourism, of course – where I was lodging, and when I was here last. After I got a visa, I accepted the help of a young Palestinian man to wheel my luggage out and hail a taxi. I was the sole rider, so I paid more for a ride that is usually shared. The main road to Bethlehem was closed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) or the Palestinian Authority (PA), so we were detoured by 30 minutes as night was falling. The driver took me to the door of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability and Museum (PIBS) Before I got out of the taxi, he turned around and showed pictures of his wounds he sustained after he had been beaten by the IOF last year.
Mazin Qumsiyeh and Jessie Chang Qumsiyeh established PIBS with Bethlehem University to create a hands-on sustainable agriculture and animal welfare center while living under a military occupation that spans 76 years. I arranged to volunteer for just a week. Usually, stints are at least three weeks. I stayed in one of the rooms upstairs where two other internationals were staying and volunteering at PIBS: Johnnie, an Englishwoman in her 70s, and Matthew, a law student from Scotland who also volunteered with Badil, a refugee law organization in Bethlehem. Christine, a French national, also volunteered in the library and with the children’s activities.
Once a week, children, kindergarten through teen, attended classes, learning biology, botany, zoology, recycling, biodiversity, and more. Games and painting projects were done on the patio under an ancient olive tree. A local Palestinian woman led the classes along with adult volunteers to help.
Johnnie showed me around PIBS and how to care for the animals – chickens, pigeons, a peacock, rabbits, and an owl all in two walk-in bird houses. We fed them grains, cabbage leaves, and squishy tomatoes. We tended to a greenhouse where recycled water supplied the plants and tanks of Tilapia fish. Gardens were everywhere. Rosemary (the herb) grows like shrubbery along the sidewalks. Gardening is my therapy, so I was happy to weed the garden beds. In the afternoon, we fed the two hyenas, that had been rescued as babies, now full grown. They were released later in the spring.
During my time at PIBS, apartheid Israel (AI) broke the January 2025 ceasefire with Hamas and continued its military onslaught on Gaza. Walking through Bethlehem, I saw an opportunity to address AI’s abrogation and continued genocide. Walking in the community, I happened upon a graffitied mural of a fifteen-year-old martyr, Adam Ayyad, murdered by Israeli sniper fire. This was the backdrop for my @clevelandpeaceaction Instagram post live from Bethlehem.
My second week in Occupied Palestine I was based in al-Bireh, the capital of Ramallah and Al-Bireh governate. I joined the on-the-ground work of the Museum for Palestinian Memory/ Nakba (MPM Nakba). I was impressed with what had already been accomplished at the museum, virtual and actual. The project not only commemorates the 675 destroyed villages of Nakba 1948 (the catastrophe) but also focuses on a way forward on the road to Palestinian land justice.
Palestinians have dealt with the continual threat of erasure by the occupation forces of apartheid Israel. Their villages have been renamed, their graves desecrated, their food products and recipes appropriated, and their humanity denied.
We drove to Ama’ri refugee camp, in al-Bireh city, whose residents were displaced from the al-Ramla District during the Nakba and ethnic cleansing incursion of 1948. We saw the illegal Zionist settlement outposts on the hilltops and the dirt road that Zionist settlers use to come into the camp to harass and violate the Palestinian residents. The administration building at Ama’ri had been set fire by the Zionist vandals in 2024 and was now restored.
We also traveled to an overlook of an illegal settlement. Two Palestinian family homes remain in the Zionist outpost settlement, refusing and resisting displacement. The illegal Zionist settlers are seeking to expand and join their outposts with roads and other infrastructure.
The virtual museum is 80% complete in Arabic and the English version is 20% complete. It can be viewed in English or in Arabic here. The actual museum is getting off the ground too. It is housed in a sturdy stone building at the offices of the Shaikh Hasan Foundation. It is equipped with up-to-date tech capabilities and beautifully designed conference rooms. For the MPM Nakba mission to be fully realized in a timely fashion, dedicated volunteers will be needed. I invite you to join me in supporting the MPM Nakba.
In February 2025, Hamas and Apartheid Israel released detainees in a negotiated prisoner exchange. In my recent trip to Occupied Palestine in March 2025, my host, Amal, took me to meet one of the Palestinian men who was released. He had been arrested without charge multiple times in the last fifteen years. Our meeting was scheduled for a late hour, 9:00 pm, after the nighttime prayers for Ramadan. We went up in the elevator and knocked on one door. The door opened and a woman in Islamic Palestinian attire welcomed us into a hallway. She then led us to a room with stuffed chairs and two couches. There were photographs on the wall of a man with graying hair and a solemn face. I was offered a chair and Amal sat on a coach to my left. The woman who answered the door was the wife of the man released from prison. She and Amal exchanged greetings. Then another woman in hijab and Palestinian attire entered the room. She asked us, in Arabic, if we would like tea, and sweetened, or not.
I learned that the released prisoner, Fadi, who we came to visit, had been elected mayor of a city in Occupied Palestine while in prison. Putting democratic leaders in prison is a common practice in totalitarian countries, but you may not think that a nation that calls itself a “democracy” would take this measure. That’s exactly what happens under the Zionist government of Israel. Not only does Apartheid Israel (A.I.) arrest, jail, and torture popular public figures but also people who practice nonviolent free speech and assembly.
As of January 2025, A.I. imprisoned 10,400 Palestinian political prisoners and 3,376 administrative (held without charge) detainees. This includes 320 children and 88 women.
Fadi was repeatedly held in administrative detention for six months every time he was arrested. Fadi’s daughter, Noor, is a journalist and has been arrested seven times in five years. Fadi’s wife, Noor’s mother, was arrested once. Her arrest was based on false claims of her leading a nonprofit organization that she was employed with.
The arrests happened at their family home. Typically, about ten Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers would surround the building, some stationed on the roof, others at both exits and the remainder in their home. The IOF soldiers would break up furniture and artifacts in the home for no reason except to inflict damage. Noor’s mother told us how her daughter was beaten, with the IOF taking turns hitting her. Noor said that she still feels numbness in her hands and shows scars from her beatings. Her eyeglasses were knocked off her face and never returned to her throughout her confinement. She was forced to buy eyeglasses while in prison at an exorbitant price.
Prison conditions were harsh. Food was bad. No hot meals. Prescribed medicine was not administered. Prisons were privatized, which demands full capacity for maximum profit. Over one hundred women were kept in thirteen small rooms with six beds in each room and twelve women in each room. During wintertime the windows would remain open. Paper and pen were not allowed. Noor heard stories of how children were handcuffed while parent(s) were arrested. One boy was forced to the floor and stepped on because he held a Palestinian flag.
In the women’s prison, an 87-year-old woman showed up in prison. She was arrested in Gaza and made to sleep on the floor. Prison solidarity comes into play when detainees are subject to such treatment. Younger women offered their blankets to the elderly woman. A seventy-five-year-old woman is still in prison (at the time of our meeting) accused of terrorism without evidence. Her two daughters are also confined. The sister of the assassinated leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was arrested and imprisoned just because she was related to Haniyeh. She was 55 years old with cancer. Her money and gold jewelry were stolen. She was placed in solitary confinement, as many were. In one of those prisoner solidarity moments, the women in a cell block added up the multiple sentences levied against a sister detainee – equaling 5000 years! This expressed the absurdity of it all. When stealing people’s lives this oppression must end.
I was impressed with the positive attitude and grace of these two women who sat and spoke with us for an hour before Fadi came in to meet with us. In that time Noor had brought us a cup of tea, Arabic coffee, and water all served on a brass tray. I saw colorfully wrapped squares in a bowl next to me but resisted the temptation to invite myself to a sweet treat to compliment my coffee. I asked Noor and mom if they feared or expected to be arrested again. They said, “yes.”
I then asked Noor and mom how they stay so apparently joyful. Since they were practicing Muslims, I expected to hear “alhamd lilah“ (all praises to Allah) but instead Noor said, “for us, the value of freedom is so high.”
Fadi’s wife told us that when her husband was released, soldiers came to monitor whether there was a celebration for his release. Celebrations are deemed illegal by A.I., threatening families with violence and arrest. That is the epitome of occupation-oppression.
Conversation with Fadi
Amal had told me ahead of time that Fadi had lost thirty pounds after repeated incarcerations. I learned later that he had endured a 63-day hunger strike as well.
When Fadi entered the room, he looked like a tall man of at least six feet. I realized that he was the man in the framed pictures above our heads. He sat down across from me with Amal on the side couch, interpreting.
Fadi began: “The confrontation is more than just about Israel, but also with the West and the U.S. He said, “In the US, there’s a dictatorship by two political parties.”
Don: I call them the war parties. We need independent politics.
Fadi: The Palestinian Authority, the Zionist regime, and U.S. America portray three models of oppression. They use harsh measures and alienation to intimidate others from speaking out. Oppression and tyranny are common threads. Contradictions of the oppressors are rising as internal division increases This ignites more conflict, empowering Palestinians and allies to speak out and to resist. The desperation of the oppressors is evident: The Trump administration has deprived Columbia University of $400 million because they could not suppress the protests over the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil. He blamed the US for the rise of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS).
Fadi went on hunger strike lasting 63 days to resist the harsh measures in the Israeli prison. He said that morale was heightened by prison protests. He confirmed that BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) is working, and we should increase it.
Don: Why is Arab freedom oppressed in so many ways?
Fadi: The Arab world has been divided by imperialists and Arab nations are occupied by military powers. We Palestinians are considered sub-human. Satellite states don’t want Palestinians to be free. Israel wants the land from the Nile River to the Euphrates River; all Zionists agree. Abu Mazin/ Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian “president” wants to live under the boot and even admitted this. He asked for protection from the United Nations.
The settler population has increased from 150,000 to 800,000. Theft of water is detrimental to Palestinian people in the West Bank; destruction of water infrastructure in Gaza is leading to famine now.
We all surmised that sumud (steadfastness) is stronger than hate.
Regarding the silent majority, Fadi said that we are saving those who are on the sidelines. (Maybe the most important lesson for me).
Breaking News as we were there: The IOF was attacking al Ama’ri refugee camp in al-Bireh city, whose residents were displaced from al-Ramla District during the Nakba and ethnic cleansing incursion of 1948.
We all rose at the end of our talk. Now, standing next to Fadi I realized that our heights were nearly the same, and his tallness was in my imagination with respect for his accomplishments, even as a captive of the Zionist regime.
I wanted to express my feelings in Arabic and said, “Yalla Hooriyah; al Awda,” meaning “come freedom and the return,” I think.
We clasped hands and smiled at one another, with our eyes too!
Please contact Congress and the president to call for an immediate arms embargo on Apartheid Israel (AI).
Plans are being arranged for travel to the Occupied West Bank again this year with a small delegation. Contact ohio4palestine@gmail.com for more information. Please put “Visit Palestine 11/25” in the subject line.