Is the Occupation really so bad?

In some conversations I've had recently, some people seem to have the perception that the Occupation isn't so bad these days... that things have been 'relaxed.'  It is true that there are up and down times during this occupation.  Some times, violence sparks more road closures and arrests... sometimes, things are cooled down and the checkpoints are loosened.  But the occupation is still very much a reality, and the control of Israel is felt throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

Some people have asked me what the military presence is like in the West Bank.  Do we see the Israeli army every day? Do we feel constantly that we are under a military occupation?  In Ramallah, we do not see the military day-to-day. But Palestinians here feel the occupation nevertheless, whenever they want to drive to the next city. The fact that they cannot enter Jerusalem, which is only 20 minutes away. The difficulty in obtaining permission to even cross the Allenby Bridge into Jordan, where only then they have an airport from which to fly to anywhere in the world. They also feel the occupation through its economic effects - the difficulty of opening a business here in Palestine, where exports can be stalled by Israel for any reason.

However, in other parts of the West Bank outside Ramallah, the occupation is even more a daily, physical reality.  In Hebron and the south West Bank, you see Israeli soldiers every day. In downtown Hebron there is a constant mlitary presence to 'protect' the Jewish settlers. In some Palestinian villages south of Hebron, Israeli soldiers escort Palestinian schoolchildren to school every day in order to prevent them being attacked by extremist Jewish settlers.  Israeli tanks are a constant sight on the horizon of the village of Doora, near Hebron.

In the north West Bank, and around the city of Nablus, the Jewish settlements create the same necessity for military presence. Closures of roads, road blocks and curfews imposed by the Israeli army are still common in some Palestinian villages in the area. In recent days, this is the case in Iraq Boreen, the village which I wrote about and visited a few weeks ago.  It has now been declared a 'closed military zone' and international medical volunteers were denied entrance to the village.
Israel declares village closed to foreigners

Some people on the outside, particularly some Israelis that I have spoken with, want to believe that the occupation really isn't so bad, and that its presence is exaggerated by Palestinians. I can tell you that it is not.  The occupation is felt, and it is real. Whether physically manifested in tanks and soldiers, economically in trade restrictions and border delays, or in the psychological scars from family history of arrests, humiliation or death at the hands of Israel, the occupation is very much a present reality.