At school but no students

The road between the two villages Sarrah and Geet


My collegue Saleh and his daughter Nadeen.


Today there was a general strike carried out by teachers in all of Palestine as a protest against the poor wages that the Palestinian government pays teachers in this country. The teachers were at school, but there were no students.

Yesterday, one of my peer English teachers - Saleh - invited me to come today to his village and home. So in the afternoon we took a bus - minibus-over the hills and down the gullies to the nearby village, Sarrah, east of Nablus.

Being the last house in the village, and lying by a crossroads, Saleh told me Israeli soldiers decided to occupy this house too during the second Intifada. This was in 2001 and the occupation of their house lasted for a year and a half.


The house has two floors plus a roof top. There is a separate entrance to first floor and the roof. The family had to live on ground floor.

Did the Israelis pay rent? Of course not. Stupid question, but I wanted to know for sure. He told me the family had sued the Israeli army because it did not even pay the for the electricty it used while occupying a large part of the house. Salah does not believe anything will come out of the court case since the Israeli authorities don't bother even if they get a ruling in court against them.

Why did the soldiers leave the house? The family contacted newspapers in Israel which took an interest in the situation and wrote about it. Media pressure worked.


But Saleh who had just added these two stores to the house with the purpose of marrying, had to postpone his marriage for a year and half.


One of today's photos is taken from the rooftop. You will clearly see why the Israeli army occupied this particular house among others.

Towards the east it overlooks a road leading to a village - Geet - and a settlement. The road is blocked so it is impossible to drive to the village. If people in Sarrah want to visit relatives and friends in Geet, they will either have to walk, or make a detour that will take them about one hour by car or bus.

The distance between Geet and the settlement is about 500 meter a teacher, who lives in this village told me. Geet you see on the hill on the left hand side of the mentioned road. The settlement is on the other side of the road.

Clashes between the population in this village and the settlement have obvisously occurred, and are likely to occur, since the settlers have taken fields on the hillsides next to these villages, fields that belong to the Palestinians. To top it off, the settlers deny the Palestians access to the fields that they have stolen from them.

No wonder lasting peace is far away in the Middle East.