http://www.eappi.org/eappi.nsf/index/rep-ab-05011002.html

The Palestinian people have voted and selected a new President. As expected, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) emerged victorious. Walking in Abu Dis, on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem, I noticed new changes at the Bawabe barrier, where people walk through the garden of a monastery in order to access the city.

Israel’s gray, nine-meter high Separation Wall cuts through Palestinian society and it seems as if there are new obstacles every time I come here. A new road block, new barbed wire, new concrete blocks, or police and soldiers at new places. People keep passing, though, but the journey to Jerusalem is getting more and more time-consuming. Old women, young students, everybody, have to walk through the garden in the mud, seeing the Wall depriving them of their right to freedom of movement. At times, soldiers or Border Police patrol the garden, preventing any crossing at all.

In Abu Dis, Abdul Wahab at the Jerusalem Centre for Democracy and Human Rights tells me about some recent news: seven young men and children were killed in Gaza by Israeli tank shells. Six of the victims were from the same family, three brothers and three of their cousins. The killings in Gaza were not the only killings since the start of the election campaign. For instance, on December 30th, 10 Palestinians were killed and 30 injured in a large-scale Israeli offensive on the Khan Yunis refugee camp and al-Amal neighborhood in southern Gaza.

“I watched the news yesterday; I saw the mother on television. She said that one hour ago, she had three children, now they are gone. I started to cry,” Abdul Wahab said. He himself has two children; however, he can’t see them as much as he wants since they are living with their mother in Jerusalem. After the Wall was built in Abu Dis, she moved back to Jerusalem with the children in order to keep her residency rights in the city.

“If you ask me, the election won’t change anything, because it is not a democratic problem here in Palestine. Our main problem is the Occupation. The elections are important for us, but people here have other needs that are more important,” says Abdul Wahab.

In Abu Dis, Al Izariyyeh, and Sawahreh, about 70,000 people have been cut off from Jerusalem since the Wall was built, according to the Jerusalem Centre for Democracy and Human Rights. Many people have lost their jobs; people are being cut off from hospitals, schools and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

A couple of weeks ago, when I asked Abdul Wahab about the elections, he said he considered them really important, but his opinion changed in the days leading up to the vote. “I think everybody thinks that if Israel wants Abu Mazen, it will be Abu Mazen,” he said. “If they (the Israelis) want someone else, he will win. In the end, it is not our vote which will decide the election.”

Despite his critical views about the election, Abdul Wahab went around Abu Dis to put up posters and hand out flyers which instructed people how to vote. He worked as a volunteer at the centre and gave me the impression of a person strongly committed to his work for Palestinian society. He said that he did this work because he hopes for a better future for his children; that his children will get all the freedom that he has lost.

“I want to live in freedom; I don’t want to feel anyone pressuring me. We fight; we suffer; we get arrested; we lose our future; but nothing has changed; the Occupation is still here,” he says.

The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) was launched in August 2002. Ecumenical accompaniers monitor and report violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, support acts of non-violent resistance alongside local Christian and Muslim Palestianians and Israeli peace activists, offer protection through non-violent presence, engage in public policy advocacy and stand in solidarity with the churches and all those struggling against the occupation. The programme is coordinated by the World Council of Churches (WCC).