After a long journey through Jordan, the girls are staying the night next to the sea in southern Jordan before flying to London tomorrow. This needs some explaining: why are they travelling south and east in order to go north and west? They haven't lost their way. The trivial answer is that currently there are cheaper planes from Aqaba than from Amman.
And the real one is because of the apartheid inequality they live under in Palestine. Where swathes of their village land has been taken over for building of Israeli settlements (illegal under international law whatever Trump wants to claim), and Israeli settlers can swoop into Jerusalem on super highways and visit the beach, can access the airport and visit the UK (for example) with no visa, Palestinians are held up by walls and permits systems and checkpoints and soldiers.
On a recent Dar Assadaqa summer camp, only 5 of 25 children could say they'd been to Jerusalem (though most of them were born there). Although they live near the sea, most have not been there. And when they travel west, like most Palestinians, they have to travel east to another country because the old Lydd airport (now Tel Aviv airport) is completely barred to them.
And let us not forget the role our own country plays in this, taking the lead from Israel and accepting the 2-state lie that plays a role in apartheid. Our government are aware that Israel has been building to stay in the West Bank for over 50 years and has no intention at all of giving up the land occupied in 1967, but our government is prepared to judge the occupier in the settlement as on one level (s/he doesnt need a visa at all) and the Palestinians on another (giving them a long, complicated and often unsuccessful visa procedure). Time to ask you again please to sign and share our visa-equality petition http://chng.it/TFBCVLWFPq
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