“I am sitting here preparing my children for death.” — a mother in Gaza

For many in Olympia, Gaza is no abstraction. Its dead are not mere statistics, though the numbers are staggering and mounting: over 10,000 dead, including 4,000 children and 2,500 women. Gazans and Palestinians are our friends, colleagues, family members, trapped in a nightmare of catastrophic destruction for which they bear no responsibility and from which they cannot escape. Their messages come through on Instagram and WhatsApp: we feel alone, we feel invisible, death surrounds us, the bombings don’t stop, everything is collapsing. Where is the world to protect us?

The Israelis brutally killed and kidnapped by Hamas also are part of our human family. Yet the atrocities committed against them are being used to justify an even greater atrocity: destroying a society’s very ability to survive.

What words can describe Palestinian life today? When I was a Fulbright Scholar at Bethlehem University following the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israeli writers and scholars began to use the word “apartheid” to describe Israel’s systematic seizure of land and water, and ever-expanding settlements inside Palestinian territory. Some thought this word an exaggeration.

Thirty years later, the scope of Israel’s dispossession and segregation of Palestinians is so firmly established, with high-tech, militarized walls and checkpoints, that three major human rights organizations — B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch — have now documented Israel’s crimes of apartheid. This system is most evident in Gaza, a strip of just 365 square kilometers between Israel and Egypt where 2.3 million inhabit the “largest open-air prison in the world.”

In 2003, Olympia’s Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza by an Israeli military-operated bulldozer while defending a Palestinian family’s home from demolition. Shortly before her death, she wrote that she was witnessing children being killed, greenhouses destroyed, homes and water wells demolished. She said please tell people “I am in the midst of a genocide.”

Today, some debate the accuracy of this term, but it is accepted by many on the ground — international health workers, Jewish Voice for Peace, NGOs, and other legal and human rights advocates. Some U.S. and United Nations officials have resigned in protest of the systematic strangulation and bombardment of an entire population that violates all norms of international law.

In 2018, Gazans gathered peacefully at the border fence in the “Great March of Return” to protest their lives of imprisonment, economic and military siege. They danced the debke in front of Israeli soldiers and flew colorful kites over the wall to symbolize their quest for freedom. Israeli forces killed over 200, injuring and crippling thousands, including women, children, and journalists.

I serve on the advisory board of Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, an NGO that supports women and children dealing with the trauma of the ongoing Israeli siege. A 15-year-old in Gaza today has now lived through five so-called wars. The trauma they carry in their young bodies is immense. It is difficult to imagine how these children, if they survive, will heal from the inhumane levels of violence they are witnessing. In addition to the over 4,000 dead, many others are injured, buried in rubble, orphaned, or suffering having their limbs amputated, sometimes without anesthesia. The mental health staff send messages that the clinic building is damaged, their families are now homeless, entire neighborhoods are destroyed, and that they lack medications, food, and water.

Last Sunday, thousands marched in Olympia, demanding a ceasefire. They included Palestinian youth leaders, Jews against occupation, Muslims, and diverse families with young children splashing in the puddles along Capitol Way. Collectively, we voiced despair, anger, and ultimately hope that the world will recognize that there is no military solution to this conflict. That we need to address the root causes and deep injustice at its heart, and affirm the rights of both peoples, Palestinians and Israelis, to live in freedom and equality on their lands.

Therese Saliba is a former Fulbright Scholar to Palestine who works with the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice.