by George Capaccio

This January (2002), on my way home from Iraq, I met an old friend in Jordan’s Queen Alia airport. She is Palestinian and had been visiting her family in Amman. I had spent the previous three weeks living with families in Baghdad and Basra as a member of a Voices in the Wilderness delegation. It was my eighth visit to Iraq in nearly five years. My friend and I were returning on the same flight to Boston. As we waited for the boarding call, she told me stories about life on the West Bank. The one I found most compelling concerned a Palestinian couple attempting to pass a checkpoint. The woman held her child in her arms and explained to the soldiers that the little girl was very ill. They needed to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible. The Israeli soldiers told the couple they would have to come back in the morning.

They argued, they pleaded. But the soldiers were steadfast. The man and woman walked back to their home about a mile away. During that long night, their little girl died. She died in her mother’s arms. The woman would not surrender her child. In the morning she returned, with her husband, to the same checkpoint. This time, they explained to the soldiers, theywanted to bury their child in the cemetery that lay a short distance away. The soldiers told them to wait. When the husband asked for a reason, one of the men pointed his gun at him and ordered him to shut up.