A teacher under occupation.

• Author: Audeh, Ida

Qalandia, north of Jerusalem, is a major checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. The wall isolates 30,000 Palestinians in Kafr Aqab and Qalandia. One of those is Fatima Assad. This is her account, which she gave me on August 28 of last year:

"I am a teacher in Jerusalem, and I live in Qalandia. In the past, it took me no longer than seven minutes to drive to work. But after they put their separation barrier up, our home became beyond the fence. Now I can't drive my car. I have to wait at the checkpoints an hour or two or three. So I have to walk.

"I walk to the Qalandia checkpoint and then cross it on foot. Then I take public transportation from the Qalandia checkpoint to the Dahiya checkpoint, I have to walk about a hall kilometer to get to the checkpoint. At each checkpoint, I wait in line. Sometimes they add another checkpoint beyond the usual one. Sometimes I have to walk all the way to work. "I leave home at 6:15 and I arrive around 8:00. The distance is no more than seven kilometers. In the morning, I have no time to do anything for my kids or in the house. I rush and barely make it to work on time.

"When you go through these hardships just to go to work, what state are you in when you finally get there? I'm tired, I take ten minutes or so to get something to drink. When I look at my students, many face the same struggles that I face, so I feel very sorry for them. Nevertheless, we try, and I'm sure all schools try, to get something positive out of all this struggle.

"The fence has harmed us a lot at home. The Israelis took about 1.5 dunums [a dunum is a quarter of an acre] from our land. We also had six dunums planted with trees--olives, almonds, figs, grapes, apples--anything you might desire, we had. At the beginning of the Intifada, they bulldozed about 1.5 dunums. Their excuse was that kids throw stones at them and then hide between our trees. One-and-a-half years ago, they bulldozed more of our land. That left a third parcel. At the end of June, and I remember it was a Friday, soldiers came and stayed on our roof for two nights. We said, why are you doing this?

You should have official orders if you are going to do this. They said, we have military orders, so we don't need written official papers. Having soldiers on your roof is very disturbing.

"One morning, at 10:30, we saw a big army bulldozer. It was very loud. It was uprooting our trees. I went out and started to yell at them. They said, we have military orders. They...