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The Struggle to be Ordinary
Stories of the Daily Experience of Students and Staff at Birzeit University, 2002
Tanya Nasir ends her narrative of a harrowing crossing of the Surda checkpoint with the words of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: "All we want is to be ordinary." These stories from students and staff at Birzeit University are narratives of that struggle for the ordinary; to simply reach one's classroom, to teach a class, to study, or to finish a research project. In order to undertake these normal and necessary human acts, students, faculty and staff, like other Palestinian civilians, face extraordinary and inhuman obstacles: checkpoints, curfews, harassment, intimidation and other acts of collective punishment that have one message: you are a lesser being, you have no rights. In writing these stories, the authors affirm themselves not as heroes or victims - but as full human beings entitled to an "ordinary" human life including the most basic right to an education.
The right of all persons and peoples to be ordinary - to live a life free of indignity, profound insecurity, and deprivation - is the essence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international covenants. Collective punishment is an act that denies this right; the occupier uses the civilian population as a political pawn, or simply for the occupier's convenience, without restraint or responsibility. International protection is the appropriate, necessary and moral response from the international community to this basic violation of international humanitarian law. In its absence, we will continue to witness, narrate and write our experiences of our struggle to live ordinary lives as students and teachers.
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