Last week, the Excellence Center organized a trip to the occupied Al Shuhada street to show its interns and volunteers Palestinian daily life. Volunteers were told that it used to be the main commercial street in Hebron, but is now like a ghost town . It was a very eye opening experience from which volunteers got a much clearer sense about what has happened and has been happening in Palestine during the occupation.
The group was invited in by a local Palestinian woman still living in Shuhada street. She offered tea and recounted many of her experiences living there. Volunteers came away from this short trip with a more profound understanding of the Palestinian situation, that some of them haven’t quite experienced yet from daily routine of going to the Center and back to the host families.
Volunteer Monica from the U.S. participating in the Teach English Study Arabic program remarked, “ I now feel all of the emotions of anger, fear,fascination, and empathy that I do in Palestine with much more depth. I understand what it means to have a home and a place in the world and to want to protect that and fight for it when it is being taken from you.”
