The Cadfa women's visit to Abu Dis, March 2017, were able to meet with Aseel, Fayiz and some of the young people from Aseel's youth group. It was really good to meet them and we'd like to thank them very much for their time.
They told us a bit about their lives. Two of them had been on a CADFA youth visit to the UK and had met CADFA young people in Abu Dis last summer. They said that the difference between their lives and the lives of young people in their UK was that here in Palestine "everything is forbidden." You can't go anywhere; you can't for example get to the sea. The Israeli soldiers in Abu Dis make a difference to their lives: at any time you can be stopped by them. On Fridays there are usually clashes and tear gas and rubber bullets. You can be arrested for just bring in their street.
Everyone knew boys in prison. They knew someone who had been killed. "It cut me like a knife" said one of them visitors "to hear what they said when we asked about their hopes for the future." One of the boys said. "Well we don't know what will happen to us. Maybe we'll end up dead like the person who was killed yesterday in Jerusalem."
That was terrible. Yesterday a young man on his way to dawn prayers was shot in the head and killed by Israeli soldiers. One of nearly 300 since October 2015. Who in the west hears of it?
We are going to go on working to support youth clubs like yours, help if we can with links to young people in the UK and to take up your issues as strongly as we can. We see you have much in common with the young people in their west... football, play station, etc... We want you also to have the same freedoms that you see that they have.
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