Activist walks to Palestine to show solidarity

If you’re from the North East of England, there’s a chance you know Mick. A local legend, clued up on everything left leaning, with a total disregard for authority.

He’s had a colourful life, defined by his activism. Upon retiring he announced he’d be walking to Palestine. No one was surprised.

In 2013, Mick, being a union man, heard a Palestinian speaker and it changed his life. The truth hit him hard. In that moment he realised that sitting behind a picket line wasn’t enough — he had to bear witness himself.

Since then, Mick has made three trips to the West Bank — the last defined them all. He walked 1,800 miles from the UK to Istanbul, then crossed into Palestine via Jordan — refusing to pay the Israeli regime for entry.

His journey was nothing short of raw solidarity.

A middle finger to Israeli gatekeepers

You could tell how much Mick despised the occupation. His eyes, usually full of laughter, grew dark and angry as he recounted his journey. He told me how the occupation starts at the border, how Israel controls everything.

Crossing Jordan Allenby Bridge — a land border crossing — Mick faced the Israeli security complex designed to be oppressive and intimidating. The route is one that thousands of Palestinians tread daily.

You turn up at this huge Israeli security complex and it’s absolutely horrendous… for Palestinians coming in through the West Bank it is a deeply troubling experience. At any stage they can be stopped or detained.’

Humiliation is Israel’s weapon of choice, even for foreigners. Mick described how you have to lie through your back teeth to cross the border. At no point could Mick tell them he was going to Palestine. As far as they were concerned, he was on a holy trip to Jerusalem. He described guns and an arrogance and distain for non-Israelis.

It’s deeply unpleasant. You go through body scanners and they scream at you if you have to go back. Sometimes the security are little more than kids, they’ve all got big guns, and it’s ingrained into them to hate Palestinians.

Passport control was hell. Armed with a burner phone scrubbed of all traces of his activism. The security personnel, consulting their database, saw he had been Palestine before. They didn’t buy his pilgrimage story and questioned him for hours as the soldier spat out racist bullshit.

Life under the boot

They initially refused him entry, but he blagged his way in by playing the meek Christian. As harsh as his experience was, it pales in comparison to daily life for Palestinians.

Checkpoints marked every corner. Some are permanent, other pop out of the ground like fucking daisies. Massive steel gates can shut down a city and armed soldiers uphold this oppression with disgusting grins. At these checkpoints, Israeli forces snatch thousands of innocent people. The fear of detention looms over them.

Because you’re a foreigner with a passport, you know they’re not going to take you to one side and beat you up. You’re not going to disappear into their prison system. You’ll just be told to fuck off.

The chains tightened after October 7.

Mick described Israeli forces destroying 90 percent of local roads in and around the South Hebron hills, where he spent much of his time. This deliberate attempt to isolate Palestinian villages stops children going to school, denies access to medical care and keeps people perpetually hungry.

There are some who are motivated by crazy ideological beliefs which they say are rooted in the bible… they call it the ‘Greater Israel Project,’ or ERETZ Israel. They think it gives them a God-given right to do whatever they want to Palestinians, kill them, enslave them, whatever.

Mick saw settlers act with impunity, describing them as religious fanatics misusing Judaism to justify racist behaviour. Every settler he encountered believed deeply that they had a ‘God-given right’ to steal Palestinian land. They’re backed by the government. He saw it clearly, the army and armed settlers working together to protect this land theft.

Sumud & the power of standing fast

Whilst in the West Bank, Mick’s beliefs weren’t just confirmed; they were forged into steel. In the hills of Hebron, he met a resolute Palestinian community whose beliefs were simple:

The most powerful resistance is simply existence.

This is the meaning of Sumud, the Palestinian’s refusal to let up.

Working alongside the COMET project, Mick helped build phone masts to give isolated families access to the internet and mobile coverage. No matter how much these rabid settlers attacked these small beacons of defiance, they would be back up and functional in a week.

They just walk into their properties, they steal, walk around arrogantly. The personal abuse they would hurl at ‘arabs,’ saying that they have no right to be here, they’re all Hamas supporters. The profound level of racism permeates all levels of Israeli society, not just settlers.

Mick planted olive trees shoulder to shoulder with the oppressed, watching Israelis burn their crops time and time again. The Palestinian spirit enduring, breathing life into new seedlings, standing proud as the army hurdled tear gas at them.

The community doesn’t hate Israelis because they’re Jewish. Religion isn’t the issue — it’s colonialism.

People deal with it with great fortitude and humour. They have such a strong connection to the land, they’ve been there for centuries.

Their hatred is against a system, not against a people.

The personal cost of seeing it all

Mick’s eyes glazed over as he described the more harrowing shit he witnessed. At a protest, he came face to face with Israel’s disgusting tactics; detained, beaten, pepper-sprayed and battered to the point he lost a tooth.

Yet that isn’t what haunts him the most.

At a funeral procession in Kuzra, Mick faced death. In the midst of their grief, the IOF mercilessly gunned down six people.

Bullets have a weird sound when they’re fired. It’s not like a big sound. You just saw people fall down, clutching their legs. We saw six get shot in the leg and one in the neck. He went down, clutching his neck, and he didn’t get up.

Mick was left with a profound awareness of his own white privilege, knowing the bullets were never meant for him. He told me how hard it was to come to terms with coming back to the UK. He couldn’t stop thinking about the Palestinians who didn’t share the same luxury, trapped in a system of murder and oppression.

This gave Mick his moral mandate, and he will not stop.

His 1,800 mile walk was just the beginning.

Featured image via Tim Mossholder/Unsplash