What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a white Westerner traveling in the Occupied Territories?
Kathleen & Bill Christison: Although we feel very comfortable among Palestinians, and have always felt very welcome, at the same time we always feel some embarrassment because we’re there basically as voyeurs watching other people’s misery. In fact, we feel we’re helping by bringing the Palestinians’ story, the facts of the occupation and what it means for Palestinian daily lives, to public attention in the West, but it’s still hard to get away from the feeling that we’re invading other people’s privacy by watching them line up at checkpoints and taking pictures of them, or watching them sob as their homes are demolished. Or, as happened to us once, talking to a man scheduled for surgery in Jerusalem who had been waiting for days for an Israeli permit to get into the city and who cried as he told us his story and asked us to take a picture of the medical certificate that attested to his need for surgery and should have provided his entrée to the city. We’ve told his story, but we knew,
