The challenges of Palestinians living in the West Bank were partially revealed by, ‘‘In the Jordan Valley, international deals don’t change reality for Palestinians’’ (5/9). In 2016 writers from around the world travelled to Palestine-Israel to spend time in the occupied territories. Their experiences were collected in the book Kingdom of Olives and Ash. This book of essays confirms the experiences the article describes are representative of everyday life for many Palestinians.
Daily life for most Palestinians is intolerable. The permit system, the checkpoints, make routine life – shopping, getting to work, to school – exhausting. Yet this year in the UN, when Israel threatened to forcibly annex up to a third of the Palestinian West Bank, Australia voted against a resolution condemning the annexation. The Australian government rightly promotes a ‘‘rules-based international order’’. There is no justification for Israel and Palestine relations to be an exception.
Jan Lacey, North Melbourne in The Age.