The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The camp where Nasser now lives is illegal, meaning that, at any moment, Israeli bulldozers could appear and demolish everything. But the bureaucracy that rules over Susya still has its own opaque internal rules. For now, instead of taking down the entire camp, they have settled for demolishing one structure at a time. The result is a kind of limbo—Nasser goes to bed every night not knowing whether his roof will be collapsed in upon him and his family. A few years ago, a massive blizzard hit the South Hebron Hills, destroying many of the village’s shelters. Families spent the night shoveling snow out of their housing. “One of our residents has a heart condition, and this was during this blizzard, and we called the police to help,” he said. “It’s so rare that we as Palestinians would call the forces of the occupation to help us. But we called them because he had a heart condition. They didn’t come.”