The Night is Treacherous in Bethlehem

Location: Bethlehem, Palestine

However, we are ashamed every day of our fear, which we consider trivial in front of the night in Gaza; if we hate it because we can lose any of our family members; in Gaza, entire families lost because of the bombing; this reason gives us the strength and courage that we inspire from the people of Gaza, that this is our sympathy so that we can sleep bravely.

We hate the night; because it belittles our safety, and because it is the fear that we woke up to; we often wake up in the morning to the news of the martyrdom of a young man and the news of arrests is one of the first news, and we start reading it to know young people who may be our friends or relatives.

How can we love the night, which is the source of calm and tranquility for the whole world except the Palestinians, and it is a time of love and comfort for all the world except the Palestinians; it is a time of sudden loss of loved ones, and episodes of panic and treachery.

The night is bad, we hate it, not for treachery, according to the Israeli treachery is present in the day as the night, but it comes to you while you are sleeping, and you try to rest from this world, it comes to you double.

Perhaps one of the most shocking things is that the only nights I slept reassuring are the nights when I slept with my family while we were traveling outside Palestine; where the feeling of security that we lose was present in those countries, and for the first time I felt it, although it was not complete due to my fear for my people; we have one heart and pain. I dream of liberating Palestine, feeling safe, sleeping comfortably, feeling absolutely free, and I believe that it will happen one day thanks to constant resistance and absolute faith.

Contributed by: Dina

Date of Testimony: November 20, 2023

April 23, 2024: Layal Barakat reading excerpt of sleep testimony at MIT’s Scientists Against Genocide Encampment

I came to this world in 2000, I lived for twenty-three years, I hate the night and I do not feel safe like every Palestinian who associates the night with moments of treachery, how not, and the policy of the Israeli occupation in arrest, the killing that is doubled during the night, their entry into Palestinian corridors and houses, and arousing terror in them, and waiting for the turn of your home one day to live this horror.

Our street included many Palestinian martyrs who died in the first and second intifada at the beginning of the late nineties, and the occupation still punishes their children, starting with beating, abuse and arrest during the night hours, and at other times the youth are arrested without charge and reason, or any young man is arrested if they do not find the young man they are looking for; I live this fear and the sounds of gas bombs every time and the possibility that they will arrest any member of my family, or kill him if they find him on the road at the late night; anxiety accompanies every every Palestinian individual, how not and he is lost safety on his land!

During this war, I can be sure that I can't sleep more than two hours of fatigue only, accompanied by nightmares, or after the dawn ears in which the incursions of the army subside because the light has begun to appear; the attack of the barbaric occupation during this war on the West Bank is hysterical. I imagine all the bad scenarios that could happen if the military wanted to choose our house in its intrusions, arrest, murder, abuse, rape and everything.

My sister can't sleep without closing the windows tightly and the curtains, even the aluminum cover of the net, so that you don't hear the sounds of clashes and bombs; we had to turn on the air conditioner even on cold nights; just to sleep! Just to sleep, to not hear external sounds!

During this war, the occupation behaves with absolute brutality, entering the houses at 4:20 A.M! and breaking their doors; once during this war the door of our house and the house of my uncle and grandmother were broken, and the occupation soldiers entered us angrily asking about a young man we do not know, so panic and horror were spread in the hearts of my sister, my little brother, and my little cousins ; who were unable to go to go to school the next day because of their failure to get rid of the shock; when he broke into their house and broke their door while they slept without taking into account the privacy of the house or the children and women in it. My sister also had a panic attack that could not sleep for nights of imagination and anxiety, I am too, and if I was less expressive of my feelings, but sleep left me, and I became I go to work sleepless with worrying tiredness.. All the words we utter are only felt by those who lived them, and if the word anxiety, fear, panic and loss of loved ones is short; but feeling them is the worst that can happen to a person, which we live every day and night but a night in a more terrifying way, and this happens with most of my relatives and friends who were deprived of the occupation of pleasure and reassurance while sleeping.