WELCOME TO THE OCCUPATION:

Upon arrival at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, I was taken to a waiting room and spent the next three hours being interrogated by eight different officials, each playing either good cop or bad cop with the same set of questions.

I was made to write the names of every family member, including my grandparents, before being allowed to leave.

Wherever you travel, here's a relief that comes with passing through airport security, picking up your luggage, and finally collapsing on to your hotel bed.

In Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories there's no such thing; the checks rarely seem to end.

I was out there to work on stories, and most of our travel time would go in passing through various security checkpoints dotted throughout the area.

I have only heard and read about apartheid in South Africa, and I often wondered how it was possible to segregate public facilities and social activities.

Nothing quite prepared me for what I saw in Jerusalem.

Life is segregated for Israelis and Palestinians to the extent that there are even different buses for Jews and Arabs.

I was travelling on one such bus with Palestinians leaving Jerusalem for the occupied West Bank when soldiers stopped the bus and demanded to see identification documents.

The soldiers checked ID cards for everyone on board - Israel issues military permits to a few Palestinians who are allowed to visit Jerusalem.

A young Palestinian carrying a baby in her arms was asked to get off the bus as her permit had expired.

Even though the woman kept telling them that she was leaving Jerusalem and returning to the West Bank, they took her off the bus regardless.

She was made to stand in the sun with her baby while officials at the checkpoint sat in their vehicle and questioned her.

I was watching from my window growing increasingly frustrated because I could not intervene and help her.

If it was a free country, people could have gone out to help her and challenge the officials. However, this is what occupation looks like, where repressed people are forced to endure every injustice thrown their way.

Since we were getting late for an interview and the bus had been standing for nearly an hour, we decided to get off the bus and cross the checkpoint on foot. I don't know what happened to her.

Racial profiling is routine on the streets of Jerusalem and I witnessed three men thoroughly searched in a span of just 10 minutes.

Such treatments come coupled with widespread hatred for Palestinians. A day before we reached Jerusalem, Israeli forces killed 34 unarmed Palestinians on Gaza border. We decided to interview people in West Jerusalem about those killings.

"Just 34 killed?" Asked one Israeli.

"They should have killed 200. I want them to kill all the Palestinians there," he said.

I was still confounded by shock as he went on: "My life is before (that of) the Arabs," meaning his life is worth more than an Arab's.

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