ًWelcome to Israel.. . A trip down the Jordan Valley

I haven't had time to double check all the facts in here, one or two statements that I wasn't sure about I've left out or approximated if I haven't got the exact statistics to hand

Today had a trip down the Jordan valley (left), the Palestinian person who we had showing us around had just been delayed for two hours at a check point. A soldier on the way through a checkpoint had drawn a star of david in the dust of the car. When they returned the soldier wanted to know who had wiped it off and held them for two hours demanding to know.

We started at a farm near the Bisan check point where Plestinians now find it very difficult to take their produce through to the markets they once used and therefore now have to go to markets elsewhere. However with problems at check points this is often problematic and adds huge costs to their journey making their products less competitive as Israeli trucks are allowed to use specific roads and bypass the checkpoints.

Despite the fact that this is the Jordan valley the Israelis do have farms out here, in fact quite a few and many Palestinians were angry at the amount of land that they have taken off them. Israeli settlers who want to move here are given 70 dunums of land (approx 17 acres), a house and long term loan of 70,000 USD. Companies such as electrical, telephone and water etcetera are obliged to give them discounts of up to 75% we were told. This obviously makes their lives much easier out here despite the fact that this is well into the West Bank. A fact that many soldiers seem to ignore - when checking our passports one soldier said welcome to Israel - I hope you enjoy it here.

However it is not the case that although these settlers pay 75% less than the Palestinians, in fact the Palestinians pay nothing for these utilities. Why? Because they are not available to them - we passed a large number of houses often next to huge water tanks, electricity wires etcetera that they are not allowed to connect up to. Many Palestinians only build plastic houses or corrugated metal houses as otherwise the Israelis knock them down. In fact even these can be knocked down. Last year 22 houses were knocked who in one day while around half the land in the Jordan valley is no longer available to Palestinians - it is closed to settlers, environmental reserves and military training areas. Now as an environmentalist I would normally applaud the opening of environmental reserves but actually these people live very sustainable lives and there is no reason why these areas should be, in particular, protected. This has lead to the population to drop from 300,000 pre -1967 to 52,000 last year.

Planning permission for new houses for Palestinians is difficult to get, a new school built is being threatened with demolition, attempts to generate power are stopped. Badala has been waiting 10 years for permission for a water tank but the nearby Israeli settlement, built without planning permission has services described in the paragraph above. A clinic in a tent has also been deemed illegal in the past and knocked down (picture on right - despite electricity lines going right by it and some more 'permament' buildings they are not electrified).
But it isn't in just these respects that the Israelis control the local area, they even try and control the sun, one Palestinian joked. A community project with NGO support meant that a few households had purchased solar panels to generate electricity. One man was arrested and put in prison for three days for 'stealing' this off the Israelis, despite the fact he had documentation to demonstrate how he had come to acquire it. He was fined 300 NIS and put in prison for three days without even being able to call relatives to help out while he was away. Israeli settlers then came and looked around the house while he was still in prison.

When visiting another farmer we saw the electrified fence, the English reads, danger electric fence but the Arabic says warning: potential death. The farmers daughter touched it and received a shock. The land that is fenced off was once his but was taken in around 1970. The Israelis manage this by saying that land not used in three years can be taken and redistributed, the fact that many of these people were unable to return home or were prevented from accessing their land is not important. He finds it difficult to get water all year around as the Israeli settlers get the water from the Valley, in fact he has to drink bottled water.

Again the message I got was all these people want is their rights to be respected, his family had lived in this area since 1920. The farmer accepted that the Jewish must live (in Israel) here but they did not have the right to take his land. He can't see an end to this situation as both peaceful and non-peaceful means have both failed. The more time I spend here the less likely I think there is going to be peace anytime soon. Certainly if any peace deal does not remove the Israelis from most of this land and if the wall is at least not rerouted out of the West Bank then it certainly won't be possible.

At checkpoints where we were stopped we often just handed our passports to them and they handed them back a few minutes later without checking them. Often however Palestinians are forced to wait much longer than we are.

house demolitions continued

Later on today I will be able to upload pictures but after the first two house demolitions which we missed we were called to another house where another organisation had been staying but could no longer manage. We somehow managed to get there (buses finished so had to take bus and walk) and luckily some friendly people gave us a lift - everyone here is incredibly friendly to us, much better than I've found anywhere else in the world.

This house was beautiful, it was an extended family where each 'part' of the family had a floor. The family has obviously done very well for itself and have been building it over 6 years but it was only 2 years ago that the Israelis authorities complained about it. They paid a huge amount of money for permission (over 1,000GBP) but were told they needed to pay more, money which they did not have to hand. The Israelis threatened to demolish the house therefore. This is bad enough except for the fact that there is a huge Israeli settlement, which I'm sure breaks many of the peace accords that have been signed and is built with no permission on the hill opposite. They have fantastic utilities whilst this house has very little - the roads are poor, other services are unreliable etcetera. This family also had a school built on their land by the government who never compensated them for it.

Therefore we spent the night in anticipation that the bulldozers might arrive in the morning (most houses have been demolished early in the morning and this one would take some time). The family had taken lots of steps to prevent the Israelis from entering in the hope that an upcoming court case would decide in their favour. We hoped that if they arrived we would prevent them from bulldozing as the family had arranged the money that had been demanded (bringing the total to around 5,000GBP) to be paid in the morning but only once post office opened. Once they brought the receipt it would guarantee no demolition today but it could happen on Thursday. In short they have spent a huge amount of money on planning permission with no guarantee the house will be kept.

Despite this huge worry they were incredibly kind to us, asking us about our lives at home. and feeding us incredibly well. Many of them were intelligent articulate and had a good knowledge of world affairs, philosophy etcetera and say all they want to do is live on the land that they have done for generations and are happy to live peacefully with the Israelis. The reason for demolishing the house, they believe, is so that more homes for Israelis can be built eventually forcing them out of the area and giving Israel more claim to this land.

The bulldozers did not arrive but we heard of other demolitions near Bethlehem but would not have had time to go to them. Its difficult to know what we have achieved in the last 24 hours. We haven;'t delayed any houses from being destroyed and have only really shown solidarity. Hopefully providing images of the destruction might make more people try and influence their governments but apart from that its not been brilliant. I'm going to have a few days off and then travel elsewhere, am not sure what yet but will keep posting as and when. Hopefully I will be able to bring good news about this house in a day or two. We've been told we will be welcome to come back anytime and I really don't think this is an empty promise. As we went to leave they were full of thanks, even though all we had done was drink and eat lots!

PS now that I have some free time I will upload some pictures and correct the spelling and layout of the other articles

demolitions

Last night we received a call saying that there were going to be demolitions of houses in Palestinian areas today and could we go so two of us from Hebron went to Jerusalem and then travelled out to Azzawya. When we arrived we found that the house had already been destroyed, the bulldozer had come at 5am. All we could do was document it by taking photos and talking to the people there. The father was there but the children and mother were all 'sick' - presume he meant stressed as I know I would be! It was gutting to see and it raised the question of how far we can go. If my house had been bulldozed over I doubt I would want to have people asking me questions but they were all very happy to let us take photos and ask questions . This is the second time the house has been knocked down - they were told if they paid 10,000-20,000USD it may be saved but of course they do not have that money. They had rebuilt it from the last occasion simply because they had no where else to go.

This family will now move into another house next door which other members of their family live in - the reason they had moved out is because there were too many - now 6 people with have to move into a house with similar number. The space available to them is pretty small as it was so this is going to make the situation even worse. Its pretty terrible and I felt pretty helpless. Luckily they had enough time to retrieve almost all their belongings before the house was knocked down

We then went onto another house closer to Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives to watch the demolition take place, the police would not let us anywhere near because of 'orders'. When questioning one of the soldiers pushed a journalist for no real reason, only a small push but still it is unacceptable, he was not trying to pass the soldier. That is all they normally ever say, they say its their orders, and don't talk about the morality of the situation normally. However today one police officer said before this house they knock down a Jewish house and then go onto another Jewish house, in fact a lot of the houses they knock down are Jewish. Of course vague on details and when we said we had never heard of this - one person in the group has researched this she said well i see different research. They then said we can take pictures from here.
"But we can't see the house!"
Shrug of shoulders and they walk off

Eventually we got onto the roof of another property but most of it was over. The soldiers and police who were there were all patting each other on the back and shaking hands - (job done). We again went to see the family, they were lovely - offering coffee in a neighbours house as if we had mildly inconvenienced them and they let us take photos and talk. The children were there and some of the grown men had tears in their eyes, which is a pretty awful sight. I can't really say anything to them, all I can do is tell them that I will tell the people at home what happens here and try to get my government involved. Other houses in this area have been bulldozed recently as well and some residents seem worried that other houses might go soon.

Feel pretty helpless about it all but what can you do. I will fill in place names etc and upload photos later. I am now in Jerusalem for a few hours before deciding what to do next.

Picture: part of one of demolished houses, I've decided not to use any of the pictures I took of the residents

hebron continued

Today the same soldier who threatened me yesterday was at it again outside the flat. He came up to me and threatened me again saying I obviously had no recollection of yesterdays conversation. It turns out the other week he threatened to beat someone up and slash their throat. he is a complete nutcase whose face was so close to me that I could smell his bad breath. Mary however was having none of this - she is a 70+ granny about 5ft 5 who stands up to the soldiers. she knows her rights to the letter and makes sure the soldiers don't prevent her doing whatever she wants within them. Some of the soldiers love her, others hate her. These ones today hated her - eventually they called the DCO and some officers arrived who eventually left. The soldiers repeatedly asked us if we thought there was terrorism here and laughed at our replies. They asked for every Palestinians ID and held them up, stopping people from going abut their legitimate business, and asking for people to lift up their shirts. They got bored and eventually started shouting and pretending to shoot which scared a few kids. Later I played football with Ronaldo and various other members of the Brazilian football side aka Palestinian kids 6-11. Saying I was England the best side in the world was met with laughter. needless to say I lost (though of course I let them win ;-) Its difficult not to dehumanise the Israelis. Te soldiers here believe that everyone is a terrorist ad see them as subhuman. I see every soldier as a potential murderer - normally with fingers on trigger- every action is seen as hostile. Whilst they see me as someone who prevents them from preventing terrorism (or allegedly). I must make sure that I remember to see them as humans often young scared kids who have been attacked on occasion by Palestinians, some of whom have been fighting in Lebanon. I came here wanting to promote peace and solidarity and I don't want to come across or become simply just anti-Israel, which I am not.

Picture: Boarded up house in Tel Rumeida