Some good news

But first, went from Ramallah to Jerusalem today and a journey that should take 45 minutes unhindered took about 2.5 hours. The wait at the checkpoint (outside in the cold) was absolutely huge and the queue moved ridiculously slowly. Its a mix between an airport (please keep this area tidy, please wait patiently) and Bentham and his idea of the Panopticon. Voices over the PA system (almost always female, always aggressive) as you trudge forward obediently. Not wanting to appear annoyed or flustered in case they hold you longer.

But on a much better note Tel Rumeida residents had a rare victory today in that they are allowed to walk through the main road which connects the city. Previous entries in this blog describe how this road has been shut for about six years changing a 5 minute walk into a 45 minute walk and stopping the city from functioning effectively. I'm unsure if they will be able to reopen their shops down this road but it is a victory and a big one. Of course there are many more battles to be fought but the resistance is alive still and it stops the settlers from continuing to cement their position.

cold

The wait at Huwwara and Kalandia yesterday has taken its toll and I'm reduced to a sniffling wreck. This, combined with the fact that the IOF decided to close Kalandia today so I had to walk for 20 minutes in the cold to get a taxi to Ramallah, means I'm going to be on the cough medicine for a while. Little things like this make life very very hard for the average Palestinian. The traffic waiting to pass through Kalandia was huge: 3-4 lanes for about a 2-3km.

However its not all bad news, I've had an awesome day doing an ICAHD tour of Jersualem and going to the Palestinian circus. I'll write a bit more about that when I've found all the blankets I can in Palestine and am wrapped up warm

cold

The wait at Huwwara and Kalandia yesterday has taken its toll and I'm reduced to a sniffling wreck. This, combined with the fact that the IOF decided to close Kalandia today so I had to walk for 20 minutes in the cold to get a taxi to Ramallah, means I'm going to be on the cough medicine for a while. Little things like this make life very very hard for the average Palestinian. The traffic waiting to pass through Kalandia was huge: 3-4 lanes for about a 2-3km.

However its not all bad news, I've had an awesome day doing an ICAHD tour of Jersualem and going to the Palestinian circus. I'll write a bit more about that when I've found all the blankets I can in Palestine and am wrapped up warm

Nablus

I visited Nablus for the last two days hence the lack of posting as I didn't have access to Internet there. Nablus and the Old City are incredibly beautiful and the people are incredibly friendly as always. The main job of internationals here has been to pick olives and protect Palestinians from Settler attacks.

However the Olive Harvest is now over so I was just visiting. The city is often invaded by the army, in fact pretty much nightly, who tend to kill fighters in the town and throw sound bombs. Whilst this is happening the Palestinians would rather we were safe and to be honest there wouldn't be much point hanging around the streets. You can achieve nothing and just likely to get killed as the army can be trigger happy.

The contacts we have there showed us around including the candy factory, and we were pretty much force fed candy. Tea was provided pretty much everywhere we went as was cake and for those who smoke, cigarettes. You can pretty much spunge off the Palestinians here if you so choose!

Anyway after that I've returned to Jerusalem, its taken about 4 hours and that's lucky. We were stopped at one checkpoint for ages. I was asked if I had a bomb in my bag (despite temptations to make a stupid joke I said no) and was told that this area was not safe and we should not visit. The soldier also told me that Palestine wasn't worth a visit and told us to go to Haifa.
At which I did innocently reply, oh no I've heard its not safe.
Anyway during this time my bag was searched, I had to walk through the metal detector a number of times. Then finally let through. Whats interesting is that me and a friend ended up in two different queues, he got through in 5 minutes. I had about 25 minute wait; random decisions about which line to take can hold you up for ages. Of course this wasn't the first checkpoint, we were then stopped again (briefly) and then crossing the wall. Which again took ages. I don't know how much longer this adds to the journey but it is well over an hour. I know people though who have been held up for 4 hours at one checkpoint. It also increase the cost of the journey: instead of just one bus, you have to take taxis to one checkpoint, then switch, then switch again.

How many 'terrorists' has this stopped? Not many I imagine as there are plenty of back roads left and the army believe there are lots of fighters in Nablus but manage to kill people off at quite a rate. How many 'terrorists' are created through the daily grind and humiliation of these checkpoints? Probably a considerable number. I'm cold tired hungry, it issnowing here, and I'm really pissed off by the soldiers stupid attitute. I can't imagine putting up with it daily

Bethlehem and Jerusalem

Hello there

Well I went to Bethlehem for Christmas Carols with my church. Abbas, President of the PA was there which was very interesting. The service was in both Arabic and English and was also a half political rally.
The Bishop told us about his meeting with the Archbishop and the Prime Minister of England - this land has been ravaged by Herods of the past, and is now attacked by the Herods of today. Peace is not the absence of war and conflict and he spoke about his desire to see not just co-existence but co-living. He also made an attack on the war in Iraq saying that the easiest route to democracy in Baghdad, is through Jerusalem and for this to happen we need to see the outbreak of collective common sense. We should stop building walls and instead build bridges. It was all pretty stirring stuff. The church I'm a member of is very very pro-Palestine.
I then went on to midnight mass in Jerusalem were we said prayers for those humiliated at checkpoints, those who had lost family and friends and those who had been killed in this conflict. And today I've just been to the morning service, a slightly bizarre mix of Arabic and English were people say the prayers in their own tongue and sing the songs in their own tongue at the same time, which makes for some interesting sounds! It all fits together remarkably well.

Going to Bethlehem has been one of the best experiences here but also one of the most depressing. Bethlehem is through a checkpoint but we were waved through, the soldiers gave us sweets and wished us a merry Christmas. They were incredibly polite and we were through the checkpoint in less than 5 minutes. Incredibly different to the experiences I have had and seen in Ramallah, Hebron, Jerusalem and the experiences I know others have had in the North. If one had never visited the West Bank one could wonder what all the fuss was about at the checkpoints. I was half tempted to give my seat on the coach to a Palestinian who have been denied entry to Jerusalem as they would have got straight in.

Bethlehem is a town that has been economically depressed by the Israelis, as with the rest of Palestine no wages have been paid to any government staff for 10 months now as the EU and USA withhold their former contributions due to the democratic election of Hamas. I've not seen begging before in Palestine, one or two kids have asked for a shekel but this was very different and quite depressing. This is pretty much the one time of year that they make any money and you can't blame them for begging or trying to force you to buy things off them.

Anyway I hope everyone at home is having a great Christmas. If you are reading this on Christmas day have a look at this.

And on that note

I've just watched the Israelis get a guy to take his jacket off and put him up against the wall, I didn't have my camera unfortunately but there was no need for that. He is a local who must pass through there at least once a day and I imagine they could have checked for 'suicide bombs' in any number of other ways like they usually do.

What a day

Well what a day!

EAPPI the organisation that usually takes the school run in the morning was not here so we took the children to school at 7am which is a little early by my standards! We thought it passed off without incident but it turns out a teacher was hit by a rock and has now gone to hospital, the rocks that were thrown include this one with my hand by the side to show how large it is. In the afternoon from the same window as the rock and apples were thrown eggs were thrown at me and the children as I walked them home. The soldiers are quite good here and asked if I had seen the woman who threw it. They dislike being here I think for the most part.

Before this though we had gone up the hill as there were problems, Israeli children are currently on holiday and were having some kind of picnic going on in the olive groves which the Palestinians used to own but the Israelis seem to have 'acquired'. Anyway some of the children walking home from another school normally pass through this to get home. Today, however they were not allowed and despite us trying they had to go the very long way around which takes a lot longer. We phoned the police who said they should be allowed through but they were not allowed - the soldiers are scared of the settlers in effect and wouldn't allow the children through. We also called the DCO who said they would 'sort it out' but being the DCO didn't. The children's picnic was quite a site, about 50 children and 8-10 soldiers at any one time plus one settler who had a gun. Quite what this does to you growing up in this situation (and for the Palestinian kids who watched) I don't know.

On top of that I sat at a checkpoint with other activists for about 40 minutes with aman they were detaining for no reason that I could work out, apparently he 'wanted to be there'.

Now Mary, the local 75 year old activist has been detained, we are not sure if she is going to be arrested yet - on the charges of hitting a policeman apparently! We've called the police, the embassy and a few other groups to see what is happening but more news when it comes.

It strikes me that most of the soldiers don't really want to be here, in fact I would think that the majority of Israelis don't really want this settlement. Anyway Hanukkah is upon us, the children are on holiday and I'm sure this is going to the case for the next few days. I think its only a matter of time before someone here gets killed, not this week or next week but in the long run I think this place will simmer over, probably at a time when Israeli-Palestine violence is higher than it currently is now instead of the idiotic Palestine on Palestine violence at present.

ً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.