So, I had arrived in Beit Sahour.
The family was lovely, the "Azars" which used to be one of the rulling families in Palestine, they were lovely comfortable middle class Christians with one son studying abroad and the other "Azar Azar" - love the name - had just returned from working as an accountant in Dublin.
They made me nice nosh and they had such a nice shower... Ahhhh... warm and powerful. Such a nice break. I only think I've actually washed 4/5 times since i've been here and it's usually been a cold dribble. I indulged and used their Israeli made shampoo.... felt a bit guilty afterwards but it was nice, and my hair was a greazy lanky mess!
So on the way to the house, I was being picked up by an activist that Adie met on the internet, which worked out just in time. She found me the family, a bit expensive for my liking so i only stayed there two nights.
As I was waiting for her on the high street I sat down with all my baggage to read a book. I got up, unknowingly leaving my - or should I say my mother's, really nice little videocamera on the street.
I had realised that it was gone the next morning, I ran to the road with bare feet, dodging the broken glass and having the kids laugh at me, to find that, at 830am the next morning, of course, it had gone. So I asked at the garage, they gave me more strange looks and said to come back when the security was here incase the CCTV picked anthing up, but they all just missed the spot where i was sat.
So, sorry mum!! I'll pay you back.
I still have the charger and spare CDs... so some lucky palestinian has got some really nice footage! A smashing interview with a female policy writer in a taxi, kids' analysis of the situation, some of the natural beauty, an amazing shot of Nablus from a hilltop that I climed with my rucksack on, and footage of checkpoints and walls and grafiti.
I was quite sad that I had lost it and lost the opportunity to catch some of my experiences on film, but I remain unattached and happy and blessed that I can relax about catching things on film and just being aware of what's going on :)
So back to the Azars. The first night in Beit Sahour, the activist told me about a talk going on, which was the one that inspired the investigation into the prisons, a guy from Al-Haq talking about his experiences. Saw a load of Europeans and Americans. Italians, Swedish and Norwegian, Irish and US. It was wierd. I always find it strange seeing other whiteys here as I probably want to pretend that I'm more a part of the community than I really am. It was good.
So on Monday I started volunteering full time with the "Holy Land Trust". It's motto is "strengthening communities for the future". It works on youth projects - mainly exploring kids' identity and their affiliations. It organises non-violent resistance. It trains local leaders, government officials, political parties, faith leaders etc. etc. in "non-linear thinking" with the aim of finding non-violent solutions to situations in the conflict and showing people that they are more powerful - still left to be 100% convinced but I'm getting there. It also runs what I first thought was a travel agency but is actually a really well respected "travel and encounter" program, exposing the occupation to Americans and Israeli Jews mainly. If you have only a couple of weeks in the summer and fancy a holiday, this may be a good way to do it, you can do vlunteering based, study based or talour it. I still think that the air miles aren't worth it so much but... Hey the truth needs to get out.
So I've been editing English mainly, but also doing a lot of personal organising and random facebook stuff. Which is probably an indication that I'm not totally committed to the progam yet. I know it's a long term approach but it doesn't feel nearly as effective as the kind of organising and activism that you can do in England. And I really have a problem with the formalised set up.
It's an NGO, a Palestinian NGO, and the people that work for it are amazing, they really are. They want an end to the occupation more than anything else, but it doesn't feel like they think that what they are doing is going to have an effect. The talk at lunch is small talk, it's like an office in England, everyone except the founder clocks off at office hours. They work hard and the dynamic in the office is really co-operative, but it is really an office, not an action station. SO i will give it my best but will probably move to an Israeli organisation called ICAHD, Israeli committee against house demolitions. They look fantastic and I met a nice woman from there.
need to go right now but i'll resume in a bit. x
Tuesday 21 April 2009
Thursday 16 April 2009
Prison
So with 'kidnappings' at check points still happening frequently, prisoners as young as 18 months (Nour, he was actually born in prison as many months ago), over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli gaols (out of a population of 3.3 million according to demographer Sergio DellaPergola - which would be the equivalent of France imprisoning 200,000 people from the UK), and Palestinian Prisoner Day tomorrow on the anniversary of the arrest of Nour's mother (I'm sure this is just a coincidence actually but it sounded nice) - I think it's time to write about the Palestinian prisoners inside Israel.
I can only give a brief outline of the problems because there are so many
1) Administrative detention
http://www.btselem.org/english/Administrative_Detention/Statistics.asp
So in England we are concerned and upset about the 42 day limit - well I am anyway, it's a long time to be banged up for nothing - lse your job, potentially miss the birth of a child, an event that you had been planning, hospital check ups... a month and a half. OK. In Palestine the person that has been under 'administration' the longest has wound up nearly 5 years now. 5 years without trial, that's some pretty sluggish administration if you ask me.
And what happens in 'administrative detention' - I went to a talk by a former inmate, arrested because he was politically active at University advocating respect for Human Rights in the occupied territories. Something that I do in the UK - he was in prison for 3 years without charge.
To be fair administrative detention isn't as bad as proper prison in Israel - the other side of the military/quango courts. You are allowed books - you used to be allowed 8, in line with the Geneva convention, but now that has been reduced to 1 and Israel have just made a decision to ban them altogether. You are allowed to make the dorm look nice and decorate it, but all the decorations are ripped down and the place is stripped out every 4 months or so, you are allowed to smoke... but you still get tortured, or 'interrogated with sustained exerted force' - the techniques make the fake daily injections and jump suits in GITMO look tame. Israel has killed dozens of people using torture techniques that have been scientifically refined to minimize physical damage while increase pain.
Torture
http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf
I met a student at Berziet university that had been imprisoned for 3 years from 16 to 19 because he belonged to a political family - he described 'Shabeh' - or handcuffing your hands and feet to a tiny sloped chair designed to give you back pain and put pressure on your wrists and ankles. He was in this chair for 3 days without having done anything wrong, without and interrogator presesnt. The justification for the use of this technique is so that the interrigator is protected from prisoners lashing out.
He also described iscolation cells under Jerusalem city, where you are kept in a room that is just too small to stand to lie straight in, you have a mat and a pot and you are given just enough food to live - no sugar or carbs or solids. You are left in the dark for what feels like weeks (probably actually weeks, he knows that his friends were away for about 3 weeks before coming back, having been put in the cell for the whole time) and the bucket for your toilet is only emptied twice a week. You see no-one, you speak to no-one. Some people come out of this experience literaly insane. Again, it is used as a repressive measure but it is also used arbritrarily to crush people's spirits.
You are given "light glasses" which are strapped to your head while your are handcuffed, that shine bright white light directly into your eyes - it is one techniques, along with tying you in uncomfortable positions, playing one extrememly loud rock song over and over and over and over for days, dousing you with hot or icey water - you don't know which until it hits you. People have been deprived of sleep for up to 20 days. You aren't supposed to survive 11. It wrecks your nervous system and makes you more vulnerable and susceptable to the torture techniques used to keep you awake.
They can shake you so hard that you die from nervous damage (this has happened over 6 times), suffocate you with a bag over your head that the guards usually defecate in (shit in), stamp on your balls or apply gradually increasing force until you pass out from the pain - girls, trust us, this really really does hurt.
So apart from the other physical techniques of plain beating, tying you in positions that will damage your back and jumping on you - that one's called the "banana", depriving you of a wash change of clothes or certain nutrients in your food - or indeed taking food away altogether, depriving you of water and "frog squatting", they also employ nasty psychological games. Telling you that they will kill you in a week and counting down, telling you that your wife or children are dead, telling you that your friends have informed on you, telling you that they have clear evidence that you are a terrorist, telling you that you will never be let out of prison etc. etc. etc.
OK, probably spent too long on torture...
Children.
http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/Minors_in_Custody.asp
As of now there are 54 children under Sixteen, from 18 months to 16 - it's really not all teenagers, there's 7 year old Majeb and 10 Ihab as examples.
I just find this difficult. How could you torture a 7 year old?
Niveen is a little girl in the camp, she doesn't speak and people aren't sure of her age (around 10)
I'm using personal examples here in case people can't be bothered to empathise with the statistics.
The kids are all in administrative detention under 14 because it's illegal under israeli law to keep them in the same prisons under this age. Please bear in mind that the age at which an Israeli becomes an adult is 18, the age at which a Palestinian under their jurisdiction becomes an adult is 14.
Mohamed, a boy that's 22 in his second year of University studying hard to get a 1st in economics so that he can understand the system of control (really like me, we get on well despite the lacking of arabic), spent 3 years in gaol from 16 to 19, I am living in his home in the Azar camp in Bethlehem.
Palestine is littered with young adults that have been tortured as children, I have come accross so many people that have been through prison and I've not even been here 2 weeks!
There were 348 16 to 18 year olds in prison on the 28th Feb this year. I don't know what the number is now.
Trials
OK, so these are a farce. They are military courts, they comprise of 3 judges appointed by the military and no jury. Only one of the judges has to have had legal training and its majority rule, so figure that one out! 'Nuff said.
Family visits
Hygiene
each section of 120 prisoners gets one bar of soap 5 days a week... hmmm.. I'm all up for sharing is caring but this is going a little too far.
Prisoners aren't given a change of clothes, so that if you were arrested in your pyjamas, then you wear only them, if you were arrested in clothes stained in blood from your wife - these are the clothes that you will wear until someone that loves you enough to make the treacherous and tedious journey to visit you brings new clothes.
Healthcare
this is poorly neglected, the waiting lists are longer than the NHS and check ups are done through a fence... but what do we expect, it is prison... but the ICRC(international committee of the Red Cross) really aren't too happy with it.
Phone calls
while mass murderers from Israel are allowed to make phone calls, political prisoners human rights advocates and unfortunate members of the wrong family are denied this, so they smuggle in mobile phones - a practice that carries a HUGE risk in terms of opening them up to maltreatment, but that's the level of love for their families, which often aren't told which prison they're in (there are about 50 around the Middle East)
Unfortunately, they are closing the office now. But the list goes on, there are many issues facing prisoners that I haven't touched upon, the psychological damage that is inflicted, the stunted growth and accelarated aging, the difficulties facing their lawyers or human rights organisations, the stricly controlled mail, the banning of family visits for periods of up to 2 years (I'm talking about all visits here, not just for one person), food, and other forms of abuse such as rape (mainly of female prisoners).
If this has left you drawing comparisons to the nationalist regimes in Europe in the 20th Century, you're not the only one!
I'll put up a little jiffy about how I've been settling myself down here shortly - it's pretty sad to hear about the prisons and having experienced a prolongued period of pain myself i find if incredible difficult to acknowledge that torture is happening, to face the facts, without it kind of scrambling my system a bit. I have such a respect for the people that I have heard talk about their experiences, it really isn't easy - especially as there is no psychological help or rehabilitation when you come out the other end.
I can only give a brief outline of the problems because there are so many
1) Administrative detention
http://www.btselem.org/english/Administrative_Detention/Statistics.asp
So in England we are concerned and upset about the 42 day limit - well I am anyway, it's a long time to be banged up for nothing - lse your job, potentially miss the birth of a child, an event that you had been planning, hospital check ups... a month and a half. OK. In Palestine the person that has been under 'administration' the longest has wound up nearly 5 years now. 5 years without trial, that's some pretty sluggish administration if you ask me.
And what happens in 'administrative detention' - I went to a talk by a former inmate, arrested because he was politically active at University advocating respect for Human Rights in the occupied territories. Something that I do in the UK - he was in prison for 3 years without charge.
To be fair administrative detention isn't as bad as proper prison in Israel - the other side of the military/quango courts. You are allowed books - you used to be allowed 8, in line with the Geneva convention, but now that has been reduced to 1 and Israel have just made a decision to ban them altogether. You are allowed to make the dorm look nice and decorate it, but all the decorations are ripped down and the place is stripped out every 4 months or so, you are allowed to smoke... but you still get tortured, or 'interrogated with sustained exerted force' - the techniques make the fake daily injections and jump suits in GITMO look tame. Israel has killed dozens of people using torture techniques that have been scientifically refined to minimize physical damage while increase pain.
Torture
http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf
I met a student at Berziet university that had been imprisoned for 3 years from 16 to 19 because he belonged to a political family - he described 'Shabeh' - or handcuffing your hands and feet to a tiny sloped chair designed to give you back pain and put pressure on your wrists and ankles. He was in this chair for 3 days without having done anything wrong, without and interrogator presesnt. The justification for the use of this technique is so that the interrigator is protected from prisoners lashing out.
He also described iscolation cells under Jerusalem city, where you are kept in a room that is just too small to stand to lie straight in, you have a mat and a pot and you are given just enough food to live - no sugar or carbs or solids. You are left in the dark for what feels like weeks (probably actually weeks, he knows that his friends were away for about 3 weeks before coming back, having been put in the cell for the whole time) and the bucket for your toilet is only emptied twice a week. You see no-one, you speak to no-one. Some people come out of this experience literaly insane. Again, it is used as a repressive measure but it is also used arbritrarily to crush people's spirits.
You are given "light glasses" which are strapped to your head while your are handcuffed, that shine bright white light directly into your eyes - it is one techniques, along with tying you in uncomfortable positions, playing one extrememly loud rock song over and over and over and over for days, dousing you with hot or icey water - you don't know which until it hits you. People have been deprived of sleep for up to 20 days. You aren't supposed to survive 11. It wrecks your nervous system and makes you more vulnerable and susceptable to the torture techniques used to keep you awake.
They can shake you so hard that you die from nervous damage (this has happened over 6 times), suffocate you with a bag over your head that the guards usually defecate in (shit in), stamp on your balls or apply gradually increasing force until you pass out from the pain - girls, trust us, this really really does hurt.
So apart from the other physical techniques of plain beating, tying you in positions that will damage your back and jumping on you - that one's called the "banana", depriving you of a wash change of clothes or certain nutrients in your food - or indeed taking food away altogether, depriving you of water and "frog squatting", they also employ nasty psychological games. Telling you that they will kill you in a week and counting down, telling you that your wife or children are dead, telling you that your friends have informed on you, telling you that they have clear evidence that you are a terrorist, telling you that you will never be let out of prison etc. etc. etc.
OK, probably spent too long on torture...
Children.
http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/Minors_in_Custody.asp
As of now there are 54 children under Sixteen, from 18 months to 16 - it's really not all teenagers, there's 7 year old Majeb and 10 Ihab as examples.
I just find this difficult. How could you torture a 7 year old?
Niveen is a little girl in the camp, she doesn't speak and people aren't sure of her age (around 10)
I'm using personal examples here in case people can't be bothered to empathise with the statistics.
The kids are all in administrative detention under 14 because it's illegal under israeli law to keep them in the same prisons under this age. Please bear in mind that the age at which an Israeli becomes an adult is 18, the age at which a Palestinian under their jurisdiction becomes an adult is 14.
Mohamed, a boy that's 22 in his second year of University studying hard to get a 1st in economics so that he can understand the system of control (really like me, we get on well despite the lacking of arabic), spent 3 years in gaol from 16 to 19, I am living in his home in the Azar camp in Bethlehem.
Palestine is littered with young adults that have been tortured as children, I have come accross so many people that have been through prison and I've not even been here 2 weeks!
There were 348 16 to 18 year olds in prison on the 28th Feb this year. I don't know what the number is now.
Trials
OK, so these are a farce. They are military courts, they comprise of 3 judges appointed by the military and no jury. Only one of the judges has to have had legal training and its majority rule, so figure that one out! 'Nuff said.
Family visits
Hygiene
each section of 120 prisoners gets one bar of soap 5 days a week... hmmm.. I'm all up for sharing is caring but this is going a little too far.
Prisoners aren't given a change of clothes, so that if you were arrested in your pyjamas, then you wear only them, if you were arrested in clothes stained in blood from your wife - these are the clothes that you will wear until someone that loves you enough to make the treacherous and tedious journey to visit you brings new clothes.
Healthcare
this is poorly neglected, the waiting lists are longer than the NHS and check ups are done through a fence... but what do we expect, it is prison... but the ICRC(international committee of the Red Cross) really aren't too happy with it.
Phone calls
while mass murderers from Israel are allowed to make phone calls, political prisoners human rights advocates and unfortunate members of the wrong family are denied this, so they smuggle in mobile phones - a practice that carries a HUGE risk in terms of opening them up to maltreatment, but that's the level of love for their families, which often aren't told which prison they're in (there are about 50 around the Middle East)
Unfortunately, they are closing the office now. But the list goes on, there are many issues facing prisoners that I haven't touched upon, the psychological damage that is inflicted, the stunted growth and accelarated aging, the difficulties facing their lawyers or human rights organisations, the stricly controlled mail, the banning of family visits for periods of up to 2 years (I'm talking about all visits here, not just for one person), food, and other forms of abuse such as rape (mainly of female prisoners).
If this has left you drawing comparisons to the nationalist regimes in Europe in the 20th Century, you're not the only one!
I'll put up a little jiffy about how I've been settling myself down here shortly - it's pretty sad to hear about the prisons and having experienced a prolongued period of pain myself i find if incredible difficult to acknowledge that torture is happening, to face the facts, without it kind of scrambling my system a bit. I have such a respect for the people that I have heard talk about their experiences, it really isn't easy - especially as there is no psychological help or rehabilitation when you come out the other end.
Wednesday 8 April 2009
Northern West Bank travels day 7/8
Hey hey guys and gals,
I'm going to give you a little run down of the last week and where I've been etc.
So, to round of Jerusalem, on the last day I asked this girl for where the nearest cash mashine is (they're a bit of a nightmare) and she asked me where I was from 'Manchester', she was a journalist from Mancheser and she went to the University as well, so she asked me if I'd like to join her friend and her for diner, which I did. Her friend happened to be Sarah Hudson, married to a mutual friend of Adie, Patrick and Andy's called Mark. It's a small world after all hey?
So I ended up going to Bethelehem with them, I still owe her some money for diner, which was nice. She gave me a lonely planet as well(guide book).
So I crossed the wall and the checkpoint peppered with quality graffiti asking for peace and justice by Blublu, Banksy and a couple of other artists.
So then I was shown around the Holy Land Trust with Sami Awad, a Martin Luther King kind of person, with pictures and quotes of and by the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. There were three projects that I liked and was happy to get involved with but I wanted to check out the rest of the West Bank first because Bethlehem is really a middle class christian town with very few problems compared to Nablus, Hebron or Jenin.
So then, after getting completely lost looking for their TV network called Peace News Network, stumbling into a human rights organisation to ask for help (there are hundreds of Non-Governmental Organisations trying to alleviate the situation here, to a debatable effect) and picking up a load of quality literature on the human rights situation here - which, needless to say is awful, I took a 'service' which is kind of like a big shared taxi, to Ramallah.
In the taxi, a smiley Jordanian Jewish girl sat down next to me and started a friendly rant about everything under the sun. Her name was Rowa, which means blessed water or something similar, and she explained half a dozen times that she was hyper because she was so tired...
I ended up being taken to an ice-cream place and having some tea before going back to her flat to meet the guys that she stayed with; Talal, Mohammed and an Egyptian gentlemen that had a nice chat to me about being a 'leftist' and lementing the demise of Egypt under Mubarak and Nasser's former glory...
So a couple of hours later, I was nackered and there was some debate as to where I would sleep and the social things were making it all impractical, so I went back to stay at Talal's, who I spoke a bit of French with and we made jokes that the others couldn't understand... He studied in Tunisia.
So the next day I ended up going to his village, after going to his flat, which was littered with litter and shared with his cousin who is a forty something business man, Abbuomar.
So after he finished work at 4.30pm at the Yellow Pages office (doing translation and consulting) we went to his village for the weekend - Al Zaowia, which means 'the corner' in Arabic. We went through some of the more grim check-points with bloody histories, which I got a little bit of on film, before getting to the village. It was beautiful and I said how I loved seeing all these hills after being in Holland, which is flat as a pancake, at which point Talal said 'do you want to see my hill?' 'yeah, of course, YOU HAVE A HILL?' I thought that was amazing.
The village was lovely, I started the visit with a chat to his Grampa, and a little consultation about his shakiness and inability to hold a glass of tea without spilling it, as we sat there and drank tea. His main concern was not for his health but for what the other villagers thought fo his shaking. I recommended that he watched his diet for strange amounts of sugar and that he had a good balance of potassium calcium and salt, and that if he was worried go and see a doctor... He was quite old with a beautifully weathered face,he worked in the fields all his life with wheat, olives, herbs and sheep. He now enjoyed his retirement sitting in the sun all day, literally dawn till dusk, still and pensive. Everytime I passed his house he was sitting either in the morning position or the afternoon position. People came to him to chat but he just sat there - of course his wife, diabetic, was doing all the house work and preparing his meals and tea etc. At least he wasn't making too much of a mess!
Then I lost a game of pool to Talal, saw his mates, went back and spoke to his family, went to his Father, who was living alone on top of a half constructed house that he was watching over, the ground floor filled with hundreds of chicks in warm red glowing light, with their musky smell.
The scenery was beautiful.
I met the three Imam's of the village and prayed at the mosque the next day after having a beautifully prepared vegan dinner ready for me when I got in the last night. I met more of Talal's friends and we discussed his film, he showed me the script and towards the end of the weekend offered me the part despite my not being able to be here after September, which was nice.
I spent a good part of the weekend sitting in the family court yard chatting to people and drinking tea and having shisha, with the women and girls of the house peeping from the window, hiding whenever I looked up and said 'salam uilaikum' or 'quifahaluk?'
On the saturday we went to watch the village football, and Al-Zawia won! Get in!
There were 2 Fiat Uno's with their top halves sworn off, looking like funny soft tops, I saw one ofthem filled with 3 women and 5 kids, half of them dangling off the back. Funtimes!
Then it was off to see the Sheikh, who rabbited on a bit about the British mandate in Arabic, and how the British treated the Palestinians less like dogs and more like people but still not human, and how Britian was responsible for the state of Israel. But after that was out of the way he was lovely. I ended up having him on the floor and showing him some back exercises and up against the wall showing him some knee exercises in front of his wife, cousin, nephew, grandchildren and so on... Might have undermined him a little bit but it was all good fun!
That night three Israeli Defence Forces Humvees pulled up close to where we were walking back from having more tea with Talal's Dad, the soldiers got out and started pointing their guns at everyone, I wanted to go and check it out(it was 40 meters away and there were some other youths with their hands up being shouted at) but Talal shouted through a wisper and grabbed my arm and we went to the basketball court where his mates were practicing. I had a shot and hit the ring from the D line, but no one else got it in so I didn't feel too stupid...
Then it was goodbye to everyone, which was sad, and I didn't know how to say thanks because it's kind of taboo to be polite like in England...
So Nablus the next day, I arrived, it was beautiful and very early in the morning because Talal had to go to work in Ramallah and we left at the same time (we worked a six day week but got Saturday off this week - the holy day in the Muslim world is Friday - which makes for a strange working week when you co-exist with Christians). The sun was rising on the crowded town and, sincei ti was in a valley and everything was shut on Sunday (tourism wise anyway) I decided to just walk up the nearest hill to get a view of the town.
It was breath taking, literally. The climb up (with the back pack, which was quite stupid) was increadibly steep but I did get a little lift in someone's car after walking up past the plethora of flats and posters of kids that had died resisting the occupation in one way or another, past the graveyard with grave stones painted in the colours of the flag (black red white and green that stand for black-suffering red-blood/the price of liberation white-peace green-either holiness/Allah or the land depending on who you ask...)
The hill was nice, full of wild flowers and herbs and olive trees, and it was a steep climb to the top, I filmed a bit of a monologue and did a span of the town in the morning light, well worth it. Then I satdown under an olive tree to read about violence and conflict.
By now the sun had risen to a level where I was hot just lying there with my top off. Then I decided I had better climb back down before I get too thirsty. Oh. Pants. I forgot that going down hill was exceptionally bad for my knees. B*gger. So, with the heavy backpackof books, I went down the steep slope one step at a time, and I did it without falling down! Yes! A nice little challenge and that proved to me how good the improvement has been with my legs. They were hurting at the bottom though so I just sat down in the nearest eaty drinky place which was pretty much a big tent with a gas burner, I said 'atash' which means thirsty, and he could probably see the sweat on my face, so he gave me a cup of water, then refilled it. He was nice but couldn't speak any English, he gave me some food and refused payment - it's really crazy how the people with the least here in Palestine give you the most.
I then was called at by a lively group of kids outside a shop. The shop owner was a boy my age with no parents, I didn't want to repeat 'what happened to your parents' to loudly and clearly in from of his mates as he didn't understand, so I don't know, but he insisted I sit down next to him at the counter and we had pigeon talk arabic chit chat and I mucked around with the kids a bit, they wanted to show me where to get a haircut... Maybenot such a bad idea!
Then it was back to Ramallah.
Back in Ramallah, I fancied a banana after putting my stuff back at Talal's, so the shop keeper, smoking some shisha in the back room with his mates, poured me a drink, gave me some shisha, insisted on me not paying for the fruit and gave me some more.... GENEROSITY, it's really excessive here. I love it!
So then I met up with Anan, a friend of Nasreens and he gave me a run down of the Marxism in Palestine and was having drinks with Mohamed's brother - who practically runs the organisation Action Palestine in England. So that was really nice, I ended up going back to his house and meeting Mohamed's parents in Tul Karim which is right on the border with Israel, after having drinks with some other people from Birzeit university or in that group of athiest communist fun loving students or ex-students.
I went around Tul Karim and to a nice shisha place and watched some TV, there was Hamas TV, BBC arabic, Sudanese chanell, they had everything, and my friend was kind enough to translate.
The next day I went back to Ramallah, after Abbas, Mohamed's brother, gave me a brief commentry on the history of Israel and the Palestinian politics and the peace processes since 48. I was amazed to find out that there had been no serious organised resistance for 20 years after Al Naqba by the Palestinians themselves until the creation of the PLO(Palestinian Liberation Organisation) in 65.
So then, after making friends with a blind gentlemen on the corner selling a cold and not so yummy drink, I went back to sleep as we had to get up at 5am to commute in to Ramallah - something that Abbas does 6 days a week, because his father is unwell. His parents were lovely though, and liked hearing about Mohammed's activities in Manchester, saying that that's what they sent him to England for, not to study!
So after having a little snooooze at Talal's I went into the University. Really stupidly I forgot my phone, so I didn't know that Anan wanted to meet up in the Uni and he must have thought that I stood him up, I haven't beena able to contact him since =(
Anyway, it was only a few days until election day at the University and most students were either sporting white and black Kaffir's, symbolising Fatah, or Green silk things that symbolised Hamas (which I was given, it's in the bottom of my bag but it I get caught with it I think I'll have a tough job explaining that I'm not a terrorist to the IDF or indeed the Palestinian Fatah Police), or they were wearing a red Kaffir which meant that they were socialist or democratic or 'leftist' or marxist or something. It was interesting.
I went to the Right to Education Campaign, went to the water resources study group to pick up their publications, and was shown the library by a friend who had spent 3 years from 16 years old until 19 years old and again for 3 months when he was 20 (he was my age, 20, but was shorter, looked older and really good posture, and had an aura of distance or hardness) in 'administrative detention' which basically means Israeli prisons where you don't need to have a trial and you can torture prisoners pretty much willy nilly.
He gave me a run down of the torture techniques that they used on him and the cell that he stayed in under Jerusalem that was pitch dark for a month - no bed, no toilet, not high enough ceiling to stand up... no body speaks to you and you get just enough food to survive but never anything with sugar or simple carbohydrates in because it would give you energy... etc. etc. etc. but I will post something on the prisons specifically as it deserves more than a passing mention. The torture sounds bad, it's called 'moderate restrained force' http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf
then I came to Beit Sahour and I'm staying with a family that wants me off the computer because I've been on it too long!
Chiao
more to come:
The wall and checkpoints
prisons + human rights
resources, water + agriculture
the settlements
demgographics
the right to resist and the occupation + international law
education in the west bank gaza and jerusalem
healthcare in the west bank gaza and jerusalem
aid and the economics of palestine and israel
the cost of the occupation
economic dependance and Oslo
the peace processes
the settlements
the history of resistance
hope for the future and successful campaigns.
Refugees and their right to return.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep these interesting and readable!
I'm going to give you a little run down of the last week and where I've been etc.
So, to round of Jerusalem, on the last day I asked this girl for where the nearest cash mashine is (they're a bit of a nightmare) and she asked me where I was from 'Manchester', she was a journalist from Mancheser and she went to the University as well, so she asked me if I'd like to join her friend and her for diner, which I did. Her friend happened to be Sarah Hudson, married to a mutual friend of Adie, Patrick and Andy's called Mark. It's a small world after all hey?
So I ended up going to Bethelehem with them, I still owe her some money for diner, which was nice. She gave me a lonely planet as well(guide book).
So I crossed the wall and the checkpoint peppered with quality graffiti asking for peace and justice by Blublu, Banksy and a couple of other artists.
So then I was shown around the Holy Land Trust with Sami Awad, a Martin Luther King kind of person, with pictures and quotes of and by the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. There were three projects that I liked and was happy to get involved with but I wanted to check out the rest of the West Bank first because Bethlehem is really a middle class christian town with very few problems compared to Nablus, Hebron or Jenin.
So then, after getting completely lost looking for their TV network called Peace News Network, stumbling into a human rights organisation to ask for help (there are hundreds of Non-Governmental Organisations trying to alleviate the situation here, to a debatable effect) and picking up a load of quality literature on the human rights situation here - which, needless to say is awful, I took a 'service' which is kind of like a big shared taxi, to Ramallah.
In the taxi, a smiley Jordanian Jewish girl sat down next to me and started a friendly rant about everything under the sun. Her name was Rowa, which means blessed water or something similar, and she explained half a dozen times that she was hyper because she was so tired...
I ended up being taken to an ice-cream place and having some tea before going back to her flat to meet the guys that she stayed with; Talal, Mohammed and an Egyptian gentlemen that had a nice chat to me about being a 'leftist' and lementing the demise of Egypt under Mubarak and Nasser's former glory...
So a couple of hours later, I was nackered and there was some debate as to where I would sleep and the social things were making it all impractical, so I went back to stay at Talal's, who I spoke a bit of French with and we made jokes that the others couldn't understand... He studied in Tunisia.
So the next day I ended up going to his village, after going to his flat, which was littered with litter and shared with his cousin who is a forty something business man, Abbuomar.
So after he finished work at 4.30pm at the Yellow Pages office (doing translation and consulting) we went to his village for the weekend - Al Zaowia, which means 'the corner' in Arabic. We went through some of the more grim check-points with bloody histories, which I got a little bit of on film, before getting to the village. It was beautiful and I said how I loved seeing all these hills after being in Holland, which is flat as a pancake, at which point Talal said 'do you want to see my hill?' 'yeah, of course, YOU HAVE A HILL?' I thought that was amazing.
The village was lovely, I started the visit with a chat to his Grampa, and a little consultation about his shakiness and inability to hold a glass of tea without spilling it, as we sat there and drank tea. His main concern was not for his health but for what the other villagers thought fo his shaking. I recommended that he watched his diet for strange amounts of sugar and that he had a good balance of potassium calcium and salt, and that if he was worried go and see a doctor... He was quite old with a beautifully weathered face,he worked in the fields all his life with wheat, olives, herbs and sheep. He now enjoyed his retirement sitting in the sun all day, literally dawn till dusk, still and pensive. Everytime I passed his house he was sitting either in the morning position or the afternoon position. People came to him to chat but he just sat there - of course his wife, diabetic, was doing all the house work and preparing his meals and tea etc. At least he wasn't making too much of a mess!
Then I lost a game of pool to Talal, saw his mates, went back and spoke to his family, went to his Father, who was living alone on top of a half constructed house that he was watching over, the ground floor filled with hundreds of chicks in warm red glowing light, with their musky smell.
The scenery was beautiful.
I met the three Imam's of the village and prayed at the mosque the next day after having a beautifully prepared vegan dinner ready for me when I got in the last night. I met more of Talal's friends and we discussed his film, he showed me the script and towards the end of the weekend offered me the part despite my not being able to be here after September, which was nice.
I spent a good part of the weekend sitting in the family court yard chatting to people and drinking tea and having shisha, with the women and girls of the house peeping from the window, hiding whenever I looked up and said 'salam uilaikum' or 'quifahaluk?'
On the saturday we went to watch the village football, and Al-Zawia won! Get in!
There were 2 Fiat Uno's with their top halves sworn off, looking like funny soft tops, I saw one ofthem filled with 3 women and 5 kids, half of them dangling off the back. Funtimes!
Then it was off to see the Sheikh, who rabbited on a bit about the British mandate in Arabic, and how the British treated the Palestinians less like dogs and more like people but still not human, and how Britian was responsible for the state of Israel. But after that was out of the way he was lovely. I ended up having him on the floor and showing him some back exercises and up against the wall showing him some knee exercises in front of his wife, cousin, nephew, grandchildren and so on... Might have undermined him a little bit but it was all good fun!
That night three Israeli Defence Forces Humvees pulled up close to where we were walking back from having more tea with Talal's Dad, the soldiers got out and started pointing their guns at everyone, I wanted to go and check it out(it was 40 meters away and there were some other youths with their hands up being shouted at) but Talal shouted through a wisper and grabbed my arm and we went to the basketball court where his mates were practicing. I had a shot and hit the ring from the D line, but no one else got it in so I didn't feel too stupid...
Then it was goodbye to everyone, which was sad, and I didn't know how to say thanks because it's kind of taboo to be polite like in England...
So Nablus the next day, I arrived, it was beautiful and very early in the morning because Talal had to go to work in Ramallah and we left at the same time (we worked a six day week but got Saturday off this week - the holy day in the Muslim world is Friday - which makes for a strange working week when you co-exist with Christians). The sun was rising on the crowded town and, sincei ti was in a valley and everything was shut on Sunday (tourism wise anyway) I decided to just walk up the nearest hill to get a view of the town.
It was breath taking, literally. The climb up (with the back pack, which was quite stupid) was increadibly steep but I did get a little lift in someone's car after walking up past the plethora of flats and posters of kids that had died resisting the occupation in one way or another, past the graveyard with grave stones painted in the colours of the flag (black red white and green that stand for black-suffering red-blood/the price of liberation white-peace green-either holiness/Allah or the land depending on who you ask...)
The hill was nice, full of wild flowers and herbs and olive trees, and it was a steep climb to the top, I filmed a bit of a monologue and did a span of the town in the morning light, well worth it. Then I satdown under an olive tree to read about violence and conflict.
By now the sun had risen to a level where I was hot just lying there with my top off. Then I decided I had better climb back down before I get too thirsty. Oh. Pants. I forgot that going down hill was exceptionally bad for my knees. B*gger. So, with the heavy backpackof books, I went down the steep slope one step at a time, and I did it without falling down! Yes! A nice little challenge and that proved to me how good the improvement has been with my legs. They were hurting at the bottom though so I just sat down in the nearest eaty drinky place which was pretty much a big tent with a gas burner, I said 'atash' which means thirsty, and he could probably see the sweat on my face, so he gave me a cup of water, then refilled it. He was nice but couldn't speak any English, he gave me some food and refused payment - it's really crazy how the people with the least here in Palestine give you the most.
I then was called at by a lively group of kids outside a shop. The shop owner was a boy my age with no parents, I didn't want to repeat 'what happened to your parents' to loudly and clearly in from of his mates as he didn't understand, so I don't know, but he insisted I sit down next to him at the counter and we had pigeon talk arabic chit chat and I mucked around with the kids a bit, they wanted to show me where to get a haircut... Maybenot such a bad idea!
Then it was back to Ramallah.
Back in Ramallah, I fancied a banana after putting my stuff back at Talal's, so the shop keeper, smoking some shisha in the back room with his mates, poured me a drink, gave me some shisha, insisted on me not paying for the fruit and gave me some more.... GENEROSITY, it's really excessive here. I love it!
So then I met up with Anan, a friend of Nasreens and he gave me a run down of the Marxism in Palestine and was having drinks with Mohamed's brother - who practically runs the organisation Action Palestine in England. So that was really nice, I ended up going back to his house and meeting Mohamed's parents in Tul Karim which is right on the border with Israel, after having drinks with some other people from Birzeit university or in that group of athiest communist fun loving students or ex-students.
I went around Tul Karim and to a nice shisha place and watched some TV, there was Hamas TV, BBC arabic, Sudanese chanell, they had everything, and my friend was kind enough to translate.
The next day I went back to Ramallah, after Abbas, Mohamed's brother, gave me a brief commentry on the history of Israel and the Palestinian politics and the peace processes since 48. I was amazed to find out that there had been no serious organised resistance for 20 years after Al Naqba by the Palestinians themselves until the creation of the PLO(Palestinian Liberation Organisation) in 65.
So then, after making friends with a blind gentlemen on the corner selling a cold and not so yummy drink, I went back to sleep as we had to get up at 5am to commute in to Ramallah - something that Abbas does 6 days a week, because his father is unwell. His parents were lovely though, and liked hearing about Mohammed's activities in Manchester, saying that that's what they sent him to England for, not to study!
So after having a little snooooze at Talal's I went into the University. Really stupidly I forgot my phone, so I didn't know that Anan wanted to meet up in the Uni and he must have thought that I stood him up, I haven't beena able to contact him since =(
Anyway, it was only a few days until election day at the University and most students were either sporting white and black Kaffir's, symbolising Fatah, or Green silk things that symbolised Hamas (which I was given, it's in the bottom of my bag but it I get caught with it I think I'll have a tough job explaining that I'm not a terrorist to the IDF or indeed the Palestinian Fatah Police), or they were wearing a red Kaffir which meant that they were socialist or democratic or 'leftist' or marxist or something. It was interesting.
I went to the Right to Education Campaign, went to the water resources study group to pick up their publications, and was shown the library by a friend who had spent 3 years from 16 years old until 19 years old and again for 3 months when he was 20 (he was my age, 20, but was shorter, looked older and really good posture, and had an aura of distance or hardness) in 'administrative detention' which basically means Israeli prisons where you don't need to have a trial and you can torture prisoners pretty much willy nilly.
He gave me a run down of the torture techniques that they used on him and the cell that he stayed in under Jerusalem that was pitch dark for a month - no bed, no toilet, not high enough ceiling to stand up... no body speaks to you and you get just enough food to survive but never anything with sugar or simple carbohydrates in because it would give you energy... etc. etc. etc. but I will post something on the prisons specifically as it deserves more than a passing mention. The torture sounds bad, it's called 'moderate restrained force' http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf
then I came to Beit Sahour and I'm staying with a family that wants me off the computer because I've been on it too long!
Chiao
more to come:
The wall and checkpoints
prisons + human rights
resources, water + agriculture
the settlements
demgographics
the right to resist and the occupation + international law
education in the west bank gaza and jerusalem
healthcare in the west bank gaza and jerusalem
aid and the economics of palestine and israel
the cost of the occupation
economic dependance and Oslo
the peace processes
the settlements
the history of resistance
hope for the future and successful campaigns.
Refugees and their right to return.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep these interesting and readable!
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