Leaving.

After finishing a few things at Angela's, and after she sent me off with some extra batteries for the digital camera that she gave me, and a nice hearty loaf of bread, I set off for my final day's work in Bethlehem.

We had a meeting about funding and then I realised that the deadline for proposals for the funding line that suited the study of the effect of the occupation on the villages near the 'apartheid wall' had just gone past and I sent the wrong application form with a different date on it, I closed up the day, said goodbye's and thank-yous and packed off to Hebron feeling a bit sad that I had not found a source of funding so that they could continue with the work that we had started, which we eventually planned to be the start of a grass-roots empowerment and community participation project with the report as a platform through which to educate the villagers of each other's grievances.... Oh well, I'm sure they'll sort it out but it just means more time not doing other fantastic things!

I stayed in Hebron for a few nights with Phelie and Simpiwe, and three girls all on the "ecumenical accompaniment program for Palestine and Israel", which observes human rights abuses, reports them, stands at check points at 4am and follows kids on school runs so that they are protected from settler violence.

That evening I accompanied Phelie, Simpiwe, and Peter, a Scottish mechanic that had done a lot of work in the salvation army, to their friend's for dinner. Their friend was an Immam called Yousef, one of the religious leaders at the Ibrahimi mosque. They had just missed witnessing the death of his son, who was a kind of Muslim missionary, but was back in Hebron. He was late for prayer and after passing the two heavily manned check points, passing through a metal detector and probably going through a strict search, he ran up the steps to the Mosque so that he wouldn't miss prayer.

A bullet was sent down the steps to meet him in the chest and another sent after him to rip through his neck.

The official excuse from the IDF was that they thought he was carrying a knife, or might have been a terrorist.

This is ludicrous; he had just passed through security that's tougher than Gatwick airport. I've seen the place and if it was accidental then these soldiers really were stupid.

The bullet that was fired from the top of the stairs actually sank into the soldier at the bottom of the stair's leg.

The soldiers then shot the 20 year old in the leg a few times so that they could say that they shot his legs first, but the autopsy suggested that these bullet holes never bled.

Yousef had to bury his son away from the mosque that was the focus of their lives because this was a highly emotional death for the community and hundreds were expected at the funeral. The occupational administration only lets 20 people at a time into the cemetery where the rest of the family is buried outside the mosque.

The Ibrahimi mosque is now split into 2 halves, one for Muslims to pray in and one for Jews. They both have different entrances and a wall divides the two communities.

The dinner was great, and they made instant last minute provision for the vegan after (again!) unsuccessfully trying to push meat on me.

After dinner we had a discussion about Islam, life, God, the universe and everything - which was great.

The next day was equally harrowing in its own way. We went to a deserted part of Hebron just under another Israeli settlement. In this deserted part of Hebron, right next to the towering stilt built settlement above it, lived a family of 5. Hasham's house.

Hasham was also a "one stater" (people like me that believe that the only way forward politically is to amalgamate Israel and Palestine so that the inhabitants have equal rights and work hard and strong for reconciliation and integration between the two communities - the main obstacles to this are the collective racist psychology of the region, the unwillingness of Israel to become a secular state, and It's reluctance to share the resources in the region etc. etc.). Hasham showed us the door upon which the settlers had descended to write "gas the arabs" under the star of David - the IDF, knowing that Hasham received politicians from Israel and diplomats from abroad occasionally as he spoke English well and has a computer to show videos on and talks openly about his family, asked him to paint over the "gas the arabs" at gunpoint, but when he went to remove the star of David, they told him to leave it "this is Israel after all" (when in fact Hebron is clearly classified as Occupied Palestinian Territories). Next, Hasham showed us where they had cut all the trunks of his grape fruit trees, the 8 meters or so of branches hanging dead on the frame. Then he explained why there was a broken washing machine in the front garden; a settler threw it at him when he was standing outside. He keeps it as a reminder, but tries to clear all the other rubbish that the settlers throw down his way each day.

Inside, we had a good chat to Hasham and he showed us some footage of what I could only describe as ‘pogroms’ but now against the Arabs, after we were greeted by his wife and given some piping hot tea to drink. Hashams wife painted pictures of the popular struggle in Palestine. She also recounted how a settler woman threatened her recently, saying that her son and husband would come to rape her.

After Hebron, I went to Beit Sahour for one of the biweekly talks given to the international community in the West Bank by the Alternative Information Centre http://www.alternativenews.org/ because Mahmoud was giving a talk about the resistance movement in Ma’asara and I wanted to see him before I left to check how he had been in prison.

The talk was pretty standard, standard simplifications, standard inconsiderate questions by the international community that need to get over themselves (me included – in the getting over themselves bit, we’re here to do what they need us to, not to restructure their lives after having a brief uneducated glance at the problem like we’re the first people to arrive on the scene – some people come to Palestine without even opening a book first, knowing anything about Judaism or Islam, or any kind of history about the region, admittedly mine was and still is very limited)

After the talk, Mahmoud and I met, hugged, laughed, bought each other tea, had a chat and I ended up extending my stay in Palestine by a day so that I could come to al Ma’asara village again, this time to chill and talk and plan rather than resist.

I went out to ‘Cosmos’ – the club in Bethlehem for the Christian community, which was… interesting… And then crashed at Debb’s house, before making some breakfast and going to mass with Debbs, learning about her deeper understanding of the church and Christ and God, which made a lot more sense than my previous understanding of Christianity – I had guessed at some of her suggestions before – that Jesus was just a man with an incredible capacity to channel God through him, that the Bible is full of metaphors although they appear to be factual etc. etc. But I know that’s treading on many people’s toes. It was just nice to hear from an Anglican priest.

Then it was off to Ma’asara, where I finally had fig-leaves!! I’ve been wanting to eat rice rolled in soaked fig-leaves since I thought I was going to Palestine but didn’t get the opportunity. So the evening meal was a treat and it was a really beautiful way to say goodbye to Palestine for me, sharing a meal, a talk, planning future links with the UK etc., and walking around the village that I was arrested for representing in a demonstration.

The next morning, before catching the service back to Jerusalem, I went to meet Mohammed and Hassan’s parents – the two that are still in gaol as you read this (unless you’re reading it after September 2009 – by which time Mohammed might be out with a bit of luck). They were kind and generously spirited but behind this you could sense that they were very worried, their grandchildren wandering fatherless around their legs, looking blank.

Then it was off back to Angela’s to drop off two sim cards for when my friend from Manchester arrives, to post a couple of things, and then to catch the service to Jordan.

On the way to Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem where I caught the transportation to the Allenby crossing into Jordan, Angela’s new intern, a logistics business owner from near Niagra falls in the US, Bill, gave me $20 to contribute to the pond sand filter that I am setting up now in the cyclone affected region in South West Bangladesh, and Angela gave me a load of change to help with the tax cost at the crossing.

Saying goodbye to Palestine was very difficult. I don’t generally miss things or people or places, even ones that I genuinely love and got a lot from, but there’s a gravity about Palestine that’s hard to put your finger on. Is it the suffering? Probably not, I’ve witnessed far more intense suffering in a government hospital in Mumbai. Is it the emotional depth, connection and generosity? Maybe. The commitment of the activists, NGO workers, taxi drivers, soldiers, Jihadis, basically everyone except the politicians? Maybe. Is it the deep political and religious history? Or is it just something about the land, something myserious and elusive that in some way explains the number of people fighting for land stability and control of the resource poor region…. Everyone fighting there says “the land is ours” – but I get a strong feeling that it’s the land itself that owns the people.




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