until may 1st

so, i had started working the the NGO "the holy land trust" - Strengthening communities for the future.

so i've been doing a mixture of things at the holy land trust.


For the first few days, after forking out too many shekles for accomodation, I was keen to find somewhere cheap or free to stay - but without forcing myself on anyone. So for the first few days i stayed with Elias, a really nice christian that works with the organisation. His mum is quality, always stuffing me with food - and she is a good laugh even though my arabic at that time was about 10 words and her english about the same standard. Easter was coming up next weekend and the family was quite excited.

They had a really nice shower as well :)

so i went out with Elias and his american missionary friends for one night, we talked this and that, violence and non-violence and it was quite interesting - the need to repect cultures and peoples and how the missionaries blatantly ignored that... I mean the ones i was with, i know there are some really great missionaries out there. So these whacky american evangelical missionaries made me their mission.

Did I mention that Elias collected turtles? He's got at least 12, they're pretty cute - just chilling outside his house munching greenery all day... quality.

the next morning i was taken to a lunch that i didn't really want in a western restaurant paying loads for a salad because it was all meat, and they pushed "the lord, the word, the spirit" on me. One of the guys, John, was an ex-football player that slipped discs and then spiraled down into crack and smack and then found... Shaine Claibourne http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPANKUHabx4 Well, he found God, but Shaine welcomed him into 'the simple way'.

who turned his life into one of the holy spirit etc etc. It was amazing to hear the transformation that he made in his life, and how his pain related to spirituality as well - and I was honoured that he opened up the deep pain that he was feeling before he found Love in his life.

So that weekend i went to Jerusalem to meet up with Alix - a family friend working for the EU in Jerusalem - she was having a diner party and I rocked up in muslim dress, it was hot... and i met these amazing people, beurocrats, security advisors documentary makers and journalists - they were all interesting, had good hearts and good minds. So that was a pretty fun evening and I made some contacts for activism etc. THere was even a vegan journalist that exposed the white phosphorous usage in the gaza strip for the Times by getting some evidence from the IDF through friends of friends... then she wrote an article on the zoo and how the only animals that survived were the lions - because they ate the rest of the animals when the fences were destroyed by the shelling. I love that she went to the zoo - a vegan in a war zone. That made me happy.

then on monday night the Americans held a prayer meeting. So i went with a couple of Palestinians because i've been wanting to explore christianity more an i'd been missing the spiritual connection that i have with my meditation group in Manchester - they did the last supper thing because it wasn't too long since good friday - real bread and punch - then they read some bible, and played a song about how the world should be one nation under god - american. basically gave the impression that american christianity should rule the world, which didn't go down tooo well but was ok. Then, after John speaking in tongues and using special ointment to pray at the feet of the Palestinian christians for their safety and that God would be close to them, we went to the roof to pray. I suggested a native american council circle because the americans had native american roots, and it's nice.

So the idea of a native american council circle is that you sit down around a candle, the candle represents the future generations so if you have any negative thoughts or conflicts then it will be felt by the future... just symbolic I think. And you start by passing round a talking piece, just check in you know, say what's on your mind, but be brief with words and try to let it come from the heart.

Then, when everyone has checked-in you look at each other, and develope a warmth between each other and a love until that heart felt connection spills out of your mouth in the form of words and you pick up the piece to express your heart... the mind is supposed to be disengaged but it's not a strict thing. Anyway, we did a short version and stood up and held hands and just skipped the checking in bit.

it was really nice, the energy was strong except for John and Elias - Elias because i don't think he got the hang of it and John for no know reason... so the general thoughts that are expressed are those of compassion for the world or complements about each other and appreciating each other's individual nature. So that was really nice. But John was like a black hole, you poured in your love and nothing came back, which was quite wierd but I just kept going.

After it was finished he told me that i had experience with the spiritual world and that i had strong energy but that it was slightly demonic so he was using his spiritual power and prayer just to put a stop to it imediately. He said that God told him to tell me to stop my "buddhist power trip"... which was really sad because that's pretty much what i live for. It's the source of everything i do, most of what i say, all of my happiness and joy and I call it love, he calls it partly demonic... So one of us is misguided.... which was a funny thing to think about.


so, then, after staying at Elias', the Holy Land Trust found a family to stay with in Azar refugee camp in the centre of Bethlehem. They were strictly muslim, and had 5 sons and a daughter, but the daughter had found a husband and was living outside the camp. So the boys were cool, the eldest had been to gaol and was studying economics at Bethlehem university - he wanted to understand the current system of control on the planet and was dead set on getting a first - really good lad. The second eldest was full of despair and quite depressed about the whole situation - he was unemployed without a good education and there really isn't work going for the young at the moment, the older men with status get the jobs first - irrespective of merit. So it was really sad talking to him and really difficult when he layed out his hopelessness and thoughts on the situation. I really couldn't offer him any hope or consolidation, and he wouldn't accept my empathy for a long time, thinking that because i was British i would never understand. He also thought that there really wasn't anything that i could do to help palestinians or alleviate the situation and no non-violent struggle was worthwhile. Most of the camp is just waiting to return to their lands in Israel, which is an international law, that refugees have the right to return to their previous land. But they've been waiting for 61 years... So then there was the teenager, he was working hard at school, then two younger ones, both quite hard and older than their age. The youngest had a health problem and his limbs and face filled with interstitial fluid for no apparent reason, he was still undiagnosed after much consultation with the medical profession. There was a hospital stay while i was there but it was short and he was back before i had a chance to go and visit him.

So the one full of despair really opened up to me one night, it was the night before his birthday. He was sad that his family didn't even remember his birthday or celebrate it, he was sad that his Dad was sitting on savings and that his mum often went without food, that he didn't pay for enough medical treatment for his little brother... really depressed, he wanted to kill himself but he couldn't because it was Haram. And even after really trying with him, he ended by saying "just forget, just this, just go back to England and forget. It's easy, forget about me, forget about my brother, my mum, the camp, palestine. Just forget." and wouldn't accept that i couldn't forget and that he and his family and Azar camp and the middle east meant a lot to me. it was tied up with the fact that he wanted to spend the weekend with me but i planned to go to Jenin.

so the next day i woke up early and went to the bakers, and committed a vegan crime! I bought him a big chocolate birthday cake and a funny chinese candle thing that was a flower/firework/birthdaycandles all in one to go on the top. I left it on the cake with a note and packed up to see north of the West Bank. I also put up a load of balloons around the room.

I couldn't contact the person that was supposed to show me around the camp in Jenin, a shop owner in Ramallah from when I was staying with Talal that gave me coffee and had a chat - he's my age. So in the end i spent the weekend with friends of Nasreen, a fantastic young lady working with Action Palestine in Manchester. They are quality, really well educated about the situation and good fun to be around. The guy's house that i stayed at was really fantastic, it had just been built, a 5 story thing - the floors were small but it ws a really nice house with an amazing view of the valley. The valleys here are beautiful, stepped with olive trees and the evening sun makes them even more breathtaking with it's orange glow.

So the next morning I was perched on the edge of the balcony meditating when G came up to me thinking that i was crazy and that i might fall and die from the long drop but it was a really nice session.

the Saturday, I checked out the scouts parade. It's pretty cool. Basically, all the scout groups do a march, bringing light from the place of Christs' birth with 5 candles, taken to various parts of the west bank with this procession. It's a christian thing - when Jesus came back and gave the flames that enabled the disciples to speak in different tongues to tell the world of his coming... but the muslim community embraces it as a celebration. I'm not 100% on the exact account in the Bible but I'm sure you know what I mean.

So the kids come from all different places - from refugee camps or middle class christian areas, you can tell by the way they walk, the way they wear their uniforms, the entheusiasm they put in to the procession and the way that they put on their make up/ if they wear sun glasses etc. which socio economic groups they come from. It was quite interesting and highlighted some of the stark inequalities that are current in the West Bank. There was one really beautiful moment when a little girl no more than 6 years old, held a trumpet up to her lips and blew with her face scrunched up, really exerted, and out came this perfectly timed, perfectly pitched note - and then she took down the horn/trumpet and walked on like nothing had happened... really cute.

Oh yeah, that was the day when I got my head sunburnt....

The night when the brother opened up to me, before that long conversation, they younger ones had questioned why i had long hair... they said that i needed a haircut. Fairdo's; it was a mess. So I said i didn't really want to pay for one, and saw a buzz cut thing - shaver? razor? i can't remember what you call it, my mind's still a bit scrambled from the interview at the police station - more on that later.

So i suggested cutting my hair with that as a sort of joke, then the second youngest jumped up and smiled and grabbed them and said "adventure, adventure!" So, I thought why the hell not - it would mean that i wouldn't have to buy Israeli shampoo.. So I was shown a chair, i took of my shirt and they were amazed at my tattoo but pointed out that it was Haram and that i should remove it if i wanted to become a muslim (not likely). The 3 boys then found a pair of sissors each and started hacking away at my hair - i suppose it was kind of like getting your braids done as a girl or something... attention from the same sex making you look nicer. So after the hacking, they turned on the buzzers and hessitated, so i just took them and ploughed it past my forehead towards the back of my neck, giving them a good start.

I look funny without hair - like a cross between a skinny buddhist monk and ray winstone - if that makes sense.

so the next day I was in Ramallah - the western style drinking/gay/spying/political/consumerist capital of the West Bank and the sun was high in the sky and I was walking everywhere, I went to a law firm to inquire about volunteering on Sundays - but it was all either in Hebrew or Arabic so i wouldn't be much use, then walking back i felt the sun begin to bake my head. By the end of the day it was red and the next day it peeled off, so i got a hat. A red, inconspicuous baseball cap.

So, shaved burnt head and cap, i returned to the camp to excited thanks for the birthday cake and an apology from the brother that he had misjudged me and i wasn't like all english people.

I started arabic lessons with this fantastic woman that's wheelchair bound and has extremely limited mobility due to muscular distrophy. She's pretty amazing.

I wanted to teach an english class a couple of times a week in the camp but the guys running the centre were slow and busy with other things. I met a cool dutch woman that has a project in Silway "playgrounds in the middle east" - she came over here 4 years ago with musicians without borders and just stayed here and is married to a fantastic israeli gentleman that's working hard with the centre in Silwan, we were just writing a funding proposal for a library and creative writing centre - I'm stating at their house for the next half an hour.

So eventually i found a teaching/general kids work post for sundays at Aida refugee camp, which is about 4 times the size of Azar and is coloured with a lot of really nice painting on it's walls - but it's right next to the apartheid wall. There's a big fat gate with a key on top representing the right to return.

So tomorrow was supposed to be my first day, but I can't go back to the West Bank for 2 weeks now.

Various cute and enlightening events happened in the past month but I wont bore you with all of them.

Independence day/the Nakba comemoration was an interesting day actually. On Thursday night i heard an air-raid siren. It was just like the world war 2 sirens you hear in museums etc. it was quite frightnening but no-one seemed to be caring about it. So i asked about it and i got shrugged shoulders. The next day at work, it went off again at lunch. I was told that it was to comemmorate the dead from the Nakba. Ilan Pape's book "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine" has a good account of the Nakba or catastrophe for anyone that's interested.

So I went to see the celebrations in Jerusalem, the police cut off the central area to any arabs and there was dance music, drunkeness and soldiers on leave or settlers hanging around in normal clothes with M16s around their shoulders - it's because they can't leave it anywhere except a liscenced safe - which many don't bother to get. Many settlers just never go anywhere without a few guns..

People hit each other with blow up hammers coloured with the Israeli flag - and the celebration was kind of wierd, like there was a feeling that Israel wouldn't be around long, that there was a funny edge to it... anyway. I went to the alternative independace day where i met the israeli activists - there really weren't many. People say that the whole activist scene in Israel numbers fewer than 500 people, but they're a tight group and go to great lengths for each other.

We were going to do an action to remind people of the Nakba and hand out a load of leaflets explaining it, and go into the celebrations with a blindfold and our hands cuffed like Palestinian prisoners but the guys with the material couldn't show up at the last minute.

The alternative event was really nice - songs from people singing about the sadness of the situation, speaches about the real heroes of israel - the kids that stomach prison instead of going into the army, speeches about projects that were happening - it was a day of sadness and compassion that contrasted starkly with the wild and confused escapism of the independance day celebrations themselves.

So then I met Angela again - a fantastic woman working with ICAHD. I'm going to be doing things with her and living with her rent free for a while in Jerusalem.

OK, so the next week was pretty good, we started doing really productive things with the Holy Land Trust and the study of the villages was really coming together. Then... Friday.

Labour day, May day....

I went to a tour of a valley of land next to the solomon pools with my mate from South Africa - really fantastic woman that worked to lift apartheid and was a white nurse in a white hospital, so she was completely ostracised from the medical community and spent lunch time with the cleaners... She nursed the ANC members that had to be treated at the white hospital because the black hospital in the area was run by the Inkatha, and the patients would be stabbed before they got to the operating theatre, in the lift, in the corridor... the political violence between the black themselves was horrific. If an ANC supporter knew he was being taken to this hospital he would throw himself out the back of the ambulance, wounded or ill or whatever to avoid murder. So the white hospital had to take them.

The white doctors didn't give morphine to the black patients, saying that they were used to pain so it didn't matter, their genes hadn't build up a resistance to milder pain killers - so men with knee caps shot off were given paracetamol and the nurses had to deal with the screams from the black ward all night long, so she is pretty ace, a priest, has a mixed family, has a fantastic community, protects women from rape and gender violence and does other amazing things with her life. It's always a pleasure to spend time with her.

So then we went to a protest at Um Salamouna, one of the villages that I was studying. There were twice as many people there as usual, and it was a non-violent protest. the SA lady was filming from the side and I went to the wire to try and diffuse the situation when people started bussling and attempting to cross the barbed wire.

I went out the group again when it calmed down and was standing sort of near the side when....