Dreaming in Nablus

These images are Gaza.

Good morning.
I am quite perky again today although Liz is not. It will take a long time to begin to turn the days in Gaza into some kind of sense - I am not even going to begin to try to be coherent about it yet. We met some incredible people, we were overwhelmed. We were horrified. In brief though:
1. It is a lot easier to get in to Gaza than to get out.
2. This was not due to being kidnapped.
3. It is because of Erez. Israel's very own heart of darkness. More another time. Un fucking believably evil.
4. Despite today's headlines, word in Gaza city is that Alan J is alive and well, everyone knows where he is - with a very powerful family, untouchable by the P.A, and it is about a ransom.
5. Everyone is very very pissed off with them.
6. We hope they are right.
7. Beautiful revolutionary Palestinian women in Gaza use Clarins moisturiser.
8. In a just world I will ride horses with Neda down the Gaza coastline. And no men will stop us.


Back to Nablus.
Our journey here felt very chilled indeed after Gaza, despite the checkpoints; again, eclipsed by Erez.

But I had a dream last night, which went on for hours (I have been have the most intense dreams since we arrived but will not bore you with any others). I dreamt that we were being bombed - gunfire in the streets in Gaza was routine, so I woke up unsurprised. Then Liz said she has been kept awake by the sound of explosions. Yes, Nablus was being attacked in the night. Israeli incursions here are a near daily occurrence - mostly at night, but occasionally, for variety during morning, noon or eve.

Other than that the city seems so lively and normal after Gaza, maybe anything would seem normal.

It is also very beautiful - we have just been through the old town - its maze like layout must give the Palestinians an advantage. It is also a souk in parts the roofs meeting in the middle. A little hard for tanks to bulldoze through without having buildings collapse on top of them.

Uploading images is a little tricky in Palestine - generally speaking computers are of the steam engine variety. This is inconvenient for us, but another facet of the daily grind for the locals. We have a little time on our hands this morning as a couple of people on their way up from Jerusalem to join us for a meeting are stuck at the checkpoint outside town. So the next couple of days will need to be rejiggled a little. Hey ho.

I promise that I will talk you in great detail through the 15 or so separate security processes necessary to cross Erez. Each of which could have been designed for cattle.

If you want to avoid that particular post then you can either:
1. Look out for the Erez title
or
2. Pretend you were the 4 or 5 year old Palestinian boy in front of us who had to go through it, then grit your teeth and dive in.

Over and out.

Don't go changing!
x

lost for words

Friday the 13th

Hello and good morning from your foreign correspondent here in Palestine. I am not quite sure why I have decided to post this photo as it reminds me of a photo of my nana in which she is wearing a similar colour scarf leaning over her garden gate. The question is then I suppose Am I turning into my nana? I do hope not, not yet anyway. She was never in Palestine that's for sure.

Well it has been an interesting couple of days since I last communicated. We have been up to the very north of Israel and the Golan heights, to Jaffa, the Dead Sea and back to Jerusalem yesterday for a political tour, which for me has been the most emotionally difficult experience so far. I felt like i just wanted to sleep for ever last night and had very vivid dreams early this morning.

As you may imagine we have eaten many meals during this time on the road including falafel falafel and some falafel. I didn't really fancy the burgers.

Yesterday was the first day that we have gone without falafel. A falafel free day. I hope you realise what an achievement this is and reward us accordingly.

Since we introduced you to Mary we have acquired two other travelling companions. There names are Mary and Mary and I would like to introduce you to them but would also like to keep their introdutions until next time. So until next time xxx

They get knocked down but they get up again

[imagine this on Fabian way, anybody? It is the only road into a Palestinian village: making any cars left inside rather pointless)

We went out with Abu Hassim on his political tour of Jerusalem this morning - you can imagine that the Israelis make running this business really easy for him. It was gruelling to say the least.

My personal worst moment - I couldn't film or photograph what was happening for obvious reasons - so I will bung it in the blog before it falls out of the close to overloaded brain. We spent some of the tour trying not to cry too obviously. (I was doing pretty well until tonight when something daft set me off in a Palestinian restaurant. Liz is becoming aquainted with my sentimental and superstitious sides).

We went through a Palestinian suburb of East Jerusalem through which the wall runs - right down the middle of the main street, dividing the inhabitants from each other. The road then ends in a huge pile of Israeli dumped rubble, the end of what was the road to Ramallah - the detour through residential streets winds miles out of the way (part of the maze of blocks, detours, gates and checkpoints that the Israelis are creating for Palestinians - and this is nothing to do with dividing Israel from the West Bank for 'security' reasons - it is clearly to fragment and divide the Palestinian population within their own city).

[People squeezing through a gate that dissects their neighbourhood - completion of the wall may close this permanently]

So, in the maze we came across a Palestinian truck trying to do a 3 point turn down a tiny road which was never designed for this kind of traffic. His job was made harder by the Israeli jeep parked in the way, with its door wide open, blocking the road. The soldiers inside were ignoring the situation completely. The truck driver and his mate just carried on patiently maneuvering around the jeep. We sat there fuming at this arrogant, pointless obstructiveness and the humiliation it seemed designed to provoke.

This is what is left of some chap's house: The iniquitous Israeli designed planning laws tie Palestinians into catch 22 situations with their housing. Many have given up trying to comply and build anyway - unable to afford the average 10 years and 100.000 shekels that a licence will cost them. The insecurity of saving and waiting is then replaced by the insecurity of whose house the IDF are coming to bulldoze next. We saw a few squashed flat.

What may strike you as particularly incomprehensible is that this is happening in East Jerusalem - which is not part of Israel. Under international law it belongs to the Palestinians. What we witnessed today is that the Israeli state can act with absolute impunity.

Anyway back to our friend and his squashed house:

This is the pile of blocks ready to begin rebuilding - for the third time!

Over and out. I think the fragrant Ms Porter may sign in au matin. Hey, thanks for the message Flo - give Mr Fluffy a tickle from me xx

Friday 13th tomorrow.

Oh god loads more stuff, it just keeps on coming.

OK, I can't be doing with chatting much about Kiryat Shimona right now. Mooli is as great as I remembered, Liz was reluctant to leave. The Golan region is strange, occupied, military, grasped tightly with all claws extended. We stayed last night in the oddest vast 'youth hostel', the architecture of which resonated strangely with Ben Gurion Airport. Maybe tomorrow I will go into the bomb shelters again with you good people (they are marvellously well decorated), and gaze out of the Community Stress Prevention Centre's windows again at where the rockets hit last summer and torched the woods.

Potted history of the area - Israel nicked it off Syria a while back and its indigenous population, the Druze (unique culture, monotheistic religion) are ambivalent about whether they want to be given back or not. Frankly, my dears, I suspect the Israeli powers that be do not give a damn about your opinions, mixed or not, they are there for your strategic importance as a bit of land.

(Here is a picture with what do with a bit of land of strategic importance. Just in case you've got one spare lying around.)

However, we had the loveliest afternoon on the borders of Lebanon, Israel and Syria with our new acquaintance, Rajaa. She is liberated, chilled, home loving, generous and open. She has a fabulous home too, a dab hand with the decor: warm toasty burner, Danish pictures from a random danish friend, handsome babies scattered about, and an extraordinarily beautiful husband safely tucked up serving in his cafe. We picked her up in there, not him, sadly. She works in a local University which was luckily for us on strike today, and does peace work with Jewish and Druze Youth.

Although identifying herself strongly as Syrian she is not keen on giving up her car, job, opinions and freedom as a woman on the edges of Israel to risk enforced Hijab wearing and sexual oppression under an Islamic state. She agrees that this is not the case with her Druze sisters in Lebanon, but they are not the ones likely to be handed her chunk of land in any possible peace settlement with Syria. Tricky. But we didn't promise you easy politics here.

[This is the Druze flag, Rajaa can megaphone from here to her Uncle - this is the border. His house is one the other side - 500metres away]

Great vibe in her town. Won't bore with our theorising about it all this afternoon - suffice it to say the Druze of the Golan rock - gorgeous and open and clear - best of luck to them and all who sail with them...

Nearly time for bed.

There is so much to say, and unfortunately I am too tired to say it with any of the vim and vigour it deserves. The bastard wall deserved its own post. It crept up on us when we weren't looking and my heart jumped out of its little socket when its glowered at me.



Would you like to look at a pretty picture when we recover together? Then I will tell you a little story...





Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin. So, we are heading for Kiryat Shimona, out of East Jerusalem towards Jericho and up the Jordan Valley. Remember (if you ever knew or cared) that between here and Jericho and around and beyond, we are in the West Bank, well inside the green line, but swarming with settlements and flash roads lined with stony hills, and much much poorer Palestinian villages, somewhere on the sidelines.







We stop for water. We pick up 3 hitchers (it's a tic of mine, can't help it). They are cute girls, very hippy, a bit frekkly and stuff and very very young - and from a settlement. They ask us if we fancy a dip in a remote hot spring on the Dead Sea, nearly on our way. Fine... We judge a bit of a line with them ie they are just kids, and they are so painfully ignorant of their own history and politics it is rather eerie.





The hot springs are precisely that, the place looks nice and pretty, Liz floats a bit, then stings a bit (inevitably), then gets a bit pissed off with it all stinging and we want to get on with our day now. Bringing the hippy chicks back towards a main(ish) road from this obscure place (not wanting to leave them out to fry) I ask them whether we are still in the West Bank (we crossed a checkpoint, and I am aware that the green line extends about half way down the Dead Sea).



They have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.

Nada.

Ok, I say, you know Jericho is a Palestinan town, right? "Where?" That big fuck off town right there in front of you? "Oh you mean (insert Hebrew to fit)". Yep, Okay ... "That's not Palestinian. That's an arab town now [in tone of great concession] but it used to be Ours." Right. Sack full and cats come to mind. So what about where we are now? "Oh, this has always been Ours." (airy gesticulation that encompasses much of the Dead Sea, West Bank and possibly even bits of Jordan). Jericho is Jewish in about the same way that London is Roman.



I find this all rather worrying.



There is a particular kind of Steiner vibe about this very particular kind of (oh dear I don't wish to generalise and I may be a about to, help help) Israeli youth. Great fabrics, soft pastel colours, fab sandals and a kind of scary big hole in the middle where the powers of reason roam in other mere mortals.

Liz, bless her tolerance chats kindly to them when I spit out mean little comments on the sidelines every time they say something more than usually irritating.

It was a bit of a relief to get shot of them and zip up the Jordan valley on our own. The checkpoint out of the West Bank was grim, but had nowhere near the impact of the Wall. This was because there was not a non Israeli soldier in sight, other than ourselves, and after all they were so cute, right? in their natty little khaki uniforms, and so smiley to us as they waved us through with our neat UK passports ... and they couldn't have been move than 18 years old,.. same age as the lovely girls ... they might even have been at the same schools... with the same blind spots in their educations,.. and they had guns ... lots of big guns...

Suddenly I was glad not to be Palestinian.

But I would not entirely want to be an occupier either.




[A Point of View: Nice, but dim]
PS

Oh, and by the way, our route north up the Jordan valley and up into the Golan Hights from East Jersualam isn't possible if you happen to be Palestinan and from the West Bank. You could do it if you were Palestinian and from East Jerusalem but it would have taken you considerably longer, if at all. And that is without floating anywhere.

I have nothing to say that meets this evil bastard wall