Jerusalem March 24

“Visit Palestine” the old advertising posters used to say. Today I made the short trip from Jerusalem to Ramallah, for a day’s visit. The first part of the journey is on new roads, and as the minibus speeds on you see the turn offs to settlements. The moment the driver takes the turn for Ramallah the potholes start. We are now on a narrow road, and he has to make way for minibuses going the other way.

We drive alongside the wall, up to the Qualandia checkpoint. Going through is no problem, and we are on our way in to Ramallah. During the daytime the population more than doubles, and the pavements are full of people, and the roads are full of the yellow minibuses and taxis that bring them here. I look around, eat, do a little business, and head back.

Negotiating Qualandia this way is a different kettle of fish. We have to get out of our minibus, keeping our tickets in case we get in to a different one on the other side.

We now wait at a turnstile for 20 minutes, before anybody is allowed through. Once through this one we reach the checking turnstiles, where people are only allowed through one at a time.

Having waited twenty minutes here, I am only three away from going through when they close the gate, and me, and the Palestinians with me, have to start queuing again at another gate.

There is a lot of cursing, but we finally get through, in to a different minibus, and set off over the potholes. 300 yards down the road we are stopped at a mobile checkpoint, and all our papers checked again. One of the Palestinians is taken off and the driver ordered to leave him there.

It is only the “privileged” few Palestinians that happen to have the papers that enables them to make this journey. The majority are stuck in the prison that is the West Bank.

March 29 2007

In Ramallah to continue working for young people’s visit to Oxford. Have to go to Bethlehem in the evening and we decide to go from here.

Huge numbers are going for holiday breaks. Lots of people work in Ramallah, and live elsewhere on the West Bank.

After about an hour we battle our way on to a shared taxi. The journey of a few miles takes at least an hour and a quarter, because we are not allowed on settler roads. We take the Wadi Nahr route, much of it on winding roads high in the hills.

We arrive at the “Container” checkpoint. There are huge queues, mostly of minibus loads of people, nothing is really being checked, just people held up. Our driver jumps the queue, dodges oncoming traffic, and gets us through quite quickly; the soldiers shout, “What’s the hurry”. Eventually we get through to Bethlehem in 1and a half hours. We’re the lucky ones.

We stay in the Bethlehem Hotel, looking at an expanding settlement. Originally this settlement had its own wall all around it, now the Apartheid wall is coming close to it, and it is building on the land between the wall of the settlement, and the apartheid wall.

So the argument that the new wall was built for their security, is shown as rubbish, because they are utilising the stolen land to build right up to it. One of the new buildings is a huge hotel, so that they will be able to steal more of Bethlehem’s business.

We visit a friend in Al Khader. There is a new football stadium, for the Palestinian National team, one of the only two on the West Bank. The Wall is being built yards away, how many spectators will ever get here?

March 30

Friday set off for Galilee, from Jerusalem. One used to be able to drive through Jericho, and although the signs are still there the road is blocked, by concrete and sand. This means that you have to go in and out by one entrance, and the checkpoint is sometimes closed. So we have to bypass Jericho.

Israel has in effect stolen the Jordan Valley. We pass mile upon mile of settlements, with huge fields of fruit and vegetables. All of this land belonged to Palestinians, from Nablus, and from the local villages. It was always lush, and it was from here that they exported to Jordan and other Arab countries. In the guise of security the Israelis have stolen it, and the settlements produce the vegetables for huge consortiums, like Carmel.

As you look across to the other side you see even more farms, these are Jordanian, producing for themselves – showing how the Israelis lie when they say they were needed to make the desert bloom.

We pass out of the West Bank, in to the land that the Israelis stole in 1948. We come to the Sea of Galilee. For the whole of this part of the journey our friend, who is driving us, points to places where ancient villages were destroyed, and their occupants ethnically cleansed. Most of them are now Israeli villages, often built over the remains.

This is the feature of this visit, just as the few remaining Palestinian villages in the Jordan Valley are surrounded, so with the process of Judaisation of the Galilee, the remaining Palestinian Villages are surrounded by Kibbutzes, settlements, or new towns.

Each of the new developments involved the stealing, of the land, “for security reasons” and for no compensation. The village of Tarshiha, our destination, was bombed in 1948, and a proportion of its houses stolen for the settlement of Ma’Alot. When some of the Zionists decided to move to newer houses, that the settlement was building, some Palestinians were offered back their own houses in exchange for their agricultural land!

Our friend’s grandfather owned a huge quantity of land right up to the Lebanese border. He made the mistake of befriending the pioneers who brought land next to his, in 1938, and set up a Kibbutz. He fed and advised them.

When the army evicted him in 1948 they didn’t do anything, and although they didn’t object to him moving back two years later they again did nothing when he was arrested, in 1957, and his family evicted again.

So he lost all his land, and the only thing his ‘friends’ did was stop his house being knocked down, and so you can still see it, derelict, and surrounded by barbed wire.

So for most of our journey we saw remaining churches, and mosques, because the Israelis generally left the religious buildings, sometimes surrounded by Israeli towns, populated by imported Jews, often from Russia, sometimes the churches are in isolation.

Big demonstrations took place all over Palestine on Friday, because it was Land Day, the main day this stealing of Land is protested against.

The land is still being stolen, for roads, and housing developments, always the same “security” arguments. Sometimes the Palestinians win their cases in Court, but always the army wins, arguing that “security” comes first.