Not quite finished.....

Well, we thought we were winding down, however, we are still on the go!
A full closure of the West Bank has been imposed by the Israelis and has been effect since Friday. What that means to us is that no West Bank ID holder (i.e. all the men who queue to go to work in the morning) cannot pass through the CP, hence no CP watch. What is good for us is rather catastrophic for Bethlehemites, no work, no money and possibly no job! Remember Ameen, the morning coffee seller who supports his family, extended family and assorted others - I told you about him earlier – tough time for him with no coffee selling!

We aren’t quite off-the-hook because the Bible College Conference is in town and we meet groups of about 20 participants each morning at 6 a.m. to escort them through the CP. For the pleasure of getting up early and picking up groups from the lobby of Intercontinental Hotel, we were invited by the Sabeel organizer to stay and have breakfast in a wonderful dining room overlooking the grand swimming pool, as posh as a ***** in our world. Truth be told, she didn’t invite us, I invited myself and my colleagues. Actually, Abraham, one of the conference participants, said that he valued the work we do here and would like to pay for our breakfasts but it turned out his offer was not needed because it was a huge buffet style breakfast and no one even noticed us. Now, my colleagues and I are fighting over who will go tomorrow and Wednesday on the chance we’ll get another free breakfast. The ‘juxtaposition of incongruous elements’ (as Robert would say) is stunning with the backdrop of Aida Refugee Camp immediately behind the Intercontinental. I wish I could get up high enough on one of the surrounding buildings to get this picture but I can’t, so just visualize it.

The conference speakers and sessions are also open to us and those of us who are so inclined have been attending. I have attended two sessions (not necessarily because I was so inclined but it was an oasis of cool out of the 30C heat!): The Bible, Israel and the Church: Challenging Zionism, Anti-Semitism and Replacement Theology presented by Stephen Sizer and Evangelicals and Islam presented by Colin Chapman and Brother Andrew. Brother Andrew was nicknamed God’s Smuggler for smuggling Bibles to Communist countries at the height of the Cold war. He was a joy to listen to! You can goggle any these people if you care to know more about them.
This morning’s CP tour for the conference participants was cancelled due to increasing tension in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and actually all throughout the West Bank over holy sites in Jerusalem. Military presence is on every street corner, sirens wailing, Palestinian teenagers throwing rocks. We had an early morning phone call Samira Alshaer, the Principal of a girl’s school in Tu’qua village to request that we go there immediately because the military was throwing tear gas at the children as they went to school. Apparently, some of the teenage boys from the boys school across the highway had thrown rocks at the military hummers and the IDF responded with tear gas. We spoke to one of the young girls, Nariman Sulimann, who had had an M16 or whatever those guns are called, pointed at the side of her head. She was still physically shaking when we spoke to her. Samira told us they have a social worker who can assist students like Nariman who have been traumatized by the military, however, she is only in the school twice a week and today was not one of the days. We promised to return to Tu’qua tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. to monitor the situation as the kids go to school. Today, we got there after the fact! Even Eli, our driver, was a shaken by some choice words one of the soldiers shouted at him as we got in his taxi.

When we got back to town, Eli took us to the Intercontinental to take in more of the conference. There was quite a disturbance of teenagers throwing rocks at the Wall which cuts into Bethlehem to preserve Rachel’s tomb on the Israeli side. Because Bethlehem is Area A, the Palestinian Authority army dudes arrived to disperse the young men, which they did without the use of tear gas, or sound bombs. The Israeli’s declared Rachel’s tomb and the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron as Israeli heritage sites last week – just one more irritant for the Palestinians. It has been 5 days of closure now – the first closures, other than for Jewish holidays, in many months. The popular belief here is that the Israeli’s are pressuring or squeezing the Palestinians into reacting with a Third Intifada so they can then say, “look at those terrorists” and justify more oppression.

Our staff in Jerusalem become very protective of us when there is unrest in the West Bank. They want to know where we are at all times and who is in the placement and who is out on days off or whatever. One of my colleagues, Phil, is enjoying days off by the Sea of Gallillee right now and we have two visitors from other placements with us. It is quite a task to keep track of all 24 of us from Group 34 and add to that Group 35 – another 24 newbbies - are currently arriving in Jerusalem. I do not envy the EAPPI staff!

On Sunday, we travelled back to Hebron with Hamed, our UNOCHA contact, that’s the Humanitarian Affairs branch of the UN. We visited the Bedouin village of Um Al Kher which is the most vulnerable community in the South Hebron Hills. The people of the village all live in tents with the exception of one concrete block house, and 2 concrete structures which house toilets. All structures, with the exception of the one house, have demolition orders on them, meaning that at any time the military may come and flatten their tents and toilets. The settlement of Karmel is expanding and encroaching on the land of Um Al Kher. The Bedouins have actual paperwork to support the fact that they own the land, which is very unusual for a Bedouin community. The electrical poles carrying electricity to Karmel on one side and a settlement chicken farm on the other side pass on Palestinian land. This would not be so bad except that the Palestinians are not allowed to hook into the power source. So near and yet so far!



While there, we met two Israeli physicists who sympathize with the plight of the community (and other vulnerable Palestinian communities) and volunteer their time and expertise to work with Palestinians in setting up solar panels to bring electrical power to the people of Um Al Kher. Very impressive men! The first and third from the right are Israeli and the second and fourth are Palestinian.

Although there are no ongoing open hostilities between the villagers and the settlers, there are flare-ups from time to time when a donkey doesn’t seem to know the border between the communities and inadvertently gets into the settlement. Other villages in the South Hebron Hills such as Suseya, Al Twani and Tubas have benefitted from the constant presence of the international community, EAPPI and Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPTs), to name a couple. Hamed said that he fears that it is too late for these Bedouins and they will be forced to give up their way of life and have to move the Yatta, a Palestinians city, not too far away. Of course, by our standards, that may not be such a bad move but because they would be forced to do so, it would be very sad. After many cups of lukewarm sugared tea and amazing hospitality, we had the usual hair-raising ride back to Bethlehem with Hamed’s cousin. My strategy is to sit as far back in the vehicle as possible, close my eyes and hope for the best.
Phil and Muriel relaxing in our hosts tent.

Holy unfit!

The Bethlehem Bible College is an interdenominational Christian Bible College very close to our house. On Monday, we were invited to have lunch with the students and faculty and we were told about an international conference of theologians, organized by Sabeel, at the college from March 12-17th. This conference is called ‘Christ at the Checkpoint’ so they thought it would be appropriate to invite the delegates to be with us in the checkpoint at 6 a.m. So for 4 days next week, we will take groups on the wonderful journey through Gilo CP. Many of the participants will arrive to the conference by bus or car and will never experience what Palestinians go through every day. What is the point of sitting through hours of academic lectures about Christ at the CP just steps away from the CP but not visit it? We’ll show ‘em.......

For some reason, village people like to dress me up! We visited the village of Nahalin this week and were treated to a feast of, you guessed it, Maqulba. We went at 4 p.m. to visit teachers, Hussein, Naim and Yousef, for what we thought was tea time. Of course, Yousef’s wife had been cooking all day and served the 3 men and the 4 of us a wonderful meal. The women later ate what was left after the men and guests had had their fill, a custom I find extremely uncomfortable. They did not want us to leave and even though my colleagues, Phil and Sabine, had been up since 4 am and were nearly falling asleep in their Maqulba, we couldn’t extract ourselves until after 9 p.m. Gunnar was playing volleyball (with a wire for a net) with the teenage guys and the women insisted on dressing me in one of their traditional Palestinian costumes. This happened to me in the village of Jubbet adh Dhib as well, I seem to appear to be some sort of toy doll to these folks!





There is a local women’s group in town who wanted some physical activity and a young German volunteer named Kevin offered to give them aerobics classes. A generous offer from someone who only knew how to train a soccer team! Some weeks back, I told him that I would assist him and this week he took me up on my offer. So I searched back in my mind about 20 years, put some music together and off I went. It turned out that the dozen or so women we not very fit and so my level of ‘unfittness’ went unnoticed. Kevin and I did a little tag-teaming because I felt he had made the offer and he should participate in the leadership. It actually would have worked better if I had done it myself because that led to a somewhat disjointed class. Sabine watched the spectacle and told me after that the women (and Kevin) were following me – we’ll see what happens next week.





The weather has been magnificent of late – 28C and sunny. This morning we had a delegation of 18 Germans, part of an Alternative Tour to the Middle East, to escort around the Wall, CP and refugee camp for 3 hours and it was a bit of a challenge to find shade for them to shelter under. We managed to keep them alive until their bus returned.

Group 34’s Handover Report has been written and sent to Group 35; the Handover Schedule has been planned and the invitations to the Handover Party have been delivered. Now we wait for Group 35 to arrive.

Olive trees? What olive trees?

I arrived back in Bethlehem on Monday to a house full with placement visitors from Hebron and Yanoun. It is always nice to host our colleagues because it is far less boring in the CP when you have company. A really nice Arab Israeli is the commander at Gilo right now (the soldiers rotate locations every 2 months or so) and he loves to speak English. It really doesn’t matter how nice the commander is the process of humiliation remains the same. It’s all relative – better than with a nasty commander but nonetheless, humiliating. I complimented him of how smooth and fast the CP queue was cleared today – 2 ½ hours – and he told me he was there to work and that was exactly what he did. He went directly to the Humanitarian Line and fished out the women and elderly and let them through as he is supposed to do but none of the other commanders have the compassion or the guts to do it. The fact that he is an Arab makes it easier, I think, to deal with fellow Arabs. He comes from Carmel, in Haifa. Not too many Arab Israelis serve in the IDF, so it is a bit rare. We walk a fine line between being seen by the Palestinians as too friendly to the soldiers but on the other hand, the soldiers are young men and women too. I have a need to try to understand people as people, not soldiers, Palestinians, oppressors, terrorists, Israelis or whatever label you want to give them.

Israeli bull-dozers rolled into Beit Jala on Tuesday morning flattening anything and everything in their path. I guess they didn’t see the olive trees on the path! One would have to have been blind not to see the destruction the bull-dozers were causing as they uprooted one olive tree after another. Home owners were trying to replant some of the trees and cut up others to salvage what wood they could. They told us some of the trees were probably 200 years old. But the bull-dozers marched onward heavily supported by the IDF and other Israeli security forces (difficult to tell who the security players were). We had been notified by our local contacts that a demonstration would take place the following day in support of the people who were losing trees and land in this operation. The first family, whose house we stopped at, had lost part of its land the previous day, swing sets and other garden furniture had been salvaged and moved close to the house. When we arrived the owner showed us what was left of an olive tree which had been uprooted.

This homeowner will lose his whole front yard and driveway. You can see, if you click and enlarge, the Wall is coming through. The angled portion of the Wall is to prevent kids from throwing rocks on the Israeli cars below.


We always keep our distance - except when we don't!

The route of the Wall in this area makes no sense at all. We walked back to the other side of the highway where the bull-dozers were moving very fast up a hill taking down tree after tree. Protesters scrambled down the hill to meet the heavy equipment. Two young men sat down and had to be forcibly but peacefully removed by the army, carried up the hill to safer ground. Another group of protesters sat under an olive tree until the army pressured them to move up the hill. It was sad, indeed, to watch the local residents, the owners of the trees, watching the army take down what they had spent years building up. All we could do was be there, witness, photograph, and tell their stories – many times one feels completely helpless in these situations.



We did hear a bit of good news out of Beit Jala this afternoon. Our local contact in Umm Salamone, where we attend a demonstration every Friday, told us that the Israeli court ruled that the route of the Wall in this area is illegal and the destruction has come to a halt! But who know for how long?

If it is possible to have light hearted fun at a demonstration against the Wall, we had it on Friday. Our driver, Eli, and our translator, Yousef, teased each other back and forth and had us in stitches. Yousef is a student at Bethlehem University, hoping to get a scholarship to study languages in France next year. He wanted to attend a demonstration (not in the capacity as our translator) so he could say that he had been at or had at least witnessed such an event. Because the IDF photograph the protestors as much as we photograph them, Yousef stayed in the car, not wishing to jeopardize his future. So now he can say he was there! Eli had a field day teasing Yousef about his bravery! Also, one of my colleagues is deathly afraid of tear gas and so retreats at the first sight of a soldier holding a tear gas canister, regardless of the mood of the demonstration. Early on, Eli and I lost sight of my colleague, of course, because he had already retreated to Eli’s car. Another brave soul! It turned out to be a completely peaceful demonstration with a Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) politician, Abbas Zakke, showing up because elections are just around the corner. Eli said that the politicians will be at every demo from now until elections.

Early on Saturday, I came to Jerusalem for a couple of much needed days off. I took my chances with a Palestinian hairdresser and had highlights done. Not bad! Although I was looking for a mindless couple of hours, I got a 2 hour discussion about Armenian Christians and how they feel neither Palestinian nor Israeli, etc, etc, etc. It seems no matter how hard one tries, there is no clearing the mind and avoiding talk of ‘the situation’. I attended St. George’s Anglican Church this a.m. – same thing – at coffee hour following worship, someone wants to talk about ‘the situation’. This afternoon I wandered about West Jerusalem in the sunshine and no one talked to me. Lovely!

You never know what you will find in East Jerusalem – at the Legacy Hotel tonight, I found a Sushi Bar. I buried my head in my book, sipped my glass of wine and ate Sushi. Perfect end to two days off!

Best laid plans go awry......

I finally got away for my placement visit to Jayyous on Saturday and was to be picked up by Muawya in Ramallah, but unfortunately, he got picked up by the Israeli police the night before, arrested and eventually, 8 hours later, was released. However, his taxi, So Far So Good, was not released and kept in prison. Apparently, there is a discrepancy between what his paperwork for the car says and what the Israeli computers say. After he had been hand-cuffed, leg shackled, paid a 2000 NIS fine ($556.00), produced all the required paperwork, he was let go but his car was not. He can ill afford the fine and the loss of income while his taxi is in prison. He takes all this in his stride and with good humour – he said that the worst part was he couldn’t smoke for the first 5 hours. Then the policeman invited him outside for a cigarette, so he showed how he waddled across the floor with his legs bound. He said when they gave him his phone back to call Sewar, his brother, to bring him the money, he first took a picture of his feet! He later told me that he will be secretly very worried until So Far So Good is back home.



I can’t imagine how it must have felt to be treated like this for some kind of alleged traffic infraction. A little overkill, I think!

I continued on my journey by taking a service to Tulkarm and visiting a friend, Samar, who I missed the last time I was there. Muawya borrowed his brother’s taxi and drove me to Jayyous about 7 p.m. One of my colleagues, Sophie, cooked a vegetarian Thai dinner – the last thing I would have expected in Jayyous – which was fabulous! She had invited two of the locals, Noor and Mufaq, to join us but they had great difficulty with the spicy-ness. It was quite funny to watch them trying to be polite, as we are often called on to do in Palestinian homes.

As I sit writing this with my headphones on listening to John Mayer, I keep turning up the volume to drown out the Muzeen hollering from the mosque and a very loud donkey outside my bedroom window. Needless to say, I did not sleep very well last night. There is no glass in the windows of my room, just a screen and some type of plastic shutters. Between heavy rain and wind, thunder and lightening, Muzeens and donkeys, sleeping is just one of the many West Bank challenges we EAs face.

Today, I went with Sophie to the South Gate in Jayyous, which opens between 8:00 and 8:15 to let the farmers get to their land and tomorrow, we will go to the North Gate. David, the other Canadian EA and I left for church in Nablus about 9:00 arriving late in Nablus about 11:00, missing the sermon but just in time for communion. Of course, we followed church with lunch at the Yasmine Hotel in Nablus, an activity which I loved doing during my first stay. On the way back, we got out of the service at the village of Azzun to visit Afaf, a lady who is a good friend to EAs. She insisted on feeding us more but I was able to convince her I was very full from lunch and only had room for dessert, which Sophie had already warned me about – some brown wobbly stuff of unknown origin. David obliged by eating nearly another whole meal.

Tomorrow, I will go back to Bethlehem – not sure how I will travel. Today was the Jewish holiday of Purim so all the CPs from the West Bank to Israel were closed to West Bank ID holders. Not sure about tomorrow!

Farmer Susan enjoying herself!

As with my last journey to the West Bank, one of our biggest challenges is teamwork. Each member of the Bethlehem team comes from similar but different backgrounds. One, whose first language is not English, claims that his frustration with trying to speak and write English leads to not doing the dishes????? I don’t quite get it. Can someone explain? I also would have thought that when learning a second language ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ would be high on the list of necessary words but apparently not. When we arrived home from our mid-term break, we had to address these issues. Now, we have all said our piece/peace, a bit of a gang-up situation but it was done in a caring way and we go on from here. Nothing has changed but at least its out there. When I was with Group 29, there were several teams which were struggling and I did a lot of listening but with Group 34 either they don’t exist or I’ve just not heard about them.

Hatem Sabbah, the mayor of Tu’qu, invited us to a meeting to explain issues which exist in his village. We were aware of some of the issues and agreed to meet him in front of the schools where the IDF jeep sits. There appears to be no reason for the jeep to be there and is it felt that its presence, in some part, is to provoke students of the boys school to throw stones, which they do. Some 1000 students from kindergarten to Grade 12 pass here every day on their way to three different schools, all within a stone’s throw (no pun intended – well, maybe a little pun intended!) of each other. Israeli cars from Tekoa settlement, as well as Palestinian cars, drive at breakneck speed through the gaggle of children – a scary sight. There are no sidewalks, no school zones with reduced speeds, no sleeping policemen (as speed bumps are called here). The mayor explained that he has approached the Israeli Civil Administration, who has the jurisdiction for 70 metres on either side of the road, to make it safer for the kids, but to no avail. The rest of the village is Area B – joint Israeli/Palestinian Authority (PNA) controlled – but the road is Area C – full Israeli control.



It’s a very complicated business, one I’ve been trying to understand for 5 months now, what is Area A, B or C. Bethlehem is Area A which is controlled by the PNA but the Israeli army can and does come in to Bethlehem any time it wants. It simply declares an area to be a ‘closed military zone’ a term which means no one has any right to be there. In theory, the IDF should be able to present a piece of paper indicating an area is a closed military zone but, in practice, we can’t read the Hebrew so the paper could be a prescription for eye glasses or a child’s homework page and we would be none the wiser. However, we do ask to see the paper.

A morning visit to Jubbet adh Dhib was delightful after we got past the desperation experienced by the village when their water was cut off by the Israelis due to an archeological dig at Herodion. Hamza, the leader of the 176 village people, told me, “we can live for 200 years without a road into the village and no electricity, but we cannot live without water!” We called the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to see if they could help. We were told that it was a temporary measure and the water will be restored but the villagers are afraid that these are empty words and they will be forced to give up their land.



Once we had done what we could about the water issue, we were shown how their morning bread was baked in a taboun which is an oven in the ground. There is a receptacle of some sort which they fill with sheep dung the night before and which is just hot coals by morning. Hamza’s wife tossed the dough like a pizza guy tosses his dough and laid it on the coals, covered it with a lid over which she threw more hot ashes. Ten minutes later, she uncovered it, removed the bread and handed it to us. Delicious, with a glass of goat’s milk fresh from the herd. I had trouble downing the goat’s milk which was more like natural yoghurt but my colleague, Sabine, came to my rescue by finishing her glass and switching glasses with me. We do a lot of glass and plate switching here with the sugared tea, coffee and other delicacies, especially when we don’t know what we’re eating. Some of us, like Sabine, are used to these epicurean delights.



Before we left we visited the animals and a couple of shepherd ladies in the fields. Sometimes I wonder what the animals survive on because the fields are mostly dirt and rock with the odd sprig of green. I also wonder why there is so much conflict over this tiny little area of the world. I do know the answer to that (historical significance and all that) but when you walk to this little village in the shadow of Herodion, it does give you pause to say, “and they are fighting over this?”

This little guy in the picture is 10 days old. His coat reminded me of my grandmother’s fur coat – the kind of fur with the tight curls, the name of which escapes me at the moment. But I am really not much of a farmer if I can't down a glass of goat's milk!



Last evening, Phil and I attended a Board of Director’s meeting at the Bethlehem Roots Society for a brainstorming session on future projects the Society could undertake. They were interested in hearing any ideas we had. They run successful projects such as an after school program for underprivileged Christian children, an exchange program called Peace in Music, language lessons, etc. They are interested in a program for young university graduates to assist them in finding work and as well, further exchange programs. The President of BRS, Saliba Zelfo, is a sincere, hard-working translator who we felt deserved our support and we felt privileged to be invited.

This morning I was scheduled to go on a placement visit to Jayyous and to visit my friend, Milena, from my previous team, who lives in Bet Yehoshua in Israel. But the weather is horrendous here! Horizontal, torrential rain, thunder and lightening on and off all day long. Getting to Milena’s would involve a complicated plan ending with Muawya driving me to a village with a ‘settler-only’ road on which Milena can drive and pick me up – not a plan for bad weather! I will have to skip the visit to Milena’s this time and try for Jayyous tomorrow.

So would you like to know what you missed?

I am referring to those of you who chose to lie on a southern beach and sip martinis instead of joining me and my colleagues on this exclusive, exotic tour of Israeli settlements, kibbuztimes and villages of the West Bank!

Last week, we had a ‘mid-term break’ – not sure why ‘break’ is associated with this particular week as it was anything but a ‘break’! We were on the go from sun-up to sun-down. Many relatives and friends (about 15 extras) of Group 34 joined us in Jerusalem on Sunday and participated in most events with the exception of Group meetings. Many of the visitors finished their journeys in the West Bank placements with whomever they had come to visit.

First stop on Monday morning was at Efrat Settlement where we were invited the home of ‘Settler’ Bob Lang, the Public Relations man for the settlement, who told us his story. He was born in the US but came to Israel as a young man, married and had four children. He has lived in Efrat Settlement for about 35 years where he and his family live a good life – upper middle class. He sees nothing wrong with the Israeli government policies which have allowed settlements to dot the West Bank to the detriment of the Palestinians. He was quite passionate about the fact that he has every right to live in a settlement and categorically stated that UN Conventions are simply wrong. He was convincing in some ways; however, went over the top with extreme statements.

This is Bob, the Efrat settler, walking with my colleague, Sabine. That's my Canadian colleague, David 'made in Taiwan' Pan, from Toronto in the hat in front. Great guy.



Efrat settlement has 9000 residents 60% of which are native born Israelis and 40% have immigrated from all over the world, according to Bob. He said that the residents of the settlement have a good relationship with their Palestinian neighbours – two small villages – but the route of the proposed Wall will separate them. He said that both the villages and the settlers have petitioned to stop the building of the Wall which has not yet been completed. Bob stated that it is the desire for good relations which caused them to petition but one has to question whether that is the real reason or could it be that it would limit the expansion of the settlement. Who knows?

He will not refer to the West Bank as the West Bank but calls it ‘Judea-Samaria’, a term coined by the Jordanians at the time that they ruled the west bank of the Jordan River. A few quotable quotes from Bob: “Israel has lost the PR War”; “the Israeli army is the most humane army in the world”, “there will be no peace in the Middle East until all the dictatorships of the Arab countries are replaced by democracies” and “settlements in Judea-Samaria are not obstacles to peace to rather they are bridges to peace”. He ought to share this notion with the armed settlers of Hebron and elsewhere in the West Bank!!!!

The week continued with a visit to Yad Vesham, the Holocaust Museum, led by Tamar Avraham. She is a very impressive, soft-spoken woman who is a member of the EAPPI local reference group and an Israeli peace activist.

On Wednesday, we left for Sderot, the Israeli city which was the favoured landing pad for Qassam rockets launched by Hamas from Gaza. There we were addressed by Nomika Zion who lived on the ‘urban’ Kibbutz (a kibbutz in the city) of Migvan in Sderot and founded a grassroots organization called Other Voice which seeks to bring people from Sderot and Gaza together, promoting dialogue and creating relationships. She told us that from 2001-2008, with the exception of a 5 month cease fire, Hamas was launching between 5 and 60 rockets per day into Sderot. All the residents were traumatized, victims of shock and anxiety. She said that all houses built bunkers where families slept, disrupting private life completely. Schools had to re-inforce their roofs, playground equipment creatively became bomb shelters.



Nomika told us that the focus Other Voice (http://www.othervoice.org/welcome-eng.htm) has three parts: 1) Speak to ourselves about seeing each other as people, not Palestinians or Israelis 2) Try to influence public opinion in this way and 3) Try to influence decision makers in the same way. She wrote an article which was published in the main stream Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, and translated and published around the world about the bombing of Gaza. She pleaded with her government – “not in my name” and “not for my security” – referring to the bombing. She was ready to pay the price of social isolation but the response was overwhelmingly supportive. She said that since the bombing of Gaza in late December 2008 and January 2009, things have been quiet in Sderot with only occasional Qassams being fired.

From Sderot we went on to Zikim Kibbutz, also on the border of Gaza. There we met with Arieh Zimmerman, who told us that there have only been 12 Qassams land in the Kibbutz and even though the Israeli government provided each family with a bomb shelter, he has never been in his. We were about 1 km from the Gaza border and could see the Gaza Strip very clearly in the distance. He said that the Qassam is a very primitive weapon, which, over the years, injured one child on Zikim and killed seven cows.

That's Gaza in the background. (Apologies for the poor quality, hazy day, lousy camera.)


In Kibbutz Zikim, they got creative with the Qassams which landed there and built a menorah out of them.





Arieh did not speak well of his own government’s policies, which he compared to an Israeli driver saying, they are “aggressive, impolite, bumbling, stupid”. He continued, “they break the law and get angry if reproached”. He favoured a boycott suggesting that our countries should boycott the Israeli population by not allowing them into our countries. More of Arieh’s views can be found at http://www.ariehzimmerman.net/. Interesting guy!

It was then on to Haifa for one day of work and finally, a day off! Our bus was taking a group to Akka for the day off but those of us who wished to remain in Haifa, could. Since I had gone to Akka in December 2008, I chose to go shopping with two EAPPI staff, Anya and Pauline, at the Grand Canyon Mall in Haifa. No different from Bayshore or Rideau Centre, except for Hebrew being spoken. I was still managed to extract some cash out of an ATM in Hebrew – where there is a will there is a way!

Lunch at 'Faces' in Haifa'



So folks, that’s what you missed! Bet you’re sorry, right? Or maybe you are nodding off from boredom.

Third try at reconstruction!

Last Saturday, we were invited to the village of Al Walaja for breakfast by two contacts, Basil and Machmud, two young men in their 20’s. We got our signals crossed, of course, as often happens between our Arabic and their English, with us waiting for them at the Ansar community center where Machmud works and them waiting for us at Basil’s house. We were not surprised when they did not turn up at 9:00 as arranged – we just assumed they were operating on ‘Palestinian time’ as opposed to ‘Westerners’ time’. When I called Basil at 9:30, they scurried down to the centre, breakfast in hand. Machmud operates the Ansar centre and his salary is paid by Oxfam and Basil just got a job as a pharmacist in Shufat Refugee Camp after spending two years looking for work, or as he says “talking to Machmud”. Both these young men are highly opinionated, well-read, and well-informed in current events from all around the world. We were so engrossed in the conversation that 2 hours passed before anyone even mentioned the reason that we had travelled to Al Walaja.



Al Walaja is set in beautiful rolling terraced hillsides which slope down into a deep valley. This beauty as well as its proximity to Bethlehem makes it attractive to Israeli’s plan to extend the settlements of Gilo and Har Gilo. The village has about 2500 residents and is located in the Bethlehem Governorate. Thirty Al Walaja houses have demolitions orders on them because they block the view from the new buildings in the settlement or are in the way of further development of same or of the Separation Barrier route which eventually completely surround the village. Hard to believe! (I just realized I wrote a bit about this village earlier when we visited Abed, the man who lived in the cave.) This time we visited another remarkable individual named Seham Salm, her father-in-law and two of her three sons.



Seham told us her story. She and her immediate family had moved from country to country before eventually settling where her mother’s family had lived, in Al Walaja. In 2003, they built a family home but did not have the proper paperwork (i.e. title to the land), so not only did the Israeli government order the house to be demolished but also ordered them to pay a fine of 70,000 NIS as well as the cost of the demolition. On January 31, 2006, the IDF arrived at the house with bulldozers, ordered the family out and gave them just enough time to collect their ID’s and money before the bulldozers went to work. It is common for the people whose houses are being bulldozed by the IDF to have to bear the cost. Some of the family went to live with other relatives in Al Walaja and her two oldest sons lived in a tent. The community rallied and help them rebuild another house, albeit smaller than the first.

In November 2006, the bulldozers and the IDF arrived again, unannounced and flattened house number two. This time the Holy Land Trust intervened and assisted with financing a third house, with help from international and even some Israeli organizations.



As we sat in the small but cozy house enjoying Seham’s Palestinian hospitality, the view from the window is a pile of rubble from the demolitions and in the not-too-far distance, the ever-approaching settlement of Gilo. She said, “the first two houses were bigger” and it “hurts her heart to think about it”. Her eldest son, Mu’taz, told us of being approached in CPs by soldiers wanting to befriend him, but with the hidden agenda (not too hidden), to become a collaborator with the army. Many generous offers and large promises are made to young Palestinian men to turn on their fellow Palestinians.

Now Seham and many other Al Walaja residents just wait for the next time. The demolition order is still in place.