Okay, so I love Tel Aviv. Not everyone loves it - some call it tacky, boring, or ugly. But I love the 1970s laid-back ambience, the beautiful beaches, the sweet sea breeze. Gorgeous, wavy Jewish hair and big sunglasses; people riding around shirtless on “cruiser” style bicycles; young people carrying ostentatious musical instruments, like cellos. […]
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Posted 13 July 2010
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Al-Bueire, 6 July 2010
Today we made a foot patrol of Al-Bueire, an area on the edge of Hebron where settler harassment is a serious problem. We simply walked, slowly, up and down the road that runs through the village. Now and then we approached a Palestinian on the road, and each time the approaching figure […]
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Posted 08 July 2010
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When I went to the An-Nabi Saleh protest on Friday, I was wearing an old anti-settlements cap that I found lying around the ISM apartment. It has some Arabic writing scrawled on the visor in pen; I hadn’t paid much attention to this, until a Palestinian friend looked at it and pointed out that it […]
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Posted 06 July 2010
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An-Nabi Saleh, 2 July 2010
Every Friday afternoon, the Israeli Army invades the Palestinian village of An-Nabi Saleh, initiating a passionate, inspiring and somewhat bizarre response from the villagers. What happens each week in An-Nabi Saleh is a powerful model for unarmed resistance to the Occupation.
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Posted 04 July 2010
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Al-Awja (Jordan Valley), 28 June 2010
Monday morning I went down to the Jordan Valley: a long narrow gash between Israel and Jordan, centering the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, lowest point on Earth.
It is smaller than I had realised (like the whole of Israel-Palestine, which is all smaller than I realised). You drive a […]
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Posted 02 July 2010
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There is a small Palestinian population living at a place called Bir Al-’Idd in the South Hebron Hills. This is the far south of the West Bank, a sparsely populated area that may be seen by the Israeli government as ripe for ethnic cleansing and annexation. I have not called Bir Al-’Idd a “town” or […]
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Posted 27 June 2010
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Myself and another ISM volunteer did an observation patrol in Hebron this morning. In the mornings we normally observe the Tel Remeida checkpoint for a few hours, documenting any abuses (apart from the general abuse of Palestinians having to pass through armed checkpoints on their daily business). Other checkpoints in Hebron are monitored by other […]
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Posted 27 June 2010
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There are large parts of Palestinian life that go on quite happily, more or less unaffected by the occupation. There seems to be a doubleness to peoples’ lives: they are mostly quite cheery when they speak with you, very kind and generous, and like people everywhere, Palestinians are preoccupied with eating good food, asking about […]
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Posted 23 June 2010
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One of the villages regularly visited by workers from the International Solidarity Movement is a place called Iraq Burin (no relation), in the northern West Bank, near Nablus. Every village here seems to have a story, and Iraq Burin’s is quite unhappy. In brief: a Settlement was built nearby, and the Settlers there are especially […]
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Posted 20 June 2010
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Today I attended the regular Friday demonstration in Al-Ma’asara, a West Bank village that has had a large part of its farmland confiscated to make way for a new Israeli settlement. The lost land is already being cultivated by Settlers, and soon a wall will be constructed to cut the villagers off from the land […]
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Posted 19 June 2010
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