Days 8 & 9 - Jenin & Qalqilya

The group flew back to London on the Sunday and I took a bus up to Jenin in the north of Palestine with a friend. After the busy itinerary of the first week, it was great to wander around aimlessly for a while. It might have been because we were no longer in a large group but the people in Jenin seemed even more friendly and welcoming than in other towns we had been.

When we got out of the bus we were greeted by the sound of gunshots. A train of cars sped up the road with men leaning out the windows firing guns. It was evident from the flags they were waiving that this was just a Fatah demo. Great fun all the same!

I tried out my basic Egyptian arabic on the first policeman we came across and asked if he could direct us to the nearest hotel. He asked me something in Arabic and I nodded without understanding and before we knew it we were getting in a taxi and heading out of town into the surrounding mountains. Me and my friend exchanged glances but said nothing (on the basis we wouldn't have been understood anyway).

Things then took a bizarre turn (as they often do when travelling) as we turned into the entrance of a huge estate. It transpired that I needed to learn the Arabic for 'youth hostel' as we realised this was probably the most expensive hotel in the whole of Palestine. Ironically, when we thought we were getting in amongst the 'real' Palestine, we were going to be sleeping in a 5 star hotel complete with Greco-Roman facades, topiary and room service. Luckily it wasn't too expensive by European standards and we agreed with the manager we would stay for one night before venturing back into the town centre in the morning for somewhere more appropriate to stay. 'The hostel in town is very dirty' he warned us.

We left our bags in the room and took a taxi back into town that afternoon. Jenin is off the usual pilgrim / political tourism route and people here were genuinely surprised and delighted to see us. Although it is a thriving agricultural market town, nobody tried to sell us anything. We would typically be offered free coffee by people in the street and then offered a room for the night in their home! They all wanted to try out their English and have us take photos with them.

We were stopped by one guy in the street who asked where we were from. His english was excellent and he tried to give us a brief breakdown of the current political situation in the West Bank. He had previously been a leader of the Western Jenin Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (a group affiliated to Fatah) and had once been high on the Israeli wanted list. He told us that the resistance groups were being sold out by the Palestinian Authority. Previously wanted individuals were being told to come out of hiding by the PA only to be arrested by Israeli troops. There is widespread suspicion of the PA and its leader Mahmoud Abbas and many believe they act as US/Israeli agents rather than in Palestinian interests.

In the evening we were surprised at how many armed PA guards roamed the streets on foot and in jeeps. The PA is holding onto the failed and hollow peace deal and part of its responsibility under this deal is to police the resistance on behalf of the Israelis. They set up their own Israeli-style checkpoints to search and arrest their countrymen and are effectively on the payroll of the US. Given they themselves are under occupation, they have no real power and would certainly not be allowed to defend their people from Israeli attack. Nevertheless, they seem to enjoy parading around with their 1960s Egyptian issue rifles.

We managed to get in touch with the manager of a French funded NGO (non-governmental organisation) who was able to direct us to the only hostel in Jenin. She also introduced us to one of the girls at the NGO, Islam, who took us round Jenin refugee camp. The camp itself is infamous because of the massacres that were carried out there by the Israeli army in 2002. F16 jets and cluster bombs (which remain unexploded in civilian areas in order to create further injuries and deaths for many months afterwards) were used on the defenceless refugee population. Half of the buildings were destroyed and aerial bombing was used to blow a deep trench down the middle of the camp, literally cutting it in two. Many people were killed and many shot in cold blood in the streets (as has similarly happened in Gaza recently).

Israeli violence is often concentrated against the refugee population. They are an important group in Palestinian society because they represent the memory of the 1948 Nakba in which the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland.

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The Nakba

It is easy to talk about the Nakba ('catastrophe') in general terms without appreciating the scale of the suffering that was inflicted on the Palestinian population when they were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in order to make way for the creation of the state of Israel. For a comprehensive account of the atrocities committed against the defenceless civilian population, Ilan Pappe's 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' is essential reading but I will give some brief examples here for illustration purposes.

Ben Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, was the architect of the ethnic cleaning operations. He was never tried for any war crimes but instead is upheld internationally as a historic Churchill-style national icon. Tel Aviv airport is named after him. His diaries reveal the cold, calculating nature of his intention to rid Palestine of Palestinians at all costs whether by killing or forcibly expelling them. The campaign of terror he waged against the Palestinian people in and prior to 1948 is difficult to comprehend but a couple of examples might give some insight:

The Dawaymeh Massacre
The Zionist troops surrounded the village on three sides, as was standard practice in their cleansing operations and twenty armored cars entered the village. The standard procedure was that they attack from 3 flanks leaving the fourth as an exit point to chase the civilians from their village.

On this occasion the villagers were paralysed by fear so the soldiers jumped from their cars and began shooting indiscriminately (bear in mind there was no resistance). Many fled into the mosque for shelter or to a nearby cave. An eyewitness (the mukhtar of the village) ventured back into the village the next day and the streets were strewn with bodies, men women and children. The entrance to the cave was blocked by bodies. It is thought 455 defenceless villagers were killed in cold blood.

The accounts of the soldiers who took part in the massacre detail babies with their heads blown open, women raped or burned alive in their homes and men stabbed to death.

The Tantura Massacre
Tantura was attacked by Zionist forces at night in May 1948. The offensive unusually came from all four flanks so the villagers had nowhere to escape to. Consequently the soldiers found themselves with a lot of civilians on their hands, all unarmed. They were herded to the beach and the men seperated from the women and children ('men' were classified by the Zionist forces as any male between the ages of 10 and 50). The men were ordered to sit down until an Israeli intelligence officer arrived.

They were interrogated about a 'huge cache of weapons' that had been supposedly hidden in the village and as they knew nothing about this many were executed on the spot. Many villagers were also killed within the village as the soldiers went on a killing spree. A jewish soldier described how soldiers would go up to the commander while the Palestinian men were on the beach and say 'my brother' or 'my cousin was killed in a battle with arab forces' and the commander would order a group of men to be taken aside and shot dead. Other soldiers would approach the commander and more would be taken aside and murdered. They were massacred in groups of between five and ten.

The Deir Yassin Massacre
The village of Deir Yassin had a non-aggression pact with the Hagana (Zionist force) but this did nothing to save it. Jewish forces occupied the village in April 1948 firing their machine guns into the houses which killed many villagers. The remaining villagers were then gathered together and executed. Many of the bodies were mutilated and many of the women raped and then killed.

One eyewitness, who was 12 at the time, survived being shot after being lined up with other children and then sprayed with bullets by the Jewish soldiers. Approximately 170 villagers were killed including 30 babies.

Rapes by Zionist Forces
Obviously many of the victims have never spoken about their experience and many more were killed before they were able but there are some horrific stories about rapes by Jewish soldiers in 1948.

The most disturbing is the case of a 12 year old Palestinian girl who was taken by Israeli soldiers to their base camp. They shaved her head, beat her and imprisoned her. For the next few days she was gang-raped repeatedly by the platoon soldiers (22 in total) and then murdered. The case came to trial after an Israeli newspaper published the story in 2003. The harshest sentence was afforded to the murderer himself, he got 2 years.

Theft and Looting
There has rightly been full compensation paid to the Jewish Europeans robbed of their posessions by the Nazi's. No such compensation has been organised for the Palestinian victims of theft and expropriation at the hands of the Israeli authorities in 1948.

All of the assets of the 1.3 million Palestinians were seized by the invading Zionist forces. This included their farmland, businesses and money held in bank accounts. The first governor of the national Israeli bank had a plan in mind to avoid them being embroiled in international investigations: "Maybe we can send it all to American Jews?" he suggested.

The stolen agricultural land was handed out amongst Jewish settlers (a process that continues today) and any trace of the Palestinian villages that once stood there wiped away. Typically trees would be planted over the ruins to remove the memory of them altogether. On this basis, Israel claims to have 'made the desert bloom'.

The refugees from the 1948 war settled in Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and many other places. Most retain refugee status, as do their descendants, and as such retain their right to return to their homeland one day.

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Jenin refugee camp was the subject of a documentary called 'Visit Palestine'. It has also been the beneficiary of international funding as it hit the headlines for the atrocities committed by Israeli troops there in 2002. This is a typical Arab and Western response to Israel's violent excesses: do nothing to stop them perpetrating their crimes against humanity and then try to patch up the victims afterwards with monetary aid (often with a political tag attached to the aid). The same thing is happening now with aid to Gaza.

After the massacre there in 2002 a German artist created this horse from the twisted metal of cars, trucks and ambulances that had been crushed by Israeli tanks. Jenin also has the Freedom Theater for children in the refugee camp. When we visited, there was a press conference being held by 3 of the directors (one German, one Israeli and one ex-Al Aqsa Martyrs!). They had been accused of indoctrinating the children with anti-religious liberalism and were trying to calm the locals.

Later that afternoon we were invited to our guide's english lesson that she held for the doctors at Jenin hospital and then it was back to the hostel in Jenin town for a long sleep.


Qalqilya
The next morning we set out by bus. We planned to drop our stuff in Nablus at another NGO office and then go on to Qalqilya. On the way to Nablus we had to get out of our bus, pass through a huge Israeli checkpoint and get on another bus the other side. The soldier in the checkpoint feigned amazement as to why I would want to be in the West Bank when I could be in Israel. I decided not to enter into a debate. We were greeted warmly in Nablus as always and given a bed in a nice little flat on the top floor of the offices.

We took a shared taxi out to Qalqilya and were surprised to be stopped at another checkpoint, this time manned by three armed Palestinian men, one in uniform, two in civilian clothes. Clearly PA men. The one in uniform opened the door of the taxi and asked for passes. Me and my friend went to get our passports out but the man said in English 'No, just the Arabs'. I was shocked at this and one of the guys in the back of the taxis was clearly put out as well. 'Just like the Israelis' he said in arabic after we had driven off. I couldn't help agreeing.

Qalqilya itself used to be a thriving agricultural town before the Israelis began building their apartheid wall. The town is now totally walled in and cut off from most of its farmland. The wall is designed to steal as much of their land as possible while keeping the population of Israel as ethnically pure as possible (ie keeping the Palestinians on the other side of the wall).

To see a satellite image of how the town looks from space click here

The people here were more suspicious of foreigners. They are right up against the Israeli wall and are subject to persecution by both Israeli forces and their own Palestinan Authority that effectively does the bidding of the Israelis.

This was the last place we visited in the West Bank and it was fitting that our last memory would be the feeling of claustrophobia and oppression, walled in on all sides in a ghetto.

Day Six & Seven - Jerusalem

The city of Jerusalem has represented the religious diversity of the world for thousands of years. The Dome of the Rock, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall are amongst the holiest sites for the three world religions. For this reason, Jerusalem was given special treatment in the original partition plan that the UN drew up when Israel was first created in 1948.

Jerusalem was supposed to remain under international control after 1948 but the Zionist forces of course disregarded this restriction and forcibly took control of West Jerusalem. Subsequently, East Jerusalem was designated as the capital of the future independent Palestinian state. Israel has other ideas and has been seeking to annex the whole of Jerusalem including East Jerusalem and the surrounding suburbs.

Israel claims Jerusalem as the 'eternal capital' of the Jewish state (despite Tel Aviv being the capital of Israel under international law). In order for this to be viable, Israeli authorities believe they must first engineer and then maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem (including the Palestinian areas in East Jerusalem). To this end, a slow process of ethnic cleansing is under way in East Jerusalem. This involves a pincer effect of settling Israelis in East Jerusalem whilst at the same time forcing Palestinians out.

Israel must, by its definition as an ethnically pure Jewish state, be constantly preoccupied by its demographics. Maintaining a Jewish majority of at least 80% of the population (whilst annexing as much Palestinian land as possible) has become an obsession that trumps any concern for human rights or life. East Jerusalem provides a microcosm of the policies adopted by Israel to achieve this.

Israel, as the occupying power, has authority over East Jerusalem and as such is able to practice its 'aggressive bureaucracy' tactics to the full. Israeli authorities almost never grant Palestinians building permits and they are therefore forced to build without them. This then allows Israel to declare their homes illegal and issue demolition orders against them.

The Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem has itself been declared illegal by the UN and yet Israel is able to demolish the homes of Palestinians on Palestinian land on the basis that they have been illegally built. 19 Palestinian homes had been demolished in 2009 up to the end of April. This left 100 Palestinians homeless. The rate of demolitions is increasing as the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem gathers pace.


To enter East Jerusalem we had to go through the huge checkpoint from Bethlehem. The checkpoint is more like an airport terminal than a crossing between 2 cities. Both East Jerusalem and Bethlehem are supposedly on Palestinian territory but the huge wall that Israel has built cuts them off from each other. The wall surrounds East Jerusalem.







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The Apartheid Wall

Israel calls the wall a 'security wall' and claims it is necessary for its protection. However, if this were the real purpose, you would imagine it would be built along the border of Israel and the West Bank. It is not, it snakes into the West Bank capturing the biggest of the illegal settlements and stealing huge swathes of Palestinian farmland. There is no official map of the wall but estimates suggest that when complete it will mean up to 50% of West Bank land has been taken from the Palestinians (taking into consideration militarised no-go zones and Israeli designated 'nature reserves' on Palestinian land).

The United Nations aid agency, UNRWA, made the following statement:

"Whatever the final route of the wall it will effectively place much of the West Bank lands out of bounds for the Palestinians."

Villages have had their livelihoods stolen from them, families have been cut off from each other and many homes demolished to make way for the wall. The reason it has been called an 'apartheid wall' is that it is built on Palestinian land but is designed to separate the Palestinians population from the ruling Jewish population geographically and economically. It is another example of Israel unilaterally creating 'facts on the ground' in order to prevent any negotiations reaching a just and lasting peace.

Many western artists have used the wall as a canvas (including Banksy). A selection of my favourites are shown here (click on them to enlarge them). I'm still undecided on whether this decoration of the monstrosity is a good thing or not.


The International Court of Justice declared the wall illegal in 2003 and called for its immediate dismantlement. Needless to say there was no rush from Europe or the US to enforce the ruling.

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There was a very tense atmosphere in Jerusalem the first day we visited. We kept coming across crowds of Israeli riot police in the old city who looked more than out of place. We discovered that some Jewish settlers had tried to storm Al-Aqsa mosque earlier that week. This kind of fanatic violence is on the increase in Jerusalem as the settlers are again doing the Israeli governments dirty work by terrorising the Palestinian population in the hope they will decide to leave.

I got talking with an ISM (International Solidarity Movement) activist from the US called Tom. He had been living in East Jerusalem for a couple of months in order to monitor the Israeli authorities demolition activity but also the violent behaviour of the settlers. He had witnessed gangs of armed settlers taking over houses in East Jerusalem. The authorities, as in Hebron, protect these extremists and they have been succesful in taking over increasing numbers of buildings in East Jerusalem old city. You can see Israeli flags flying from the upper floors of buildings where these lunatics have taken up residence.

Whilst the fanatics are violently ejecting people from their homes and terrorising Palestinians in the old city of East Jerusalem, the authorities are doing their bit by demolishing homes in the suburbs. Tom from the ISM had been staying in a village who's homes were under imminent threat of demolition. Because of the aggressive bureaucracy tactics detailed above in relation to building permits, there are currently 60,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem at risk of having their homes demolished.

I've borrowed some of Tom's photos. One shows armed settlers entering a Palestinian house in the old city, the second is a recently demolished Palestinian house in Jerusalem and the third shows Palestinian children clearing the rubble from the street. The Palestinian families are fined by the Israeli authority if they do not clear the rubble of their homes that the Israelis have just demolished.

Day Five - Hebron

If there is one place in the West Bank that epitomises the colonialism, violence, racism, injustice and brutality of Zionism, Hebron is it. The day in Hebron came towards the end of the group's trip (they were staying for just one week, I stayed for two) and left everyone speechless. If you want to look into the eyes of Zionism, unclouded by the spin of politics or the apologetics of 'international diplomacy', visit Hebron.

Like most Palestinian towns in the West Bank, Hebron has an old city and a newer commercial centre (the busy commercial centre is shown above). On the edge of the old city is Abraham's mosque. This is the site of the 'Cave of the Patriarchs', a religious site important to all three of the world religions. Hebron is surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements that are home to some of the most violent and fanatical Israeli settlers. Groups of hardcore settlers have periodically tried to take up residence in the old city and terrorise the Palestinian population into leaving. The first group were led by a fanatical rabbi who booked into a hotel in the old city with his motley crew and then refused to leave. They claim that Hebron was bought for the Jewish people by Abraham in biblical times. On the strength of this claim, they feel justified in attempting to evict the population of Palestinians who have lived here for thousands of years (and indeed are the true descendants of the biblical people). It is on these kinds of spurious religious, pseudo-historic claims that the whole of Zionism is based.

In 1994, a settler in Hebron, who also happened to be a senior doctor in the Israeli army, called Baruch Goldstein, broke into Abraham's Mosque during prayers and massacred 29 Palestinians with a machine gun. He was eventually overpowered and killed by the Palestinians in the Mosque. This was, to all intents and purposes, the first suicide attack of the conflict. It was this act that sparked the retaliatory suicide attacks by Hamas in the 90's. Before this suicide attack on the Palestinian civilians in the mosque in Hebron there had not been any suicide attacks against Israel by Palestinians.

There is a shrine to Goldstein in the area where he lived that describes him as 'clean of hands and pure of heart'. After his massacre, the Palestinians were held under strict curfew while the settlers were free to go about their business.

Curfews are a daily fact of life in Hebron and the Palestinians are often locked in their homes for days, sometimes weeks on end. In 1998, two babies died in their mothers arms at Hebron checkpoints as the soldiers would not let them be taken to the hospital. The curfew had been imposed so that the settlers could observe a religious period of mourning without having to come across any Palestinians on the streets.

The settlers believe in a genocidal ideology that the murder and violent expulsion of all non-Jews in the holy land will bring on the coming of the messiah. To this end, they carry out what can only be described as 'pogroms' against the Palestinian population in Hebron . The heavily armed settlers are given free reign to go on violent rampages through the city, murdering Palestinians, and burning Palestinian homes, cars and olive groves. Given the Israeli and US propensity to condemn Islamic extremism and even launch wholescale wars under the banner of combating it, you would imagine one or other would be quick to suppress this violent Jewish extremism. On the contrary, the Israeli government's reaction is to protect these fanatics at all costs. They have brought in several measures in Hebron to do all they can to ensure the safety of the settlers and, although many of them are literally murderers, murdering Palestinian residents in cold blood, they are never brought to justice.

There is currently a population of circa 650 insane settlers that have managed to take up residence in the old city. This is in comparison to a Palestinian population of approximately 180,000 in Hebron. The state of Israel, rather than evicting the settlers who have illegally invaded the old city, have brought in various security measures to protect them, at the expense of the Palestinian population's rights and liberty.

We arrived at the entrance to the town of Hebron and were confronted by the first of these security measures, the checkpoint (shown to the right [click on the pictures to enlarge them and then click 'back' to get back to the blog]). Note the Israeli flag over the checkpoint. There are over 100 checkpoints and roadblocks within Hebron. Obviously the fanatical settlers pass freely through these but movement for the Palestinian, within their own town, is very difficult.

Further into the town we saw these Palestinian girls confronting one of the Israeli soldiers at another checkpoint (right).

The checkpoints within Hebron demonstrate the way in which the state of Israel, and it's colonialist ideology, go hand in hand with the extremist religious fanaticism of the settlers. The settlers invade the Palestinian town and, rather than evict them, the Israeli state reinforces their claim to the town, entrenches their presence with military instalments, provides them with military support on their violent rampages and allows them immunity from prosecution. It compliments the direct violence of the settlers with its own bureaucratic violence of occupation. Indeed, many of the serving soldiers in Hebron are recruited from the settler populations themselves! Hebron is not a mutation of Zioinism or an unfortunate bi-product of Zionism. This is Zionism.

The state of Israel used exactly this kind of religious extremism in its foundation. The indigenous, non-Jewish population of Palestine needed to be massacred and violently evicted from their homeland in order to create the Zionist state in 1948. The same ideology is now being practised in the West Bank by the settlers. It bears repeating at this point that Zionism is not Judaism. Zionism is a colonialist political movement (founded in Europe) that was well underway long before the horrors of the Holocaust brought international consensus on the 'necessity' for a Jewish state. It is a political movement that hijacks Judaism as its ethical scaffold and one which an increasing number of Jews are rejecting. It is also worth noting that the vast majority of Holocaust survivors wanted no part in the Zionist movement that was claiming the salvation of the Jewish people. Most wanted to settle in the US or even remain in Europe (which they considered their home).

Israeli politicians are fond of using Hebron as a medium for demonstrating their liberalism, their removal from the extremism of the settler movement. They will sometimes make critical statements against the more violent acts of the settlers in Hebron. And yet I saw with my own eyes the way the state will go to great lengths to protect the settlers and support them in their genocidal goals.

Our guide took us to Abraham's mosque on the edge of the old city. The building was previously a mosque in its entirity but, after the settlers moved in, was made into a synagogue. Now just 20% of the building is allowed to be used as a mosque by the Palestinians of Hebron. We saw the Jewish settlers arriving for prayer in a huge, Israeli military armoured bus. The 'call to prayer' that you hear in every city across the Arab world has been banned in Hebron as it disturbs the settlers.

Note the settler here on the left with his family and the gun tucked into his trousers. The way he has done this, I think, is indicative of the kind of macho, frontier-like mentality of the settlers.



The Palestinians must go through several checkpoints and searches in order to enter the mosque itself. The Jewish entrance to the synagogue has no such inconveniences even though it was a Jewish settler who massacred the Palestinians in this mosque in 1994. Inside the mosque are CCTV cameras monitored by the Israelis. The tomb itself (site of the burial of the Biblical figures, Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah) was entered by the Israelis some years ago and they were inside it for several days. Nobody knows what they did inside but they covered the entrance with a bookcase (shown here on the right). They enter the mosque twice a day to check if the bookcase has been disturbed.

The mosque is separated off from the Synagogue although you can see into the Synagogue at one point. This part is separated by bullet-proof glass which is there to protect the Palestinians from another settler attack (obviously the Palestinians would not be able to get a gun into the Mosque but the settlers are allowed to carry weapons into the Synagogue if they choose). I took this photo of someone peering through the divide from the Synagogue (left).

We left the Mosque and headed towards the old city but were stopped by two Israeli soldiers in the street. They pulled one of the girls aside because she looked more Arabic than the rest of us. They demanded to see her passport. Her passport was European and our guide explained we were on a trip from England but they were not satisfied. "Are you Muslim?" they asked. This kind of open racism seemed bizarre to us but is an everyday reality for the Palestinians. Indeed the treatment our friend received was surely toned down by her possession of a European passport compared to what the residents here suffer. A police car arrived and spoke with our guide. We were eventually allowed to move on.

The second thing I noticed about Hebron, after all the checkpoints, are the grills and grates on all the windows. The settler children are taught in a Jewish fundamentalist school on the outskirts of Hebron, that violence and terrorisation of the non-Jewish residents is an instruction from god. They do their own bit by stoning Palestinian homes and can also be very violent towards internationals.

The entrance to the old city is the site of the more inhuman checkpoints (right). They appear more suited to cattle than people. Only Palestinians who have residency cards proving they live within the old city are allowed through these checkpoints.

The old city has effectively been shut down by the Israeli military. What was previously a thriving market centre has become a ghost town. All but a few of the shops that were the livelihoods of a whole population are now shuttered up, their customers denied entry. All this because 650 settlers decided they wanted Hebron for their own. Not only do the Palestinians here live in fear from settler violence, they have also had their businesses ruined by the Israeli military.

A couple of boys followed us around trying politely to sell us trinkets and souvenirs and this made the desolate scene seem all the more tragic. In the photo on the right you can see one of the boys being harassed by some soldiers.

On the left is the old entrance to the fruit market. Now blocked off and shut down. The streets where Palestinians still pass are all covered by wire meshing to protect them from missiles thrown by the settlers from above. We saw glass, rocks, chairs and bottles (presumably filled with something) caught in this wire.

The settlers typically take over the upper floors of the Palestinian homes. This tactic is replicated by the Israeli military who patrol the roofs in the old city. They can pass easily across the roofs in the old city. This photo was taken of a soldier peering over into the street at us.The following video (The Iron Wall) gives a more detailed look at Hebron in particular and how it characterises the occupation. Apologies I have had to put it in several parts. You will need to click 'back' at the end of each part to navigate back to this page. It really is a must see but does contain some quite graphic violence. How could it not:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Day Four - Nablus

Wednesday was spent in Nablus in the Northern half of the West Bank. The landscape around Nablus is some of the best in Palestine. On the way there we saw many of the illegal Israeli settlement farms that are built on some of the most fertile Palestinian land. They are easily identifiable by their intensive farming methods, lots of plastic sheeting and modern irrigation systems. The illegal produce from the settlement farms finds its way into supermarkets in the UK. Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsburys stock produce from illegal settlements despite the UN declarations of their illegality. See the following website for more details:
http://www.bigcampaign.org/

Happily there were also Palestinian farms in evidence, like this one, being tended by Bedouin labourers.

We began the day at An-Najah University. The campus was funded by a Saudi Prince and is quite impressive. They have very modern facilities and we spent a few minutes watching a volleyball game.

We got talking to some of the students who were showing us around. I asked one guy how long he had been studying for and he responded that he had started his course 8 years ago. He had been detained by the Israelis in a prison camp without a proper trial for 5 years. A huge proportion of young men in Palestine are detained by the Israelis at some point in their life.

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Political Prisoners

The wholesale imprisonment of young men has been a major part of Israel's aggression against Palestinians since 1948. There are currently around 10,400 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

Many children are imprisoned by Israeli forces just for throwing stones. Under the 4th Geneva convention, the population of an occupied territory (West Bank & Gaza) has the following rights:

1. Not to be subject to physical coercion or torture.
2. Not to be sentenced without a 'regular trial' (legal representation etc.)
3. Not to be detained or imprisoned outside the occupied territory.
4. Not to be interned without trial except for 'imperative security reasons'.

Israel flouts every one of these international requirements. The military courts in which prisoners are tried are there to uphold the occupation rather than administer any justice.

Detainees are typically forced to confess under varying levels of torture (beatings, stress positions, psychological torture etc.) and then hauled before a military court that rubber stamps the conviction brought by the army. Degrading treatment and humiliation is the norm (humiliating full body searches and confiscation of personal property are typical).

In 3 of the prison camps, Palestinians are held in tents all year round. The tents are designed to hold 20 but in practice many more are crammed into them. These camps are in the desert where the heat in summer is unbearable and the winters are freezing cold.

Israel continued with the British practice of 'administrative detention' that effectively gives them the power to imprison anyone they like, without a trial, for whatever period they like. 'Administrative detention' allows the Israeli army to bypass the court system altogether and Palestinians can be imprisoned for several years without any trial and without family visits for prolonged periods. The worst offence that these people have committed is being involved in the resistance against an illegal occupation of their homeland. Those suspected of serious involvement in the resistance are usually summarily executed by Israeli death squads. These executions are often carried out by use of disproportionate force (ie unmanned aerial drones or heavy artillery fire) which often kill civilian bystanders or, more commonly, the target's family in the process.

These summary executions are not reserved just for those actively involved in resistance. In 1987, the artist who created the Handala character (shown here) was executed on our very own streets here in London. A young man was arrested on suspicion of his murder and turned out to be an agent of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. Mossad refused to co-operate with the enquiry and no one was ever convicted. Handala represents the long suffering of the Palestinians, in particular those who experienced the full trauma of the Nakba, and remains an iconic image.



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We were taken by the students to the martyrs cemetery in Nablus. Here are buried the boys and young men killed during the second intifada. Nablus was bombarded heavily by the Israeli army in 2002.

The resistance against the Israeli invasion was centred around the old city (as with most Palestinian towns). The Israeli army found it so difficult to break through the defences of the militias here that they eventually decided to go straight through the houses on the perimeter of the old city with an armoured bulldozer. Here you can see a house that was entirely demolished (only now being rebuilt). An entire family of 8 were killed here in their sleep. Their memorial is also shown here (click on the pictures to enlarge them).

We moved on to Balata refugee camp. Balata camp is the most overcrowded we visited. There are 25 thousand people crammed into a space of 1 sq km. The buildings are built very tall and very close together. They are so close together that daylight barely reaches the tiny alleyways between the houses. One resident told us that when people die here, their bodies must be carried out to the main street as coffins will not fit down the alleyways into the houses.

The camp is raided often by Israeli forces and residents subjected to psychological torment by the use of 'sound bombs' in the middle of the night. There are many children living here and the cramped conditions and lack of daylight cause an unusually high level of psychological problems compared with other refugee camps within Palestine.