well.. ok then

The major terms connected with the middle east, Israel/Palestine conflice were a little familiar to me before I went there – "occupation", "suicide bombers", "the wall", "refugee camps", "terrorism", "the siege of the Nativity", Jenin…, but I must confess that had I been asked a year ago which ‘side’ was being occupied by whom, or any of the other particular details of the conflict, I could not have said for sure.
My knowledge was so limited and mostly sourced by the occasional, usually brief, national media coverage of major events there that when I was given the chance to take part in a ten day trip to Palestine, on a ‘fact finding mission’, my first reaction was negative - the middle east was a dangerous place, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get mixed up in it all.

I’m ashamed of that reaction now. After having spent the ten days travelling around Palestine and Israel, staying in the city of Bethlehem, amongst the wonderful Palestinian people, my opinions have, obviously, been changed.
The problems there are not likely to go away soon. While we must and can do all we can to encourage peace, there is little chance that it will come quickly.

Reporting on the situation is a difficult task, not only because of the great tradgedies that happened there, the sad conditions that people in the land of Palestine must face every day and the memories of civilian deaths that are so often recalled in everyday conversation, but because of the great amount of propaganda that is given out by both Israelis and Palestinians in an effort to win the world over to their ‘side’. Reading through the great many articles, reports, informative guides produced by thr government and people of both sides can feel like being accosted by two children who have been in a fight, both trying for sympathy and attempting to make out that it was the other who started it. This, along with the challenge of chronicling the history without the chronicler appearing to be stereotyping any particular religious group, means there is little truly objective literature on the subject. And even so called “unbiased” reports can be misleading – the BBC has said the Wall lies on the border between Palestine and Israel, but in fact it closes in on the land of Palestine slowly but surely.

Personally, if I must pick sides, I would have to ‘side’ with the people of Palestine. Having seen the stark contrast in their cities littered with rubbish bags because there is no where else to take it, scattered with uncleared rubble from destroyed buildings or illegally built homes that are essential but impossible to gain a permit for, from the green grassed Israeli settlements (where the plants gets more water than the Palestinian people), with olive trees dug up from Palestinian land to decorate the roundabouts. Having witnessed “security” checkpoints in the wall, built to keep checks on who passes through in case any are dangerous, unmanned and open. And having met the admirable people of Palestine; from our tour guide who, despite it all, had kept his sense of humour, to the tour organiser who planned meetings and trips for us to meet and see people and places that he, as an ex-political prisoner, could never meet and see; the lively children of Wadi Fuquim, whose village would soon be broken up by the coming of the wall, to the students of Bierzeit university who continued to attend lectures despite the fact that their journey there has been lengthened from 15 minutes to an hour and half by an Israeli checkpoint set up on the road there; the teachers of Hebron who refused to pass through a checkpoint to get home because their pregnant colleagues were being forced to go through the exrays… the list of these people and their stunning feats of courage could be listed for pages.

Our trip took us on a tour of Bethlehem city, to see the graffiti’d Wall, a police office destroyed by a _________ (it is illegal to use these in civilian areas), bullet marks on walls of the church of the nativity, there since the siege in 2002, the roads that can be seen by Palestinian people but not used or reached because of a surrounding fence with a fatal electrical current, and the roadblocks blocking off roads in and out of the city. We also toured the various areas of Jerusalem, saw Muslims being stopped and checked, always watched, on their way to their place of worship, the Dome of the Rock, on the holy day, saw people being beaten on the street by men wearing balaclavas saying “police” and Passing hitchhiking Israelis at the side of the road, freely carrying machine guns. We walked the streets of Hebron, under the nets put in place to stop bricks and rubbish hurled from the upper Israeli houses from hitting people in the street below. We were refused entry to Nabulus and discovered later that it was because several people from _____ refugee camp had been killed that morning, including two children.

The thing that struck me most of all was the courage of the ordinary people living there, who continue their every day lives inspite of the hardships, despite the Wall and settlements that seem to loom on the horizon wherever you go, a constant reminder of the occupation. Most of the people we spoke to said they must have hope for the future or they could not live, they said a two state solution is most likely but that they would wish for one state – a land inhabited peacefully by the people of Palestine and Israel side by side.