Soap, Knafe and world Class education

The day begins with a tour of the notorious, Al Farha Prison and former police station, known locally as: 'Salah Khalaph'. Built under British Mandate in the 1930's it'e exterior is a sandstone Trumpton. The shuddering horrors of the torture carried out on Palestinians by successive regimes, British, then Israeli, are described in cool detail by our guide from the camp. 

During the first intifada, young men were tied back to back and made to sit on a rock for three days whatever the weather conditions whilst Israeli soldiers threw rocks at them. If they cried or shouted, they were then taken to a series of pit-rooms, or solitary confinement, where many 'were broken' says our guide. Their screams iliiciting laughter from the guards.

'Vietnam was not worse than this.' His descriptions remind me of the treatement allied troops received in Japanese POW camps. I am with my daughter who has been listening intently to all of this, she says she needs the toilet, so I lead her away, the perfect excuse to remove from the lingering atmosphere and the too vivid descriptions of torture.

We sit in a small courtyard where twenty young Palestinian lads, in black cycle shorts and white t-shirts are lolling in the shade. The Qualqulia cycle club have combined with Peace Cycle for this leg of the journey. I admire their white, entirely thorough knee pads (I need to find Alex some) and am just entering into some sign language with the least shy of the group, when there is a roar overhead that forces my shoulders up to my ears. A rumble, a throb, as if a thousand planes are above us. the boys carry on lolling- vaguely curious. One or two put their hands to their foreheads and peer into the cloudless blue. This is the sound of the countryside, Palestine 2009. Israeli fighter jets in formation, practising their lethal trade in death and destruction. On and on and on goes the roar, I try not to flinch in front of the young men but the urge to run inside and cower under a table is almost irresistible, to hide from the tonnes of metal hell in the air above us. The pilots would call this 'manoevres' the locals call it 'just-to-remind- you-we-are' fly pasts.

The children of Jenin

Alexandra and Qud stick together like glue. Qud is smaller with pale eyes and hair and seems quite besotted with her taller, European friend and her strange, thrilling new games. Rooms, cars and streets echo with their sing song chants of the French clapping game 'Dam, Dam der der, Si, si, olero olay...'For Alex's aprt her natural reticence with new people has vanished, when she is invited to visit Qud's school and speak to classes about her life in France, she shrugs 'kay'.

Children here are up at dawn to dress for school. The birdsong so lacking during the scorching sunlight hours is more than made up for by the vibratto of the dawn chorus. Prior to 1948 Jenin was the 'garden of Palestine' abundant with fields of vegetables, herbs and fruit trees. Even today despite decades of poverty, the soil refuses to be silent pushing her green threads between rocks, stone walls and in the ankle grinding granite that counts for pavements in this part of the world.

Al Ryiad is a progressive private school in the Al jaberiat suburb of the city. I swear that I have never been anywhere to noisy in my life. The decibel level at morning break when Alexandra and I arrive along with Qud's mother makes Alex momentarily clingy. Then ther eis a scream and a bundle of plaits come hurtling towards us - Quds.
'What eez your name?'
'Where do you come from?'
'How old are you?'

There are 350 pupils at the school and langugage is a priority. Qud's and Alex jabber all day in the secret language of little girls, but it is now clear that Qud's actually understands a good percentage of what Alex is saying.

The head mistress Saheer Khalil, is a smart lady, with a temper (I can tell, I am proved right). She is like most people here a heavy smoker, which is lucky as I've forgotten mine. We puff away over photo albums of the cloak wearing grads of last year
'these children all went on to university' she says between puffs,
'In Egypt, Ramallah, Jordan...'

THe school is three storeys high, with a cement playground on three sides. The outside walls are covered in murals; the kindergarten with an attempted Sylvester the Cat, the larger children rushing around before painted mountainscapes.

Crisps, fizzy drinks, chocolate bars from the school shop, keep the noise level at airport landing strip level as we head towards the classes where Alex will give a short presentation on life in France. The schools two female English teachers are excited at the unexpectec cultural exchange and class plans are dropped.
'My name is Alex and I am going to tell you about my life in France.' Whispers Alex. She is standing before a class of children her own age staring at her with the curious blankness all students wear after school yard fun and fizzy drinks. However the by now nerve jangling volume still coming from the halls makes her have to begin again. And again. Dear thing, she struggles on not really getting beyond her name and age before the head English teacher, a cheeky woman with a spakling grin and beige hijab shouts above the din 'ask her her name, what is she doing now? Writ-ing her name, yes, writ-ting.'

The next class is better for Alex who this time gets to 'My family and the animals who live near us...'before I am forced to interrupt her.
'My father had a motrobike accident because he was drunk and he was out with the rugby guys and...'
'Alex' I yell
'What is dr-u-nke?' Asks the teacher bemused.
'Never mind, nothing' I say not really wanting to explain alcohol excess in the West.
I needn't really worry or have been so sensitive, this isn't Gaza. In fact the differences are so pronounced between life in the Jenin and say Khan Younis, I feel tearful at times. In one classroom the children are curious to hear from a foreigner who has spent time in that strange place so physically near, so culturally removed from them.
I feel an odd anger welling up in me. Why don't they know what it's like, why don't they call people there and ask them? Do their families care about the people in Gaza really or are they a racially inferior class of Palestinian even to those in Jenin? I fear they are. Ofcourse it's the occupations fault, the Israel's pride that the West Bank and Gaza are now utterly separate entities. No one who lives here has been there and almost certainly never will. Their permits after negotiation may get them to other parts of the middle East but never to Rafah.
' Jenin is Hollywood compared to Gaza' I say wanting and receiving shocked looked off the assembled fourteen year olds. This region of road blocks and refugees can make you irrational if you let it.
'And Jenin Camp is a PA-LACE compared to Gaza.'
The main theme, and one that the teachers are clearly keen to keep alive in their pupils is; Jerusalem. Teachers ask if I have been there, for me to describe it to the pupils, is it beautiful, what are the roads like, did I go to the mosque (where they cannot?) Across the West Bank, no further into the refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, 'Quds' is a burning sore that cannot heal. This Holiest of Holies, this city of history, pride and light, must be visited seen again before death. Of this trip so far, I have cried just once. A Mount Nepo in Jordan, at dusk. Standing on the site where Moses is supposed to have looked over the Holy Land and said 'this is it chaps, but we can't go there (yet)', the whole sprawling, story lay beneath us. To the left the Red Sea, shimmering, looking depleted from its banks after along summer. The green and sandstone hills of painters, poets and religious clerics, a signpost for visitors with arrows bearing the legends "Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem and..Jerusalem. I was utterly overwhelmed, crumpled by it's hilly closeness. By the temptation to just vault the barrier and walk to Jerusalem myself. Our guide a 48 refugee whose mother and family were driven from Jerusalem was with me. He sighed.
'Does your mother ever come here and look for al Quds' I asked.
'Every week for fifty years' he said shaking his head.
'Every week....'
Alex, took up the theme, really she is quite something for an eight year old.
Hands clenching slightly, she spoke loudly for the first time
'on our television news and in our newspapers you are shown as bad people, as violent..' their are gasps, some nervous laughter.
cheeky teacher says
'And are we Alex, are you afraid in Jenin, are we horrible people/'
'NO' she shouts back looking upset at the very idea
'You're nice, I like you'
'and are you afraid in Jenin?'
'NO! I am happy in Jenin the people are kind.'
This after all is the message they want, children, teachers, janitors, shop keepers. They have information from the outside world, TV's are on night and day, dawn till dusk. But an abused nation suffering collective emotional hurt, they are compelled to ask visitors over and over again 'do you think we are bad, nasty, wrong, violent?' 'Are we scary, strange, deserving of this...?'

Gaza is on my mind as we drive away in the taxi.

Jenin Jenin

We leave the coach that drove us from Nazareth, at the Al Jalama checkpoint, happy to unload our bikes. The lushness of well irrigated land is behind us, replaced by drier terracing. The roads are lined with bin liners, coke cans, broken wood and glass. Alexandra sees the high walls of the Occupation for the first time. I wonder whether she is as uncomfortable as I, beneath the roving armed eyes above us. She glances over once then ignores the IDF soldiers completely. She is so excited at the prospect of cycling again, riding round and round in circles of anticipation. It's baking hot, unseasonably humid. Our group apply sun screen and admire the thankfully flat, well tarmaced road ahead.
It is seven kilometres to Jenin.
We set off but get no further than a scorching kilometre before Palestinian police, pull us over. The Presidential convoy is about to pass, we are in its way. The edginess in the armed men is apparent, Abbas has not got unconditional support from the people (to put it mildly after delaying the official response to the Goldstone report). When pressed with a 'Marhabar' the younger ones crack and grin back, shaking their heads at the madness of foreigners on bikes, in the middle of the afternoon 'what is wrong with us?' their quizzical looks seem to say.

Eventually the black four by fours of the Abbas guard zoom by, tinted windows, lights blazing. We cycle along a tree lined road, pretty reminding me if I squeeze from my eyes of a route in the Dordogne, only with more rubbish around the tree roots. Sweat pours into my eyes, Alex has cycled far ahead at the centre of the group, i can hear her merry chitter chatter in the distance. i am ofcourse, the last in our Peace column, causing the police accompanying us to shake their heads and shout 'yalla yalla' (hurry up slow coach)

The outskirts of Jenin are surprisingly pretty, flowers of red and white along the roads, old stone walls, a pleasant, open, friendly feel coming from the higgle piggle shops and vendors themselves. Riches in this part of the world do not spell architectural attractiveness. I think of the relative wealth of Nazareth, compared to Jenin. If there is a 'romantic' Palestine to visit these days then such suburbs in some of the poorest cities are where it exists.

The Popular Committee for Services in Jenin host us witha choice of either falafel or shwarma sandwiches and blissfully icy bottles of water. They screen the film Jenin Jenin. Kevin from Dublin, wipes his eyes with a tissue more than once. Anyone wishing to know more about the 2002 invasion should see this film. The director Mohammed Bakri, a prominent Palestinian Israeli, featured a range of testimonies which suggested that a massacre had indeed occurred. After a few screenings, the film was banned by the Israeli Film Ratings Board on the premise that it was libelous and might offend the public. Bakri dedicated the film to its producer, Iyad Samoudi, who was killed by Israeli soldiers, at al-Yamun in the Jenin Governorate of the West Bank, shortly after filming ended. See it if you can.

And so - Jenin. Where to begin? Named the fourth most dangerous place in the world by the Israeli media five years ago, Alexandra and I take a walk. The camp streets are pit holed, chilldren, boys mostly, gather and stare. Unsure how far to go from the group without causing conecern to our hosts, (keen to keep us from being utterly overwhelmed by the mass of children), we loiter in front of a 'shop'. Businesses here are open rooms at pavement level with shelves lining the wall, crisps still in their boxes. Commerce utterly deprived of the showy, inviting exhibitionism of our own cities and towns. A lady with life lines on her wrinkles, in a jalabya motions to Alex to come over. Using one of our twentysomething guides, (young guys, with broad smiles, flashing eyes and pretty good English) to translate she tells Alex to help herself to anything in the shop.
'Mummy she's poor do I take anything?'Asks Alex. It is hard to see how this women makes any money from her poor wares, but she won't take no for an answer. Ignoring the plastic toys of fairground quality hanging from hooks, she takes a bag of crisps. She shows the lady and thanks her, but the woman is displeased. In fast Arabic, motioning with her hands she makes us all laugh by saying
'but the girl has two hands, the other is empty!' Alex shyly goes back in for a chocolate bar.

The Freedom Theatre, Jenin.

Jenin Camp has been rebuilt with Arabian Shekh funds, since the criminal attack on its crowded civilian apartments and hovels. Whereas in Gaza there are so many young men laid waste by despair here, there is clearly something of a cultural renaissance taking place. Old men sit and smoke on outside sofas, or sip eye poppingly strong cardamom coffee all day. The 'youth' have other maters to attend to, they have plans.
The Freedom theatre, Jenin, is one of the most inspirational success stories I have ever come across in my five years visiting Occupied Palestine. I don't ahve the time to write about it here, but follow this link for more information: http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/. Alex and I are going to see a show there performed by local boys and girls from the refugee camp. We are both excited at the prospect.

I managed to pursuade a young volunteer to give me his Freedom theatre t-shirt. He pulled it off in the street leaving him in just a vest to the giggles of his friends. I later sent him an England number seven football shirt which he returned. Not sure whether that was an act of typical Palestinian generosity (a present in return for a gift? Never!) Or a result of the Balfour Declaration making it even now of questionable taste to praise Britain/England in a place that has suffered so long and so hard as a result of our Foreign policy for sixty years in this region..

Alex has made a friend 'Kund' a girl of eight, who claps and dances as much as she does. This morning we are all going to Kunds school where Alex will talk to the English class.
More soon.

Day Two.

Nazareth is not charming from the outskirts, you encounter a giant McDonald's on the road into the city centre, a road lined with cracked and crumbling cement blocks of flats. In the Nazarene hills we arrive at St Margaret's Monastery and Alexandra at last has a chance to run, her feet touching the soil of the Holy Land for the first time. We will stay here two nights before beginning our cycle journey in earnest as the Israeli authorities demand that groups must have police permission and permits to travel the countryside. 

At a vast Arab school on the outskirts we attend a lecture given by Muhammed Zeidan, Director of the Arab Association for Human Rights. Alexandra is greeted by excited children, boys yelling, girls staring, some come and touch her hair. Even here in this 'open' Palestinian area, European children are a rarity, Christian pilgrims prefer to stick to the main tourist sites, their largely Israeli tour guides telling them that not to is 'unsafe.' 

Zeidan's insights into Israeli politics is chilling, in a gentle yet certain tone he says:

'Israeli political society has been moving to the right since 1977...In ten years Avidor Lieberman could be the Prime Minister' there are some gasps from our group.

'Everyone who is now seen as extreme and far right in ten years time becomes 'the centre' in political terms.' 

The 'cantonisation' of Historic Palestine into ever smaller sections, breaks not only the cultural identity, it creates social and economic differences between cities, villages, even families. Contact between the separate, disunited people, between Gaza and Ramallah, the refugees in Jordan, to those in Lebanon is fading, fading. The situation for Native Palestinians, now labelled 'Israeli Arab's is particular in that any communication they make between themselves and their brothers and sisters in the West Bank, or Syria, or Lebanon, is tacitly forbidden by the State of Israel. Calls are logged, emails routinely browsed, contact with 'enemies' of the state can lead to harrassment by the authorities, or imprisonment. Israel considers most Arab nations 'enemies' and the West Bank a closed military zone. More fragmentation, disconnection. 

The road to Haifa is a revelation. How green and verdant is the land here. Forests, line the hillside, flowing down to fields of abundance. Israeli cities shine their new story into the heat haze, Kibbutz, line our way, built on the bricks and rubble of razed Arab villages.

At the Arab Youth Centre 'Baladna' in Haifa we are hosted by Jowan Safadi, a young 'Israeli Arab' whose fashionable, curled, cool appearance blends seamlessly with his Jewish peers.

Before 1948, Haifa's population was roughly 20 per cent Jewish. Many families had been there generations, others joining the slowly growing population in the 1920's and 1930's. During the Nakbah more than eighty per cent of Haifa's Arab population were driven from the verdant hillside, the coastal city and the surrounding villages. Winding above the world famous Baha'i gardens is a street lined in some places with Jewish villas in others the cement apartments of the poorer Arab inhabitants. The road is called Ben Gurion. It was here that in 1948 hundreds of Arab families were fenced in by the invading Jewish terrorists. They were told that if they set foot out of the cordon they would be shot. Today the fences are gone, but the social and economic divisions remain. Haifa is now an 80 per cent Jewish city.

Jowan a twenty something musician whose parents are '48ers' deals with young Arabs who struggle today with a confused identity. For the grandchildren of Palestinians who did not flee during the Nakbah, are rejected by the Arab world. Their passports tell the world they are "Israeli's" they will not find work in Arab nations easily with that. Jowan tells us that to compound this problem, there are many university courses and jobs that are closed to them at home. Bio chemistry, atomic research, yes, it's funny to even imagine a Native Palestinian of the highest talents getting a job in those industries within Israel. More, acting, radio broadcasting on Israeli channels, limited to non existant says Jowan. Their is not a glass ceiling here but a religious ceiling, jobs for Jews is a social policy enacted by corporations both big and small, segregating the Native minority, maintaining Jewish dominance in the economy and politics.

Jowan was unlike any Palestinian I have met before in my journeys in the West Bank, Gaza and refugee camps in Jordan. He is Westernized, cooller (by which I mean less open, the 'chai and chat' friendliness of his peers the other side of the check points, removed by the society around him into which he must blend to survive. 

Drugs he says are a problem for young Native Palestinians. Fuelled by frustration. I remember earlier in the day, outside the sparking Arab school in Nazareth the plump teenage boy, who seeing my blonde self and my equally blonde, Swedish companion walking in the sunshine, ran over to us.

'You want drugs?' he shouted up at me excitedly.

Why would you ask that I wondered aloud?

'Because drugs are good' he shouted, making his friends laugh. Behind us in the school car park a fist fight broke out amongst two other boys. It was serious, ending up in a punching bundle on the ground, cheered on by dozens.

It is all too easy to forget the 48'ers, the persecutions they suffer, the growing fear of 'transportation from this, their land of 'milk and honey.'

Occupied Palestine, a child's journey. Day one.

I was nervous. We all were. The other crossings into Occupied Palestine aka Israel, that I have negotiated in the past, have ended either with outright failure, several hours interrogation, or merely a day of humiliation and misery alongside Palestinians whose treatment was always inhumane. Yesterday morning, we left Amman, Jordan, for a crossing into Israel that is known to be tourist friendly. This means that whilst Palestinians wishing to go home are shunted to the hellhole that is the Allenby crossing, Israel's tourists, go through, the more polite version further North. Here at Sheikh Hussein the barbed wire and the guns are not in evidence. All but myself were waved through in minutes rather than hours. Incredible! However, my passport with its Gaza Port stamp, it's rejections for exit marked, 'Rafah crossing', and numerous stamps bearing the legend 'PA authrority' drew giggles from the child at the passport window. The file on me that came up on their computer, drew tuts and much head shaking. There was on the other side of the passport window, something of a sense of anticipation.  A young man,  GI baldness, bull chested, wide legged (clearly watching American action movies is part of their border training programme), urged me in a low hiss to step away from my bags, to take a seat alone on plastic chairs at the end of the hall. I sat there, with the sole ex pat Palestinian man in for the same, no,  certainly worse treatment. The young guy, tall, dressed in Eurozone pony tail, had an American accent. He was on his way to visit his mother in the West Bank, and had been asked by the pretty girl at the passport window for his mothers mobile number. He had provided this and was now waiting, waiting. Checks were being made into his 'story'. I was asked my father and my grandfather's name, as Alex cycled around the empty arrivals hall. I tried not to communicate my anxiety.
‘Come onnnn Mu-um, the others are going, give me your passport and let’s go!’  
‘I don’t have it. They want to ask me a few questions, won’t  take long.’
They didn’t and it didn’t. Passport handed back to me, a paper stamped with a visa to enter the Holy Land we are, for now, free to travel onwards. And, it seems that Israel's border authorities are on somthing of a PR alert post ‘Gaza’ and that this is almost as urgent in the current climate as their day to day security alert. Thus, the adulescents in their uniforms of white polo shirts and Fourth of July shades who man the Israeli arrivals gate, looked on our melee of bikes, backpacks and cheer with only half their usual sneer. Where we could have expected harrassment and questioning in months gone by, instead, we wheeled our bikes outside into the late afternoon sunshine of what had once been Palestine, I shuddered.
‘go on Mummy it’s okay to cry now’ soothed Alex ‘You’re here now, everything’s okay.’