An unwanted garden wall

New buildings line the main road, the only entrance, into Qualquilya centre. Partially completed, yellow villas with balconies and terraces, overlook what is left of the arable land. A huge Mosque lacks just the turqouise blue favoured for minorettes in this region. Our hosts, the twenty young cyclists whose year old club we have joined for this leg of the journey, show off as we enter the once wealthy city. Cars are no respecters of youthful exuberance, and what with bikes being such a rarity here, inevitably one of the boys is knocked flying by someone reversing into the flow of horn blaring traffic. He rolls twice and clutches his arm. He is quickly scooped into the support van and his bike strapped to the roof. He is wincing but it doesn't seem serious.

The city of Qalqilya, is in the northwest of the West Bank, situated about 12 km from the Mediterranean coast, on the border between Israel and the West Bank. The city covers approximately 3.5 km2, less than four kilometres. There are more people per square kilometre living cheek by jowl here, than anywhere else in the world. Yes - even Gaza. Qualuilya has the second highest unemployment rate in Palestine; twenty five per cent. The highest is in Khan Younis. Gaza's population continues to grow, whilst the populace here are leaving in such great numbers for other parts of the West Bank, where it is easier to trade and to move, that despite the average family consisting of more than five children, Qualqullya is dying. 

No town in the West Bank suffers more restrictions than this once thriving city of palm trees and flowering shrubs. The population is surrounded on all four sides by the wall, which separates them from their farmland and source of income. Nearby a large Israeli settlement plunders more essential resources. Worse still is the security which accompanies these structures, with dozens of checkpoints policing the town and nearby villages. Many of these serve no purpose at all, closing months after they appear, often in bizarre locations between Arabic villages.

Alex and I have cycled for thirty (of the days forty) kilometres, the final stretch being a blissful sweep of tree lined streets. We arrive at the building homes to the cycle/youth club, gratefully finding some shade for the first time in hours. Sweat on our backs, our hair, our hands. I join the others, wheeling my bike to the shed area when one of the teenage boys, Hamed, holds his hand up stopping me in my tracks. He puts his fingers on my handlebars and leans forward gently unclipping my helmet. Another lad does the same to Alexandra. The significance of this is moving, we are in their home town and they want to take care of us. We will want for nothing, says this symbolic gesture, we are 'home'.

Alexandra plays table tennis in the recreation room, whilst the adult cyclists drink oceans of fanta and coke. Coca cola is massive in Palestine. The boycott and divestment campaign that is catching light in Europe and beyond, which it is hoped will punish Israel into reassessing its murderous policies, has yet to catch on here. There is no economic anger towards the US, despite her support for the 'scurity' fence, the closures, the bombing of Gaza. Besides, says one of the boys through a translater, 'coke is so good cold, we could never stick to not buying it, bombs or no bombs.'

Back on the bikes we trundle through more beautiful streets, the suburbs of the wealthy, until we reach, the Wall.

Mr Nabil, his mother, his wife, and their children, once upon a time, bought of a plot of land on which to build a beautiful villa. The courtyard he created, still has the only roses I have noticed so far on our journey, flourishing against the white stone of the metre thick walls. When he bought the land, it overlooked sweeping hills and valleys. The land included a citrus orchard, fig tress and a grassy plain for grazing animals. On balmy summer evenings (Qualquilya is humid most of the year round), the children would play in the vast garden, and he and his wife would sit sipping sweet mint tea in the cooling breeze.

Then Israel forcibly took over all but ten metres of the land from his front gate, and they built an eight metre wall along it, stretching, unendingly from left to right, scarring the land. It is a disaster to the environment of Qualquilya. In the winter months when the rains come, rather than the water being sucked up evenly across the land to feed the crops for the dry months to come, it now settles in murky, rotten, lakes, flooding great sections of the area, including Mr Nabil's home. The Wall has cut off the natural drainage. It doesn't just rise high into the air, it plunges metres beneath the earth too, supposedly to stop terrorists from digging their way out of this illegal prison. Whatever the true reason, in building it Israeli authorities have damaged essential drainage systems, Sewage pipes, and water access for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. 

In sweat pants and sandals, smoking heavily, the villa owner explains that the few trees left are 'rotting from the roots up.' The rainy season leaves mud deep in the earth, the flora and fauna here can't cope. 

I stand by this man's front gate and look at the monstrosity in stone that blocks his family, this city, this region, from the rolling hills of figs and citrus trees, from the coastal glory of Jaff and Haifa. There is a clenching in my chest. Tears prick my eyes. Sometimes it is the scarring of the land that makes you weep here. It is hard not imagine my own lovely garden which rolls into the French countryside, being massacred, brutalised by an invaders wall. What would I feel in the summer evenings sitting beneath cameras and watchtowers? What effect would it have on my daughters to suddenly have their joyful rolling and running games cut apart, limited to a few metres, under the gloom of such a hateful mass of gravel and occupation?

I don't cry. 

I want to cry.

I won't cry.

The Nabil women stand in the gateway that leads to the courtyard in which they are now forced to sweat away the years, in suppressive heat and isolation. Pretty women in traditional Jalabyia robes, these ladies are Palestinian Bourgeousie. Able to afford the best traditional hand stiched clothes. Unable to escape the impact of this occupation, suffering alongside their poorer neighbours. Israeli occupation, like death, is a great leveller.

The women bring out plastic chairs for us to sit on and they reminisce about the smell of Bourganville, about cool breezes, gushing inland, irrigating Palestine from sea to sea. 

Gone.

A lone horse, hip jutting alarmingly, is tied to a wooden pole, in the middle of the only scrub grass that can now take the baking sun of Summer and the flooding rains of winter. A climage magnified a thousand fold by the ecologically disastrous Wall.

We continue our tour of the wall, cycling to Jal Julia street in the village of the same name. Seven years ago, this was a vibrant market town that sold vegetables, flowers, bread, cheese 'everything' says our local guide. Israeli settlers and those from towns near the borders would come here to save money on high class produce. 

Now it's a dust bowl beneath another section of the Apartheid 'fence'. Nothing for sale. Nobody comes here. International visitors have scrawled messages of anger on the Wall.

"Apartheid is Fascism' says one

'Zionism = Nazis' another, next to a five foot high series of spray painted Palestinian flags.

   

Settlements and road blocks

                                             An Israeli road block outside Nablus

Fifteen minutes cycling from Nablus and a barrier erected by the IDF is before us. This has been erected to disrupt Palestinian traffic flow between the major cities of Nablus and Qualquilya. It is also here so that armed police can monitor who uses the roads nearest to the settlements littering the landscape. Stone blocks and rubble make the road impassable to vehicles. Our laready over laden support van, must go perilously down a bracken strewn verge then attempt to climb an even steeper incline to the road on the other side. Our cyclists, steer their way through the obstruction. From this point on, until the suburbs of Nablus, Alex will ride in the van for safety. This is Jewish bandit country, not even children are safe on the roads or in the fields here.

The olive grove that the van must detour into, is sheltering a Palestinian farming family. In the mid morning heat, they share bread and water, sheltered by the trees, whose fruit has been their income for generations. 

No sooner have the Q boys and our team crossed the obstruction point, an Israeli police car winds its way down the twisting road towards us. A collective breath is silently held. 100 m ahead is a left hand turn into a settlement, the signs are once again in three languages; Hebrew, English and finally Arabic. The police give us the once over and drive away. It has been a short but steep climb, the cyclists pause in order to close ranks, if one person is somehow left it could be dangerous for them here. Suddenly a grey car turns towards the settlement road on our left. The driver has the curls of a settler, he takes an instant dislike to the dark skinned, local boys. Leans out of his window and demands 'where are you from? What are you doing here?' All the boys speak enough Hebrew to understand and respond. Palestinian children are used to being interrogated in that language, it's just daily life for them. Their body language is alert, but not aggressive. They are watching our for one another. They must not react with even a raised voice no matter what the settler says to them, to do so will mean arrest in minutes. And what that leads to I have no space here to write. But it ain't good.

'Qualquilya' repeats the settler 'Qualquilya.' He drives ten metres then stops, leans out of the car and stares back at their line. Another ten metres and he begins to do a u-turn. Trouble.

It is not uncommon for young Palestinians to be attacked by adult settlers, driven off the roads, stoned, verbally abused. I am filming, from the van as the settler heads back towards the boys he spots the van, sees 'white' faces and the camera and stops. Settlers hate video cameras. He drives away doubtless to inform his comrades of our presence. 

Meanwhile, Alex is curled up at my feet, she refuses to get up. We have been in Palestine nearly a week and she has been met with love and friendship until now. Until the settlements.

The next Arab village is Funduk, a donkey cart, the first I have seen trundles past us. Funduk is a farming shanty village that is surrounded by 13 settlements. Sheep, hot and stained, clanging bells, sweep amongst us. It is time for a mid morning pause. We stop and eat fresh dates from crates, handed out by the boys from Qualquilya. We are in a garden centre whose Arcacia trees drip brown seed pods, called Haroub. A dry, crunchy version of peas that donkeys and goats go mad for. 

Hamsa, 18, plays Arabic pop on his mobile phone ( a better phone than mine by a long chalk). Three bikes are damaged and undergo repairs by the road side. Brakes are coming unhinged on the bumpy downhill slopes. Lord knows how many punctures we have had so far. Most of them having happened to Simon, from London, whose bike has given him nothing but grief since Amman. The Q captain and men from Peace Cycle exchange skills and equipment freely until the job is done in double time.

The winding countryside is behind us for now. What lies ahead into Qualquilya is a wide, nearly new motorway, a shared on this, used by both local Palestinians, settlers, Israeli police and soldiers. Quamre Shalom, is a vast settlement on our left (I need to check the exact name as I've lost my map, but will amend any fault soon). We are in a new world of barbed, wire, watchtowers, or razor wire and electric fences. The cycling is blissfully flat or gently downhill, it's the happiest section we slower riders have enjoyed. Pity about the looming concentration camps that Jewish settlers have chosen to cage themself into. It really strikes me forcefully being out in the open right next to them how strange it is that anyone seeking 'security' or 'freedom' much less 'peace' should choose to live on stolen land in armed cages. We are monitored by cameras, as we glide pass the mile on mile of fences seperating the 'them' from the 'us' of this scarred land. Cars beep us, some in salute to our Peace cycle dayglo vests, some irritated at our being on the road at all. At the Nablus checkpoint we use, two bored young soldiers lull, talking into their mobile phones. They are, it seems, not on high alert for so called 'terror' attacks. So why are they here at all I wonder?

Yousef, the lead cyclists has us all pull over to the sandy side of the road. Hamed, one of the Q boys comes over to me and stamps his foot, back erect, beaming smile in place 'Now Qualquilya' he says 'Welcome Home.'

Having had very low expectations of what this city, entirely circled by Israel's Apartheid wall, would look like, I am pleasantly gob smacked, by the prettiness of Qualquilya. 

But for for all its loveliness and suburban investment Qualquilya is dying, being strangled by the wall. It's population peaked at over 150,000 a decade ago. It is now less than half that despite a booming birth rate. 

More later got to go.

Al Farah to Nablus. Boys in the Ude.

15/10/09

Al Farah Refugee Camp to Nablus

The Qualquilya boys, are interspersed with our group, on the gritty roads we now encounter. The roads have been far better than I had expected, or remembered. International guilt money reaches the Palestinian Authority for such things. It's the big questions that remain unanswered, like why can't we have a state or when will this illegal occupation end?

The lads are strictly ruled by their captain ‘the best bodybuilder in the area’ Yousef. He barks orders at them, not afraid to shove them into line with his tree trunk arms when necessary. The boys clearly respect and like him. Yousef is in his thirties and almost as squat as he is tall. Alex has become their team mascot as well as a surrogate little sister to them all. Her ability to cycle at their pace, and on most days, as far they can, drawing admiring chuckles. If she never gets hugged and squeezed again in her life, she will still have had her quota.

The lads are brimming with teenage energy. They hold hands with one another, stroll with arms about one another's shoulders, with a lack of self consciousness.  their is so little time to chat to them and the language barrier is a problem. They are dying to talk to us, flap their hands at me, bite their lips, blurt out bursts of Arabic, but the best we can secure from one another is that I have two children and that they are all under twenty years old. Despite their hard lives they utterly lack the angst of their western peers. This surely has a lot to do with the absence of alcohol in their society. This part of Palestine is an alcohol free zone. Areas with Christian  communities and some kind of tourism trade, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nazareth, are where alcohol and (I hear) Hashish cross the border freely. But in these rural areas lads in their late teens have energy to burn, free from hangovers.  The entire team are, in short, adorable. Despite this some of our more 'serious' cyclists feel their own cycling agenda has somehow been interfered with. Very different road rules exist here, for example you do NOT speed down hills no matter how hard this makes the inevitable vertical climb up the next one. This is to save injury as loose grit and chunks of stone littering the roads can lead to nasty injuries at speed.

I am in the van once again, the first, stretch of vertical tarmac doing for me before the camp is even out of sight. At the tiny town of Wadu Al Baden, an elderly man rushes over as the group gulp down water and look, unsuccessfully for shade.

‘Thank you for coming’ he says handing out free canned drinks. Vans go past beeping and local workers yell ‘welcome to our country’ at our two wheeled convoy.

Around a bend in the sweeping, endlessly climbing route, suddenly water is pouring from everywhere at once. A series of stalls are attached to a moss grown mountain cliff. From sandy verges we have entered a hillside oasis, we are in Valley Al Badan. A village of natural springs that gush randomly from holes in  the mountainside. Between cascades, basket stalls dominate the kerbside. The small bend, which is also the towns main street,  is full of locals, chatting, eating ice creams, enjoying their lunchtime. The arrival of twenty local lads and almost as many foreigners on bikes doesn’t seem to throw them in the slightest. They are mutely friendly, curious and then it happens. Inevitably, one of the qualquilya boys spots a drum hanging with others from the farthest stall, unhooks it without a thought and starts to pass his forefinger and thumb over its skin. 

‘Oorah!’ goes the cry. The beat is mesmeric, a treat that intensifies the lush green branches, reminding us where we are and who we are with, a religious region, under Occupation, with a rich heritage, and an inspirational younger generation. So, the boys begin to dance, hips twisting this way and that, arms twirling. A big circle forms, with people going in two at a time. Alex’s hand is grabbed in the melee, she is shy and tries to resist but soon she and I and the wonderful elder statewoman of far flung travel, Janet, are doing the Arabic jive to claps and cheers. It’s so much fun, another drum is taken down, the oweners don’t seem to mind in the least, and the drumbeat swells, the laughter builds, we are having such a good time, the bikes are forgotten. One of the Mohammed’s (there are four), gives the old Bedoin style yodel, flicking his tongue from side to side against his lips. Others join in, a joyous, aromatic sound is growing, growing.Suddenly, it’s over, the captain of the team has shouted ‘yulla’ and the boys hang up their drums. It’s time to head off.

A small way on, roadworks make it too dusty to be wise to continue, so students and a professor from Al Najah university come to take our bikes and most of the cyclists past the problem. Unknown to me, Alex has twice come off her bike behind the van and is being walked up the final terrible slope. She is helped by our guide from the Sirraj centre, Rafaa and a fellow cyclist from Canada, Methear. The sun is pounding down, as the lads pull in at last, then at last Alex appears and I rush over to take her bike and help her. She bites her lip and shakes her head insisting on wheeling it right up to the van. She really is incredible.

Alex and I part climb and are part hauled onto the open backed van with the Q boys, Martin, Kevin, Simon and Anne. Two of the boys are standing up dancing about, shouts begin at first ‘Taqbir’ ‘Allah Akbhar’ then ‘Free Free Palestine, Free Free Palestine..’ Their energy is entirely infectious, Simon is grinning from ear to ear; ‘to be here..’ he motions to the olive dotted hills, ‘with young Palestinians singing about their freedom, I mean life just does not get better’n this does it?

NABLUS

 

October is olive picking season around Nablus and across Palestine. A timeless tradition, now obstructed, made ever more dangerous, by the presence of the Jewish extremists, known as ‘settlers.’ Despite Obama's 'Peace' prize the number of these violent psychopaths and economic migrants, (happy to live on stolen land and to protect it with guns) continue to swell.

The loathing these religious zealots have for the indigenous Palestinians knows no bounds. There are 40 settlements around Nablus alone. The settlers here are known for their violence. Attacks on Palestinian villagers are common, aided and abetted by the Jewish extremists, very own private army, aka;  the IDF. Protected also by a government that no longer even bothers to deny its allegiance to their project of creating a ‘greater Israel’. This project has never recognised the so called “Oslo’ agreement,  nor the laughable 'green line' whose border through historic Palestine was supposed to allow the Arab population who remained a generous 22 per cent of their own land. The Apartheid wall has already stolen half of that land too. But more of that later.

 This year hundreds of dunums of agricultural land, of olive groves, the main produce here, have been razed to the ground in a series of settler arson attacks. The farmers whose trees remained unharmed must plead their case for harvesting access to their own lands with the Israeli authorities. Should ‘co ordination’ be given for this, the permits to do so allow the men a mere two to three days to harvest their own crops. At the end of these visas they are once again denied access to their agricultural land. Too little time, postponement until the crops are past their best.  And local farmers fail to make the money from their crops that they rely on to feed their families.

I re join the cyclists for the (downhill) slope into Nablus, and the steep final climb to Al Najar universities new campus. I was here three years ago, when times were bad, incursions, nightly, right into the old town, and a curfew in place. 56 students have been killed by the IDF. Some in the campus dorms. 

But things are a bit better this time. Despite the fact that there are more than one hundred checkpoints surrounding Nablus and its villages, in the past five months, students report that these have been easier to cross. I meet ‘Noor’ and her friends, a twenty one year old English student. She reports that this morning has been bad for her student colleagues.Noor, is not in a hijab, there is no dress policy nor religious code of conduct here, jeans, flowing hair, ipods and iphones, the stuff of modern universities worldwide are clearly in evidence. What is different from say Uk campus’s is the lack of a ‘bar’ and the smiling, happpy, connectedness of the students to eachother, their teachers and now to us, strangers who are greeted with handshakes and in Alex’s case sweets and fizzy drinks, hugs and warm coos of ‘ soo cuutte’ as she is carried along on the shoulders of a Palestinian cyclist. 

Dozens of whom were kept waiting for more than an hour at the main Nablus checkpoint without a reason, as soldiers ‘checked’ their ID. 

‘They do this so we miss our lectures. To make us fall behind, to stop us succeeding.’ she says, over hot chai with a professor from the faculty.

‘But this is neverthless a very good year’ he says ‘no one has been killed in Nablus (by the occupying forces)’. 

Back in the canteen, the professor is stunned to learn that several Nablus residents have as it turns out been killed by the IDF over the previous year. The students who have joined us say one name and search for another of a civilian who was shot at a checkpoint, whose name is already forgotten. The professor is visibly shocked.

‘Here in Nablus we used to care when someone was killed, remember their name, talk about it, hear it always on the news. Now...’ he sighs ‘now we are so used to it, we are immune..’

Alex is called over to sit with her fans from Qualquilya who call her ‘our little hero’ and hang on to her every word despite not speaking English. They talk over and over again about how she has kept up with them mile on mile, pace for pace. In fact coming into Nablus, she refused yet again to come into the van to rest and to have some shade when I called her to do so. Rafaa our guide from the Sirraj centre told me it was too dangerous for her to be on the roads. The fact that three of the boys had almost been knocked off their bikes in the space of five minutes told me all I needed to know on that score. In a motherly wave of protectiveness I got our van driver to pull over slightly ahead of Alex at the next lights, I dived towards the roadside grabbed Alex round the waist, bundling her inside while Rafaa grabbed her bike and put it on top of the van.

Alex was stunned into silence a moment then said

‘Mum that felt like I was being kidnapped’ shaking her head angrily at my over protective 'silliness'.

Al Najar has a highly renowned, brand new fine art department. Here students have their own shop, as swanky as the one at Tate Modern, where the best of their work is put on sale. Ceramics of all shapes, colours and sizes are on display, Tables with mosaic tops, sit beneath oil paintings. My favourite is a work of thick brush strokes, a vast market scene, perhaps from East Jerusalem. 

Music students present a traditional series of songs to our combined European/Qualquilya group. As a young man's hauntingly melodious voice rolls across the room, the lads clap and hail their respect. Once the tabla gets going they can't help themselves, in the corner (and to the fury of body builder Yusef, their trainer) dancing begins in earnest. Jumping around from leg to leg, laughing, scraping chairs back, two sides of Palestinian youth have forgotten their visitors altogether. The young man who leads the musicians shouts over to his poorer peers from the rural regions.  'You want this or this?' I guess he says. Their is no judgement from one side of the jubilant energy or the other, they are all brothers, they are all young, they are all Palestinian. 

And they love eachother. Checkpoints are forgotten. Palestine unites in music.

We tour the Old City of Nablus in a rush as dusk closes in. A bustling souk, cloaked in aromatic scents, turkish coffee with cardamom. Clothes hanging overhead in brown, red and green. Men and young boys wheel wooden carts through the narrow streets transporting their produce in an area where cars do not travel. Some of these carts have coffee or tea urns on them, a man in a fez shouts' Welcome,  chai?' Alex, for the first time is showing real tiredness. The pace of the cycle is hard for us both and Alex loves to be at the front. She starts to cry, one of the high points of the trip, a real, ancient, Palestinian market, no fun at all when her legs need rest and her little head, peace and quiet. We head quickly back to the hotel which is minutes from the souk, the call to prayer as aromatic as the cardamom in the air. Local women, carrying their own babies look at Alex with concern, clearly wishing to scoop up the overtired little girl and cover her in kisses. 

A local man with white hair, asks if I am Swedish, then walks alongside us. When I sniff the air beside a coffee grinding shop, he darts in and buys me a bag to take home. Then he dives into an ancient archway under the city where the souk has been held for hundreds of years and hands me a small bar of olive oil soap. 

'Thank you for coming to Palestine' he says, waving us off.

What he means is 'thank you for not forgetting Palestine.