Another Country

Danny Moran visits the Occupied Territories to see first hand the humanity behind the headlines

War tours, terror tourism, holidays in other peoples' misery … call them what you will, I was naturally sceptical about the prospect of an 11 day holiday in the occupied Palestinian territories. I'd been to the West Bank before: in 2002 I reported for City Life on the activities of a group of Mancunian peace activists in the Northern town of Nablus. Three years on, the opportunity to go back was extremely tempting - but on holiday?

My tour was arranged by Olive Co-op, a Manchester-based group who say their aim is to "introduce people to life on both sides of the conflict". Olive organise a range of tours to a variety of destinations: tours of the Holy Land, plus a host of other excursions to Nablus, Hebron, Dier Yassin and elsewhere.

Our first port of call was Beit Sahour, a small Palestinian town about a kilometre to the east of Bethlehem. Having attracted the attentions of the enthusiastic security personnel and missed my pickup, I took a taxi from the airport straight to the Bethlehem checkpoint. The landscape as I looked out of my window was a heat rash of a red rock, tobacco smears of gorse and lush olive groves. I was dropped at a rubble-ragged strip manned by a lone soldier.

"Why would you want to go there?" he asked me, when I asked if I could pass.

Beit Sahour is the site of the biblical Shepherd's Field. Ten minutes up the hill from the hotel is Manger Square. I took a walk up there to see the Church of the Nativity. For 20 Shekels (£3) a guide showed me around - everything from the manger to the machine gun damage dating back to the 2002 siege.

The place was deserted. Another guide told me he hadn't shown anyone around for six days. I could well believe it. I sat down outside and wrote a postcard to my six-year-old stepdaughter as the shadows lengthened in the square. Bethlehem is five minutes by car from the teeming whirlwind of Jerusalem, but to get to it you have to cross a checkpoint into the West Bank - and people, generally, don't.

Our guide in Beit Sahour was a gangly, baseball-capped guy called Samer. He took us to nearby Beit Jala, a small town cut in two by one of the Israelis' settler roads, which Palestinians are forbidden to use. The un-crossable highway means that a two minute walk across town can now take half an hour or more. The West Bank is a tightening grid of such roads.

We visited Deheishe refugee camp, a tumbling square kilometre of garbage, twisted iron and cavity-pocked cement cells which is home to some 12,000 people. The population there are the former inhabitants and their descendents of 46 villages sited to the west of Jerusalem (eight kilometres away) and Hebron, who fled in the wake of the 1948 war.

Everywhere we went, we encountered the same hospitality.

"Hello, where are you from? You are welcome. Please, come in to my home and have some tea …"

We'd go into these houses and be plied with Lipton's tea and Arabic coffee, and be asked about our homes and our families and Tony Blair (not a popular guy hereabouts). And then we would return the questions and invariably be told the most incredible tales. It's rare, in Palestine, to meet someone who hasn't suffered directly as a consequence of the occupation, whether through death, injury, imprisonment, unemployment, harassment or the terrorisation of their children.

Still, I was sometimes wary. Were we really welcome? Should I be here? Is everyone being upfront with me?

It's a valid question.

In Jerusalem we took a drive out to see the settlements to the east of the city. Our guide was a woman called Angela Godfrey from ICAHD - the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. The group monitors the appropriation of Palestinian property and land. When foreign diplomats come to Israel for a reccie, it's often Angela who does the guided tour.

We spent the final week in Nablus. Two years ago, as the town endured over a hundred days of curfew in the aftermath of the April incursions, I walked as a foreign national the deserted streets as scores of kites sailed defiantly in the skies overhead.

The town is famous for its soap factories, goldsmiths, the sites of Jacob's Well and Joseph's Tomb. It lies about 50 kilometres to the North of Jerusalem, between the mountains of Jerzeem and Ibal. The region is Samaria. To get there - this time, as last - we had to leave the roads and hike over the hills, avoiding checkpoints and patrols. I'm just guessing, but I reckon it's a fair bet ABTA don't approve of this sort of thing.

We stayed at the town's excellent Al Yasmeen Hotel. Each day, according to whether the curfew was in place, our guide Qusay would pick us up and take us to visit one of the town's various grassroots initiatives: the MCRC (Multipurpose Community Resource Centre), which is the lone community centre in Nablus's deprived old town, the Project Hope centre, which brings together foreign nationals and Palestinians to collaborate in art, drama and language classes. And the Yafa centre, which caters to the chronically disaffected youth of the notorious Balata Refugee Camp.

We walked the alleyways of the old town with Naseer Arafat, a conservational architect. Naseer supervises local rebuilding projects after buildings are damaged and destroyed by tank shellings and house demolitions. He trained in York. Naseer believes the town's heritage sites are deliberately targeted by the military in an attempt to destroy its identity.

In the tiny courtyard outside his office, Naseer had a collection of old front doors. He explained that, during searches, as the army's usual method of gaining entry for house searches is to blow up the front door (and there are few houses which have not been entered in this way) traditional wooden doors are rapidly disappearing, invariably to be replaced by steel security doors which can be knocked up comparatively cheaply. (Naseer, incidentally, asked me to acknowledge the assistance of Britain's Barakat Trust in his work.)

The smell of fuul (the traditional dip made from beans, peppers, olive oil and garlic). The bustle of the souk. The call to prayer, drifting upwards like thick perfume. Blackouts, sirens, checkpoints, tanks … The experience of visiting Palestine helped me to better understand what conflict is, what history is, and what occupation and oppression do to ordinary people and their families, far beyond the headlines about assassinations or suicide bombings.

But it also told me a lot about human nature, and how affirming it can be. And about the dignity and warmth of Arab hospitality. 'Where are you from? You are welcome! Please tell people in Manchester what you have seen here.'

I would recommend anyone to go.