we went to some very interesting places and met some great people and I learnt a lot’ and ‘Anan is a high quality tour guide! As a local boy he had his finger on the pulse and was able to introduce us to lots of interesting people and places as well as who and where to avoid, which was especially important as things kicked off in Gaza while we were there and some form of repercussions were expected in the West Bank. Our safety and feelings of security were top of Anan’s priorities.

extremely good in terms of the quality of the tour guides and the range of meetings organized.

Unforgettable. This was my fourth visit to the West Bank, and the most interesting.

Excellent. Wonderful group, very professional work of Jo on the ground. Most instructive experience, especially touching in Nablus.

first hand contact with daily life in Palestine under occupation and the opportunity to meet and listen to Palestinian people and Israeli activists working for a fair and peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue.

Excellent. Everything was nicely friendly, thoughtful, informal and helpful. It was informative and surprising throughout. Meetings with a good range of people, and good variety of places for a week. I learned a great deal from people and places. I thought the ‘political’ tour of Jerusalem area was outstanding.

The tour was fantastic. Extremely informative and diverse programme. Very well organised and smooth running. And a wonderful, learned and sensitive Olive tour guide!

It was really good, fully lived up to (and often exceeded) my expectations, well done!!

Being part of an Olive tour allowed me to go places, meet people and experience things that I would not have felt comfortable doing - or even considered doing - on my own. Olive’s track record made me feel safe - not just in terms of physical safety but knowing I was being considered as an individual: I felt looked after, not treated like a customer.

We were attracted to Olive Co-operative’s tours because they let us do four things - discover the country and its inhabitants, go to solidarity meetings with organised social or political groups, visit Palestine and visit Israel. Most of the other tours we’d heard about only focused on one or two of these things. Everything was great. Thank you!

I am Jew but had never visited Israel before and for a first stay I wanted to discover at least a part of Israeli country and society - our trip prepared me for my second week, that I spent alone in Israël. But we stayed mainly in Palestine and I was very satisfied with this, which permitted us to discover not only the political situation but also the daily life of Palestinians and their country. I also appreciated that the schedule of the group was not too strict and that we had times of liberty.

I can’t think of a better way for someone with limited time to visit Palestine and receive such a comprehensive experience of the current situation.

Let’s say you want to visit your relatives a few miles away in the next town. Just get the family in the car and you’re there in no time -you hardly need to plan it. But hold on, this is to get from any village to another in the West Bank of occupied Palestine: you can’t go by car (if you have one) because of the roadblocks. You will need detailed current documents to permit you to move anywhere. You can’t tell when you will arrive because you don’t know how long you will be detained at checkpoints even when everything is in order. Your son cannot come because last month he was detained at a checkpoint without a pass, getting a 3 month prison sentence and £150 fine, another problem for you because since your land and olive groves were confiscated for the security wall, your only income is two dollars per person per day. Oh, and will there be a curfew where you’re going? You will be shot if caught breaking it, like your neighbour aged 60 was last month.

In various forms, and particularly intense now, this has been going on for almost 40 years. Three times in the last 50 years you’ve been moved off your land because an invading force has taken it. You look at the beautiful West Bank sky, sigh and think of leaving. But to where? And isn’t that exactly what the occupiers want? As one said ‘this is now our lives…’

However, the fact that Palestinians live in these throttling restrictions is not what most people see or hear about. For far too many, the Palestine/Israel ‘conflict’ is presented in a way that reinforces three perceptions:

• the ‘wall’ is necessary to guarantee security for Israel against ‘terrorism’
• Israel continually sues for peace while Palestine does not;
• Palestinians are undisciplined, untrustworthy and too incompetent to run their own affairs.

Having just got back from visiting the West Bank with a group investigating ways of offering support to ordinary Palestinians, we were able to explore for ourselves what was actually occurring there. We saw incontrovertible evidence of Israeli policy: an illegal military occupation maintained through roadblocks, check points, pass laws, arbitrary arrests, detentions, internal expulsions, and house demolitions with associated infrastructural damage. This occupation is designed to harass and frustrate Palestinians in their daily lives. It is the collective punishment of a whole people for those who choose to resist it.

The ’security wall’ itself, eventually 622 km long, with approx 190 km completed, is a combination of roads, razor wire, electronic fences and slabs of concrete 10 meters high, splitting communities. It is not built on the 1967 Green Line. 85% of it is on Palestinian land, at times up to 22 km into it, (UNOCHA) winding tortuously to confiscate immense amounts of land to ensure illegal settlements and water sources now become part of Israel. (UNOCHA) At Mas-ha, in the fertile Salfit area of the West Bank, for instance, the wall and its apparatus annexed 98% of village olive groves. Local Palestinians articulate their experience in a way that makes Israeli policy explicit: ’settlers have the right to kick the soldiers’. While Israel claims to be law-abiding to the international community, its whole policy towards Palestinians is evidence of the opposite: the settlers are virtually above the law while the illegal settlements expand the state, annex the land, and lead to dispersal of Palestinians. On the ground, what Palestinians face is stark: the brutal theft of their land.

The economic implications are immense: for Israel, the ‘wall’ costs $2.5 million dollars per km, totaling $3.4 billion (Head of Knesset Economics); for Palestinians, the effects are an unemployment rate of 60%, with 65% living on the poverty line less than $2 per person per day. The effect of the wall and occupation is to ’squeeze’ the Palestinians so they will leave. Almost 100,000 Palestinians are rapped between the ‘wall’ and the Green Line (UNOCHA) in what has become now Israeli land. In Qalqiliya around 20% of the population have left and in Hebron 30%.

In some camps, there are now families who have been ‘removed’ from their houses three times: in 1948, 1967, and again in 2003. As one man said to us: ‘I was born here and am struggling not to die here.’ Some days after we left this camp the IDF came and demolished 2 houses and the kindergarden.

As for Israel solely suing for peace, the vast majority of Palestinians we met wanted peace, justice and coexistence. They all challenged us to provide evidence that Israel wanted the same when their daily experience showed exactly the opposite. It is worth remembering that after the Oslo agreement, during Barak’s regime, the illegal settlements doubled and settlement building still continues. Having seen them, they are better described as fortresses, located on high ground, overseeing Palestinian villages, taking their water and dumping their waste. Many Palestinians say that because of the conditions in which they are forced to live, their children ‘have no childhood’. It is obvious that far from promoting security, the everyday effect of their policies is to create the conditions for resistance. Israel, above all needs to build trust. They could start by stopping the daily humiliation of Palestinians that we witnessed, ending their occupation now and stopping of settlements.

Some Israelis seem to think that the Palestinians are incompetent and unable to manage their own affairs. On the contrary, in spite of their incredibly daunting circumstances, we found much evidence of a people building economic confidence, tenacious durability, with many small groups involved in co-operatives. This was expressed as ‘development not relief’ and ’strategy not charity’ with a strong collective desire for financial independence. Examples of this (there are many) are Taybeh beer (Taybeh, Ramallah see www.taybehbeer.com) and Zaytoun olive oil, the best on the West Bank -and now available in the UK. (see www.zaytoun.co.uk) As they say, ‘in the way that the land always is strong, so are the people’. Palestine also has among the highest numbers of graduates for the region (1,400 per 100k). With their energy and intelligence we could only imagine what they could achieve in normal conditions.

However, at the rate of occupation-attrition, the continuing land confiscations and annexations, and the ’squeezing’ policy, there will not be enough Palestinians or land left for anything other than separated, unviable Bantustans. Israel needs to show by its actions that it is a serious partner for peace. For now, as one Palestinian villager said, showing us where the settlements roads, new highway and barriers walls were smashed right through his olive groves, ‘If they had enough water, even the olives would cry’. The world is now watching: The Jerusalem Post of 26 November carried this article on its front page ‘Boston suburb may become the first US city to divest from Israel’. More of us need to monitor, act, and ensure peace, justice and human rights for the Palestinians. If you have any doubts go and see for yourself.

(UNOCHA: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)

I’ll start by going straight into our visit and briefly describing Bethlehem itself. We stayed in a hotel in Beit Sahour, which is part of the city of Bethlehem, which is made up of three villages. It’s a beautiful, hilly place of white stone houses. Its lifeblood is tourism, but there are virtually no tourists, and it is like a ghost town. The only people in the hotel were peace activists. The owners of souvenir shops were pleading with us to come into their deserted shops and buy something. We were told that over 200 Christian families had left. There is a feeling of poverty and demoralisation, even though people are struggling to live as normal a life as they can.

The Israeli army has withdrawn from the central parts of Bethlehem, but it is in occupation all round the edges of the city. We saw several buildings occupied by soldiers. We paid a brief visit to the unfinished blocks of Wall near Rachel’s Tomb, a fortress encased in concrete. Behind the Wall was a security post and we saw soldiers looking at us in a menacing way, and our guide suggested we leave.

We had our introduction to olive-picking the day after our arrival. Olive-picking is very easy and enjoyable. It is all done by hand - the Palestinians say this is what makes their olive oil so good. It was hot weather, though not too hot, at the end of October, and it would all have been idyllic if it had not been for the sight of the settlements above us, on the high hills overlooking Bethlehem - in particular Har Homa, which is a huge white fortress. The settlements are like monsters sitting on the hilltops threatening to encroach ever nearer.

And also an electronic fence divided us from more fields filled with olive trees bursting with juicy olives which we longed to pick - but these fields were inaccessible, on land taken over by Israel. We were told the olives would probably just be left to rot. Beyond the fence was also a wide road along which an army jeep could be seen driving, and at one point we heard gunfire - we learnt later that this was “the Israeli army practising”.

The next day, we went on a march, with banners, to a confiscated field. The farmer had papers going back to Ottoman times, but had recently been told by the army that his field and olive trees no longer belonged to him but to the State of Israel. Cameramen from Palestinian TV and Reuters accompanied us. The field was under a new bypass road which is being built around Beit Jala, which is near Bethlehem. The elevated bypass road construction towered above us.

We began picking, until someone said the army was coming, and three 18-year-old kids appeared, dressed in Israeli army uniform and carrying large automatic guns. At first, they threatened to arrest us all if we carried on picking. They checked the ID cards of the Palestinians. Then they said the Palestinians had to leave but the internationals could stay and pick. Finally they said the internationals could stay in the field but not pick any olives. One of them tore down a Palestinian flag which someone had placed in a tree. With us were two South African black clergymen - a bishop and a reverend - and they entertained us with South African freedom songs and a freedom dance. It even made one of the soldiers smile.

The soldiers walked off down the road and sat in their jeep at the end of the road, watching us. We had to leave anyway, to go to a meeting, so we gathered up all the olives we had picked and put them into buckets and sacks. Then we left our banners in the road as a final act of protest. We learned that the farmer’s house is also threatened with demolition. There is a court case pending, but the farmer will probably lose his land and house, because Israel needs the land for the bypass road, which of course will be for settlers only and is an important part of the settlement road network.

We also went into Israel and had meetings with Israeli peace activists. One of these was Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the founder and Chair of Rabbis for Human Rights. He has been mobilising hundreds of Israelis to help with the Palestinian olive harvest. Someone asked him whether he thought Israel was central to Jewish life. He said he didn’t think Israel was central in the sense that Jewish life is more valid in Israel than in the Diaspora. He said he thought the importance of Israel to Jews is that this is the place where Jewish values face what he called “the reality test” - in Israel, Jews have been given power to create either a just society or an unjust society. He was asked if he thought Israel had failed the reality test. He said we don’t know yet - the test is still happening.

But it seems to me from my week on the West Bank that Israel has clearly failed the reality test and has created a situation of manifest injustice. I would like to stress that we were constantly told that, staying in Beit Sahour, we were seeing the best of the Occupation, and things were much worse in Nablus, in Hebron, in Jenin and of course in Gaza, where in one day during our visit 17 people were killed. We saw just a tiny fraction of what is happening all over the Occupied Territories, all day, every day, often on a much worse level.

We also met up with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, ICAHD, who took us on a tour of the settlements and Wall outside Jerusalem. We saw the Wall at Abu Dis, built to cut Palestinians off from East Jerusalem, their religious, cultural and economic centre. Abu Dis is intended by the Palestinians as the centre of their capital in East Jerusalem and several government offices have been constructed here, but the Wall goes right through the main street of Abu Dis. We saw the huge extent of the settlements, which are due to expand even further, creating a vast Greater Jerusalem area. These settlements form an important part of what Jeff Halper, founder and Chair of ICAHD, has dubbed “the Matrix of Control”.

What strikes one most, going round the West Bank, is the enormous network of settlements, settler bypass roads, bridges, tunnels, checkpoints, fences and walls which is disfiguring the beautiful biblical landscape. This network is not just ugly; it is there for a purpose: it is the Matrix of Control. In his recent book “Obstacles to Peace”, which I suggest you all read, Jeff Halper* argues that the indications are that the Israeli government aims at enclosing the Palestinians in three main enclaves: one in the north, centred round Nablus, one in the middle, centred round Ramallah and one in the south centred round Bethlehem and Hebron. Each bloc will be surrounded by a ring of settlements, the roads connected with the settlements and of course the Wall.

Jeff says Sharon and the Likud government think Israel has created a win-lose situation: Israel has won and the Palestinians have lost. Israel will gain the whole land, with the Palestinians corralled into what can only be called bantustans (even if Sharon calls this a “state”.) But, as Jeff points out, this is actually a lose-lose situation, because Israel loses too. There are several reasons for this - here are just a few: 1) Terrorism will increase; the Wall does not stop terrorism, as has often been claimed; the situation will only inflame support for terrorism and the terrorists will get through. 2) The international community will not stand for this injustice, in what can only be called an apartheid situation and will mobilise against it as it mobilised against apartheid. Already Israel has become a pariah state. Is this what we want for Israel? 3) Quite simply, as I’ve said, it is unjust and it represents the defeat and failure of Zionism and the Jewish ethical tradition. Israel has failed the reality test.

So I believe Jews should speak out and try to persuade Israel into adopting a win-win policy, by which both Israelis and Palestinians win; because Israel cannot win unless the Palestinians also win.

Tuesday

More olive picking. I enjoyed climbing the trees - something I never did as a child! This was followed by a musical evening with a wonderful Palestinian ensemble. I ended up belly dancing in front of the group!

Wednesday - Windows, Tel Aviv/Jaffa

Went to Tel Aviv to meet Windows, a Jewish/Palestinian group where they think it’s very important to work with the Jewish community and gave some tips for doing so back home. After that, we decided to go to Jaffa and saw where homes had been demolished in 1948 to stop Arabs from returning there. It is still a wasteland.

Thursday - Settlers/Ramallah

Another woman on the tour went olive picking to a field which, it turned out, had been confiscated four years ago. On arriving, they discovered that the trees were dead - possibly poisoned by settlers. Next thing, some armed settlers turned up and started to throw stones at them! The soldiers were supposed to be protecting the internationals and got them to sit in a circle, but pointed guns at them! Meanwhile, I’d skived off to Ramallah with a few others. Didn’t have too much trouble at Qalandia checkpoint. There is rubble everywhere, I think from where the Israelis had destroyed much if it. Went to Bir Zeit university and managed to get a meeting with someone who deals with the media. Ironically, this was the day Arafat got taken into hospital. We tried to get a look at his compound, which was surrounded by press cars. On the way back, we spent a bit of time in Jerusalem. I wailed at the Wall … well, almost!

Friday - Rabbis for Human Rights/ICAHD, Jerusalem to Abu Dis

Met Rabbi Arik Asherman of Rabbis for Human Rights, but he didn’t have much time. Unfortunately, he is not against the Wall or checkpoints, but he is getting quite a bit of support from the ‘mainstream’ Jewish community in the US and does wonderful work. After lunch, we had a Settlements and Wall tour of East Jerusalem, with ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions). We then went to Abu Dis, which has been divided in half by the Wall, separating families. If this is not apartheid, I don’t know what is!

Saturday - Jericho

My day off. I ’skived’ off olive picking and went to Jericho with my Lebanese friend as I wanted to see more of the West Bank. Today was a much needed break from the upsetting situation. Apart from a few checkpoints on the way, you can forget about the occupation. The route through the Judean desert was fascinating and Jericho itself is a lush oasis and the oldest and lowest city on earth. We then attempted to go to the Dead Sea but it was fenced off. The driver said we couldn’t get through the checkpoint because he’s Palestinian. So, Palestinians can’t visit the Dead Sea.
In the evening, went to an awards ceremony and performance given by the children of the Refugee camp. Wonderful dancing. Awards were given to their swimming team! It’s humbling to see what they can achieve despite the conditions they live in.

Sunday - Hebron

When we finally got to the old city of Hebron, we waited outside for ages before we were allowed in. The soldier thought we were mad as it’s dangerous, though he thought the danger came from Palestinians, whereas we were worried about the armed settlers. The place is so unreal, it could be a film set from a Western. It’s like one of those Wild West, ghost towns, the odd Settler strutting around like a cowboy. Soldiers were everywhere and some homes were occupied by them. The Palestinians were mostly hiding away in their homes. All but two of the shops were closed, and those two may have opened specially for us. The shop walls were daubed by Settlers with Star of Davids, reminiscent of Nazi Germany. We went to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. We went through the Jewish part and could see through to the Muslim bit. Met the settler who is trying to get French Jews to come to Israel and is proud that he is an obstacle to peace! A mad New York Jew, who thankfully was only a tourist, thinks that the Arabs arrived in 1948, before which, only the British lived there …! Inside the souk, there were a few market stalls. Above were nets to catch the rubbish that the settlers drop on them.

Monday - interrogation/home

I had been told by some not to lie, and when questioned at Ben Gurion, said I’d been to Bethlehem and Jericho. I had not worked out my homeward story very well and ended up getting interrogated and searched for two hours! I was actually bemused by the whole thing, especially the way they kept putting my sun cream through the machine and put a detector on my cotton buds! I was not intimidated or anxious, possibly as I was too tired to care. I think my laid back manner gave them less cause to suspect me, though they were concerned that a Palestinian had planted a bomb on me. They did find my political stuff in my back pack and were obviously suspicious of my intentions by then, but only questioned me about my Windows brochure and Beir Zeit info sheet. Having not told them I went to Ramallah, I said I couldn’t remember how I had it and that perhaps the guide had given it to me … Still, one wonders if they went off and did some research on me … There ended up being no room on my flight so I was put on a different one, which luckily meant I could travel back with my friend!

London based Jewish comedian Ivor Dembina went to Israel and the West Bank where he performed his solo stand-up show about Israel, Palestine and the Jews. The show, entitled ‘This is Not a Subject for Comedy’ is a comedic account of a previous visit of his as a peace observer to the region and includes his own personal responses as a UK Jew to the Israeli Occupation.

I have often used Tel Aviv airport so I’m used to stringent questioning by Israel’s police but this is the first time I’ve been subjected to a four hour search and interrogation. Somehow my name had turned up on a list of ‘known radicals’ and my Israeli interrogator wants the names of others to whom I’m connected’. Fortunately I am well prepared for the grilling so it only seems fair to warn people in the local Conservative party they might soon be receiving a visit from Mossad.

The connection the guy was trying to establish was between me and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The ISM is a group that arranges for international peace activists to go into the Occupied Territories. The trouble with the ISM people, as far as Israel is concerned is that they have an inconvenient habit of returning home after their stay and telling the world about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

Israel has tried to discredit ISM by suggesting it’s a terrorist organisation and says it’s the organization’s own fault that one of its volunteers got bulldozed to death by an Israeli while she tried to prevent a house demolition and another got fatally shot by an Israeli solider for the heinous crime of trying to help a child across the road. The point is ISM is an organisation Israel hates. ISM and Jews like me who speak out publicly against the Occupation; I haven’t even mentioned the word Arab and you begin to get the idea.

Still, time to get some laughs. Opening night in Bethlehem, an area certainly within the Occupied Territories though largely administered by Palestinians; the kind of place Palestinians say Israelis only come into if they want to kill someone. The theatre is full; a mixture of Muslim and Christian Palestinians and a sprinkling of Internationals. ‘If,’ I declaim ‘Jewish humour is a response to generations of oppression, does that mean when we Jews are no longer oppressed we cease to be funny?’ Yes, I’m one of those kind of comedians. Convinced in my own head I’m breaking barriers, single-handedly moving Jewish comedy into a new era of truth, honesty and political hardball and away from the eternal joke about the Jewish mother.

[Olive tour group with Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower who was released in 2004 after 16 years in jail, 11 of them in solitary confinement.]

Mind you, while I deconstruct Jewish comedy on stage, a different kind of deconstruction is going on nearby. During my one-week stay nearly one hundred Palestinians perish in Gaza and over twenty Israelis are victims of a bomb blast in Sinai. What impact my ruminations on Jewish humour have on the audiences is hard to judge but, after the show, one Arab woman tells me how much she enjoyed my work but how she would have liked to have seen more jokes about Jewish mothers.

The second show in Tel Aviv is plain weird. For an hour I do the show
to hardly any laughter. I’m thinking I’m going to be leaving Israel with the moniker ‘The Jew the Yids love to hate’ but the show closes with one of the most sustained rounds of applause I’ve ever had. Maybe they are clapping in relief that it’s over? No, I’m reassured by a line of people who come up to me after the performance. ‘We cannot believe that a Jew has had the courage to say these things in public. Thank you! Thank you!’

The final show is in Ramallah to another group of Palestinians. After Tel Aviv my confidence has grown and the reception to the show is fantastic. I may never make it big in the UK but there might yet be a place for me in comedy history as the Bob Hope of the PLO.

On the way out of Israel more security checks.
‘Who did you travel with?’
‘Olive Coop,’ I say.
‘What is that?’ I’m asked.
‘It’s a group from England who promote fair trade and responsible tourism.’ Unfortunately to the Middle Eastern ear the word tourism sounds very like terrorism. I’m questioned for a further four hours.