I am not going to record events chronologically. It would take too long and anyway it is better if I record impressions and thoughts that are uppermost in my mind at the time.
The town of Abu Dis which I photographed in the last entry is quite large. It consists of narrow streets, houses and shops made of yellow / white stone and concrete some of which are old sme recent. Then there is the separation wall which the Israelis built about 4 years ago. I can see some of it from the balcony here flanking the Mount of Olives. Some of it runs close to El Quds university, which is a major Palestinian university based in Abu Dis, and runs along the next village whose old name is Bethany, which I am sure appears in the bible. I have just been shown around the town and the neighbourhood by a group of ex-students of the university. They told me that the military authorities wanted to run the separation wall between the university and their sports field, and it took a lot of demonstrations to persuade them to change their mind.
The bits of the wall that I have already seen are horrific. They are great concrete strips up to nine metres high. There a lots of grafitti all over them. I am going to be posting photographs of it over the next few days. If you have a green id card (i.e. a West Bank id card), it means that you can't go to Jerusalem or anywhere else on the other side of the wall, including visiting your relations, or working the land that you might have had on the other side but you can't reach now because you are separated from it. The only exception is if someone is seriously ill and they have to get a permit from the military to cross at one of the checkpoints. If they are lucky they will get permission to cross for one day only, and they have to be back within the time, or else they won't get another permit. Some Palestinians however have got a blue id which covers people living in Jerusalem, which means that they can get in and out whenever they want. That includes my taxi-driver this morning who can come and go between here and Jerusalem for his work without any problems. And of course it also includes people like me with foreign passports who can just jump on a number 36 bus, and be back at the Damascus Gate within 20 minutes. In addition, there are no checkpoints for people leaving Jerusalem, so on the taxi-ride this morning the road from Jerusalem to Abu Dis was very fast, but in the opposite direction for people trying to get into Jerusalem, there was a long tailback.
So there is a superficial feeling of normality at very first glance, but the network of passes, checkpoints and restrictions draws in and affects everyone in its tentacles some more seriously than others.
One of the students told me, 'It is far easier for me to get to London then to Ben Gurion airport (the airport in Tel Aviv through which I got here yesterday).' Usually someone with a green id will never be allowed to go to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. If they want to go abroad, they have to go through Jordan, which means going through an Israeli checkpoint, then a checkpoint of the Palestinian National Authority (the authority that is supposed to be in charge of the West Band), then a chekpoint of the Jordanian Government.
Another of the students said to me today, 'In the west, politics is just an activity for a few people, for us we are all involved in politics every day'.
I will try and record as many of the stories that people have been telling me as I can.
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In the West, there's something decadent about choosing not to be involved with politics, as if it's something that's "not done". In some parts of the world it's literally a matter of life and death.
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