Yesterday, our Summer Camp went on a trip to Bethlehem: 26 students from the summer camp, 30 kids who weren't from the camp, and six adults or near adults. This was something that the students were looking forward to, the chance to go somewhere out of Abu Dis. We set off early at about 9.30 in the morning. The students shout, 'Yalla, Yalla' - let's go, let's go. Someone has brought along a tabla, so that rhythm and chanting reverberate through the bus. We go through an army checkpoint. One lone soldier, a bit older maybe in his forties, looking a bit sundrenched, looking as if he'd rather be somewhere else.

Normally Bethlehem would not be a very great distance from Abu Dis as the crow flies. But there are often delays because of the checkpoints. Today we are stopping at a holiday resort on the way to do some swimming. The resort is about twenty minutes out of Abu Dis. It is a kind of tourist resort for foreigners and also for Palestinians. It is quite westernised. There are some self-catering flats for people who want to stay there, a large swimming pool and and a Turkish bath. The luxury of being able to swim. Most of the students cannot go to the sea. They don't have permission to go to the Mediterranean because they have the wrong kind of passes, they could go with difficulty to Jordan and then to Akaba, or they could go to the Dead Sea, which isn't really a sea at all, but a hyper-salty lake. Some of the younger girls come into the main pool, the older female students with Sarah and some other volunteers look for the women's pool, which turns out to be closed. In the end they are allowed to use the Turkish baths. It is wonderful to be able to swim. It is the first physical exercise I have done in over two weeks since leaving London.

The whole atmosphere of the place is westernised, burgers and chips for sale and western rock and house music. My ears have become used to Palestinian, Egyptian and Lebanese music, the raw emotions and complex rhythms, and the music thumping out of the swimming-pool speakers sounds heavy and four-square - regular rhythms one two three four, sometimes syncopated. Music to get out of your head to, not to express joy with. I wonder what this kind of music feels like to young Palestinians. I ask one of the students. 'Do you like this music? 'Yes but it's very different'. We swim and sit around for about three or four hours. I'm hesitant at first about going into the pool because of the tattoos on my body, which are officially haram (forbidden) here. But Doctor Abdullah, who is on the board of the community centre and has come along, says it is ok. I get a lot of stares though. I swim, get dressed, talk, swim again, get dressed again. Doctor Abdullah asks me, 'Are you religious?' 'I have strong beliefs inside', I say, 'I don't practice everything, but my beliefs my values are inside me'. Then I throw the question back to him: 'What about you? Are you religious?' 'I am the same as you', he replies. He is a socialist or communist. He has already told me he is a member of a left-wing party here, not Fatah and not Hamas. He trained as doctor in Ukraine, speaks Russian, married a Ukrainian wife. Sarah told me that it has taken years for the Israeli authorities to allow her to come into Palestine to live with him here. He tells me about the values of the Soviet Union. 'It was good then, you had free health, housing and education. When I was in Ukraine, I could study cheaply. That was before capitalism. Now it is more expensive there than in London'. Apart from being a doctor, he is a well-known singer here with a band.