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Hey sg land, ive added lots more to this blog, so scroll down to where it says 'part 2' to read the rest, or start from the begining (which i wrote about a week ago) if youve not seen it yet




Im finally back from Palestine and Solfest and other stuff that have kept me away from the boobs and banter of SG
I promised a lengthy blog with lots of pictures and videos, so.. here we go! I didnt take as many pictures as id have liked to on the building site, because i was building

The background is, i went with my dad to participate in a 2 week house building camp (though we just went for the last week) with a charity called ICAHD (the isreali comitee against house demolishions) and we stayed in a town called Anata which was just outside jerusalem. The group consisted of around 60 internationals, about 40 of which were spanish, because they had most of their fees paid for by the spanish government. We paid around 1500 each to cover the cost of building materials, a small group of local builders, a plumber and electrician for each house. We were rebuilding two houses, (the group was split into 2 smaller groups who worked on each house) which belonged to two big families who had had their houses knocked down by the isreali government for not having house permits.

Now, for those of you who have just thought 'well, its their own fault for not having an isreali building permit', these houses were built BEFORE the isrealis brought that law in, and its nearly impossible to get a permit if you are palestinian, or even an arab, and its also very very expensive to obtain. Also, many palestinians own the deeds for their land, but are forced off it and the land is given to Jewish settlers. This leaves palestinians waiting for a long time with no where to live, and for the majority of palestinians who are already living in poverty and are working on low incomes, this means they cant always afford to rent accomodation.

What makes this worse is how in many cases, if Palestinians are either evicted off their land, or have their homes demolished, what was their land is often given to Jewish settlers at a very low price with subsidised taxes and imrpoved electricity and water. An example of this was on the news recently;

]BBC news article

-a couple of days before we left, 9 palestinian families who were living in two houses, (its very very common for many palestinian families to be sharing one house because they cant afford their own) were evicted, and jewish settlers moved into the house almost immediately.

So ICAHD, was founded by Geoff Halper, an Isreali, Jewish, human rights activist. He has been called a traitor, a self hating jew, a terroristand many other names and insults and is (to put it lightly) not widely liked by alot of Isrealis, just because of the work he does- despite the fact all the work he does it peaceful and perfectly justifiable (whereas the isreali government breaking international humanitarian law is not.)

The organisation is not anti semitic (Geoff himself is jewish) many jewish people participate in the camp, as do isrealis. I also want to stress that i'm not against judaism or jewish people or isreali people.

anyway, heres what we did.

Okay so, we left on the 7th of august to get our flight at 10pm which would get us into Tel Aviv for 5am the next morning. We were flying from london heathrow, and managed to get there in enough time for buying duty free presents and have some dinner, as we were in the departure lounge i tried to learn some basic Arabic and Hebrew words but i was too excited. It was a british airways flight, so we got some alright stuff to read/watch/eat, and the seats were quite comfy, but i couldnt get much sleep. We got into Ben Gurian airport in Tel Aviv at around 4.45am, at this point i was shitting bricks at the thought of interrogation and getting searched; if you are suspected as being an activist or even pro palestinian you can be held and questioned for any amount of time, searched, arrested, have things confiscated, or deported.

Luckily, we were only asked why we were in jerusalem, how long we were staying for, and if we had any family in jerusalem. I think it helped that i was with my dad and we were both dressed smartly......and told them we were on a christian pilgramige. hah. After talking to other participants, we found that an american guy was held for 4 hours and questioned, and a greek girl was kept for 2 hours and questions. Its not like either of them was marching about the airport chanting pro palestinian slogans. Its been known for them to even search the seams of bras looking for 'security threats', that happened to a well known american peace activist...and of course they couldnt find anything and had to let her in.

So we got our bags, got on a mini-bus taxi and were dropped off in jerusalem. We were then picked up by a mini bus, along with two isreali women who were going to help at the building site for the day, and we were driven to Beit Arabia, which was the name of the camp. 'Beit Arabia' means house of Arabia, who was a lady in the family who lived at the house and did the cooking/cleaning (other members of the family did so much other work to support the camp, there was Salim; Arabia's husband who works for ICAHD in jerusalem, finding out who needs houses rebuilt and stuff.. and their 3 (out of 4) children who lived with them who also worked immensly hard doing washing up, cleaning, and cooking.)) The family have had their house demolished in 1998, thats how they got involved with the organisation. They had their house rebuild by ICAHD which they live in when they arent working at the camp.

When we arrived there, the place was pretty empty as all the participants had been on a trip to Ramallah, so we went out with a guy called Ahmed to pick up some lunch.

apologies for the lack of photos, for some reason my attachment bits not working.. next time folks

TO BE CONTINUED...when im not so tired..
im not sure whether il write a new blog or just continue and edit this one... so... watch this space.




***************PART 2**************



This is a local pizza shop we went to,


On the way back, i saw a guy selling fruit on a crossing island. He must have been boiling..
(excuse the quality...it was out of a car window y'know...)


we got some fresh pizza, and went back tot he camp and all had lunch


That afternoon we went into Jerusalem on the bus. We had to go past a checkpoint and everyone on the bus had to have their passports (or palestinian identity cards) checked. About half the people on the bus were dressed really smartly and got off at the same time, one of the couples had this tiny little girl all dressed in white with beautiful hair and shoes..so maybe they were off to some kind of ceremony.

We eventually got into the old part of jerusalem; where the arabs live and shop, and we had a walk around. There were loads of stalls selling clothes and food and touristy stuff, but we went past those and eventually came to the Wailing/western wall. We didnt go into the wall area, we just looked down from the city walls.



It wasnt busy at all, infact there were just a few people down there. Last time my dad was there, loads of people were there praying and stuff. We did see a couple eating with their son on the same bit of city wall who were all dressed smartly, the father and the little boy were both wearing Kippas (correct me on the spelling!!) so, maybe they'd just been to pray.

Right next to the Wailing Wall is the 'Dome of the Rock', which is one of the most important holy sights in islam after Mecca (i think anyway..) im not sure why its called 'Dome of the Rock', but it had a huge golden dome which set it apart from other mosques in the area. It might sound surprising (and just not a good idea) to have one of the most important Jewish holy sites next to one of the most important Islamic sites, but thats how it is in Jerusalem. The city is (unequally) split into four quadrants, the Jewish part, the Muslim part, the Christian part, and the orthodox Armenian part, so 4 different cultures and lifestyles are crammed in tightly, each with loads of their own places of worship.. which probably causes a bit of conflict seing as they all have different claims about their people and their relation to Jerusalem.

For example, the street Via Delorosa was apparently where Jesus was made to walk on his way to being crucified, and there are 5 sites where stuff happened down that street, (eg, he fell down, dropped the cross etc) which of course all the Christian tourists flood to. So there are lot of religiously significant areas in Jerusalem making it really interesting AND BUSY to walk around.

Anyway, heres the view of the Dome of the Rock Mosque and the Wailing Wall.


Note the isreali flags, a typical sign of settlers making their mark. Quite commonly found near Arab areas as a scare tactic. (although, yes fair enough in this case it IS near a jewish site)

That night i went to sleep in a big room by myself, i woke up to 45 women buzzing about- some making breakfast, some tidying up their matresses and blankets (we all slept on the floor) and some just getting dressed, most of them didnt speak english so it was really wierd to wake up to. Luckily i was approached by some english speakers who'd been talking to my dad and introduced themselves, so by breakfast things seemed a little more comforting. Breakfast in palestine consisted of salady stuff, cheese, pitta breadish stuff, fallafel (nomnomnom) hummous, fruit and water. It felt like i was having lunch, but you need a big breakfast if youre off building!

So that day we were on the building site. The house was half finished when we got there, it was structerally finished but there was still plastering, flooring, plumbing, electrics, painting, and clearing of rubble to be done.

All that wood is scaffolding. Yes, the builders actually walk on those rickety bits of wood. Also, when they'd finished on a little bit, we had to take all the nails out by hand, (and keep them safe, because theyre expensive) take it all down, and stack it up for when they next needed it all, then theyd rebuild it all.

And as you can see, its a little single story kinda bungalow. For 10 people. There would be 3 generations in there and they all sleep in 2 rooms (men in one, women in the other, and im not sure about the married couple..they might have slept in the living room.)

You could still see remnants of the family's old house, tattered school books, toys, smashed furnature. However, the bastarding picture wont upload right now...

So this was a view of the seperation wall. Notice how close the wall is to the palestinian houses, but the settlers on the other side of the hill have pleanty of space.


The first day of work was a complete shock to the system, the builders there were incredibly hard working. The heat was unbearable, and the work was very physical because there were no machines; so all the cement had to be mixed by hand in a little pit, all the gravel and sand had to be chained inside- passed in a bucket from person to person...etc etc. So we all got knackered. The local kids were very interested, theyd all crowd around their windows and shout hello at us or 'YALLA YALLA' - meaning faster faster! They'd also bring us cold water, pots of tea, and plums (one family had a plum tree) and theyd even try and help (but they were told to just watch incase they got hurt) so instead they just sat and sang songs to us. I wanted to give them all mahoosive hugs cause they were so fucking cute!!

So that evening, we all went back covered in cement, sand, general building dust and smelling of sweat. Nice. Oh and did i mention there were 3 showers between the 40 women?

The next day, it was the same again, reaaally hot, lots to do, and lots to see. There was alot of cement/plasterish stuff to make because the whole of the house needed another layer of cement and plaster, so alot of the day was spent either mixing (which is backbreaking work) or passing buckets down a line into where it was needed. We also did some rock clearing and rubbish collecting, fun times We had a talk that night about how the occupation of palestine effects the isreali economy, it was really interesting.

We learnt alot, mostly about how the Isreali government gets money for the wall (for example, the millions of dollars the US gives to them each year) how It taxes palestinian aid money, and how it relies on support of jewish communities and companies to be able to afford the occupation, otherwise the state would be bankrupt. So basically the Isreali government is spending everyone elses money to grab more land off the palestinians.
Obviously there was far more detail than that, but i didnt take notes

Okay, the next day we went on to the Negev dessert to see the Bedouin townships and how the occupation had affected people there. To those unfamiliar with the term 'Bedouin', these are tribes of people who live in the dessert, theyre semi nomadic and usually keep livestock to live off and sell. Nowadays its not that common to see bedouin tribes, as most of them have been forced into purpose built slums by the Isreali government. Driving around one of the towns was completely astounding. The houses were falling apart and aparently up to 10 families could be living in one house. We were told about how the people had very very little electricity and water to go around, almost no services like rubbish collection (even though they paid their taxes) almost nowhere to work, nowhere for their kids to play safely; we saw kids playing in rubbish and by the side of the road.

After driving around that township, we went to a settler town, about 300 yards down the road. Every house had its own lawn, proper roads, trees, flowers, there were 3 playparks for children (which were all imaculate) there were expensive cars and a settler only school with its own big playground that had a built in play area and football/basketball pitch. Also, every family had its own house, with subsidised taxes. We were told that in that area, between the settler village and the bedouin township, around 90% of the water was used by the settlers. Its discusting to know that when there must have been at least 5 or 6 times the amount of people in the bedouin area (who i might add, had been forced to live there) and theyve hardly got anything. Theres no acceptable explanation, its just racist. The isreali government pulls shit like this in the hope that the palestinians will just leave and then isreal can house more settlers and make the state completely Jewish, ethnically cleansing the state of arab people.

The next day we were building again, i tried a bit of plastering the plumbing was fitted and they started to lay the floor, so we had to do lots more chaining of sand, cement and floor tiles (which were well heavy!)

The next day we went to a big church; jacob's well.

You can tell this sign is old, because Its english first, then arabic. Back when the day of the British Mandate of Palestine, all the signs were like this, some had hebrew on the bottom though. Now all the signs are written in hebrew, with english underneath and arabic really small at the bottom.

It was a really nice church. Though i dont know the religious significance of the well, or what it marks.





Next we went to a refugee camp and listened to a talk about its history and the palestinians who live in it.





It was set up in '67 when some of the first illegal evictions happened, people were chased out of their houses in the middle of the night, some didnt have the time to collect any of their belongings. They ended at the Baalata camp, which was just aload of tents at the time, and after years and years of not being able to go back to their houses, the camp was finally made 'concrete' and some small slums were built by the UN authority. Under international law, the original residents of the occupied land have the right to return to their land, however, 60 years later, many have given up on that idea as their homes or land are now occupied by Settlers. We learnt that around 40% of palestinians are now refugees, alot of these people still have the keys and ownership deeds to their houses they were kicked out of, yet cant return.


Inside the camp, there was a school which taught children up to 9th grade. Most of the kids living in the camp had some form of psychological problems because of the trauma and stress of the occupation. The camp runs musical and creative workshops for them to channel some of their feelings into.

We were told a story about how two boys were saving up their pocket money to buy a toy gun between them, then after learning how to play the violin in classes held at the camp, they decided to use their money to buy a violin.(aww)

The women of the camp make jewellery to raise money, so i got some souvineers for friends

On the way out, we saw a poster showing companies who support the occupation, giving money to the isreali government. Now, we were expecting the likes of Mc donalds and coca cola, but Pampers and Ariel?? fuck me.



We then walked around the camp..


The slums were tightly packed together and tiny.



Straight after that we went into Nablus Town and looked at a soap factory. On the way there were loads of kids selling stuff, like these guys were selling turkish delight, and others were selling grapes...



So here was the soap factory..





Next we stopped at a memorial site to a family, 9 out of 11 people had been killed when their house was demolished in the middle of the night with them asleep inside it. They werent given any notice, and the walls collapsed on them and killed them, children, their 9 months-pregnant-mother, and her mother; an erldery woman.
Discusting as this is, its not unheard of, many people have been killed; murdered or 'by accident' while trying to defent their homes, their neighbours homes or even international activists protesting at a demolishion.

As we were walking off, a guy called Kemal (he was the guy who got questioned for 4 hours) had a go at the monkey bars at this little playground behined us (which was part of the memorial to the family) and some of the kids watched

and then this little boy climbed up, and kicked kemals ass, going back and forth like 4 times


As we were walking away some boys followed us. The palestinian kids always seemed interested to see a group of internationals, these boys asked us how i was, and what my name was (thats probably all the english they knew, but its better than any of my arabic )
We asked if they were brothers and they said yes.


They were so cute!!
I guess because traditionally, arab families tend to be quite big, the kids seem to have much closer bonds than in western societies, like in england, you'd never see brothers walking around like that. We often saw kids playing with their siblings (you could tell because they looked really similar, and we'd often ask them) and its so cute to see.

After looking around the markets and stopping for falaffel pitta's we went back on the coach and listened to a talk about BDS...Boycots, divestment, sanctions.. with Jeoff Halper, and some other knowledgeable folks

They talked about the importance of raising awareness through boycotting, other companies involved in the occupation (for example motorola, developing fuses for isreali bombs) and issues to think about when campaigning like for example, some isreali corperations employ palestinians and boycotting them could cause palestinians to lose their jobs, but we were told that most palestinians would rather suffer losing their job if it meant the occupation ended or they at least got their land back... ive got lots of notes

The next day we were at the building site again, except today we were at the other house. Most of the participants had gone to a protest at the wall, but my dad had decided we shouldnt go because the isreali army and border guards have been known to fire live rounds at people, killing people and hospitalising people, also throw tear gas, and spray people with this chemical that smells like shit, which stays on your body and in your hair for about a week, and they can smell it at the airport security and will know youve been 'causing trouble', so, we were building with a couple of others who decided not to go, and a couple of people who had volunteered for the day, two young isreali men called Arnon and Ian. We were moving all the rubble and rocks from the front of the house and making them into a dry stone wall. We did really well and managed to make a good wall, and level out all the remaining sand and gravel over the dips in the front yard area to make it ready for the party on friday where the chairs would be for the speaches.

That day there was a freelance french reporter who interviewed me and a couple of other people and filmed us working. By this point there had been 4 different film crews and journalists interviewing participants and writing reports. By Friday we'd been in the local news twice, once reported as radicals supporting terrosism hahaha, the next time they actually told the truth and reported our side of the story and stated what we were doing. The orthadox Jews and Isreal supporters still wrote angry letters condemning us to hell and calling us all criminals and stuff, but oh well, fuck them.

Anyway, as we were about to finish i went into the house to get some water and one of the builders pointed at my stomach and asked if was having a baby. Not good. i carried on working, then an american lady, Denise noticed something was up and we went for a walk and had a chat. She then told my dad, who had a word with the group leader... (even though i asked him not to) and then got the builder into a lot of trouble, to put it lightly :S

Aparently, the builder might have been trying to flirt with me (wtf?) or could have been trying to complement me, because aparently alot of arab men perfer their women to be curvy, (still, what kind of pick up line is it to ask someone if theyre pregnant, its fucking rude) It was hard to take because ive never really liked my body and have suffered from Bulimia and Anorexia in the past, nearly being hospitalised from the latter; when youre in recovery and are made to put on weight, you feel shit about it and feel discusting and fat and naturally carrying more weight on my stomach i'd always been scared of looking fat or even pregnant, it kills you when you hear it though. Even though im past it all i seriously didnt want to eat for a while.

That evening, me and my dad went back into jerusalem and did some shopping and went to a cafe to take my mind off it and have a break.



To be continued Soonly, thanks for reading
xxxxxxx