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The machinery of oppression

To get from the West Bank to Jerusalem everyone (except the Israeli settlers) must go through a check point. So we might understand something of the every day experience for Palestinians we were sent through a pedestrian checkpoint. You queue, about half an hour in our case, in front of a metal turnstile under surveillance cameras. A plain clothes Israeli with an ear piece and clip-on microphone watches from our side. The turnstile lets through two or three people at a time and then locks with one person held half way through - on this occasion it was me caught in the middle.   Once through you are in between two locked turnstile in a caged area. There is an X-ray machine and a metal detector gate. Your bag with all your metal items goes through the machine, you through the gate. You present your documents through a slot to an army officer, Palestinians must also touch a fingerprint machine, and then you pass through a second turnstile under the eyes of another plain clothes...
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12. Hebron - an epicentre of racist extremism.

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12).  Hebron, cradle of extremist Zionism, nurtured by the State. On our final day together in Palestine as a group, we went to Hebron.  As on all the other minibus journeys, when we crossed a fixed checkpoint along the road it was deserted and we could drive straight through it - it is only manned during the rush hours earlier in the morning and in the evening, to disrupt and delay people getting to their work.   I noticed another pattern - where there was a settler-only road going to an Israeli settlement, or going direct to Jerusalem, the junction would be laid out in such a way that the mixed or mainly Palestinian traffic would have to wait, even though it was much heavier traffic than on the other road; the settlers could drive straight across the junction with priority, but the Palestinians had to form a queue and wait; this was another example of the imposition of dominating force to create a little ritual of humiliation in the mundane act of d...
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Three Bedouin villages

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Wadi Abu Hindi is a Bedouin village of some 150 families living in around 50 metal houses paid for by the EU.   You might think that a static Bedouin village is an oxymoron as Bedouin, by definition, are nomadic herders moving through pastures as the seasons change.  Prior to 1948 that’s how they lived. Bedouins travelled with their herds, crossing countries and borders. After 1948 previous grazing lands now designated as Israel were closed to them, these included the coastal area, Galilee and the Negev, but nomadic herding was still possible on both sides of the Jordan river.  After 1967 significant areas of the West Bank were designated military zones and became closed, as did the border between the west and east banks of the river. This forced Bedouin into static villages.  The people living in Wadi Abu Hindi originally farmed in the Beer Sheva area, now part of Israel - or Palestine 1948 as I am learning to call it. Their village is unofficial and h...
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