CADFA visits to Palestine 2020

2 good things; three bad things & a bitter/sweet one. Before we got on the plane at Luton, something good happened. The London trip organiser had told us that, since the state authorities were often racist, the black bloke would probably have a tougher time at customs than others. At Luton airport, most of us met & talked of this; we agreed to adopt the policy of leaving no one behind at customs. When push came to shove, at Ben Gurion, he had to deal with only 3 trifling questions. But our policy was transferred to another in the group, a hijabi woman. We waited for 4 hours till this woman, who came from France, was grilled & lied to by two customs officers. Waiting in a café for her was boring   but it gave us a chance to charge our phones for free – at a kind of wall panel I’d never seen before - & it made me proud of the group. Another good thing was being welcomed by strangers in the streets of Abu Dis. Various people said hi out of the blue. Obvious

my motives ·         to learn more of the situation - & that happened; ·         to show support to the Palestinians - & that happened ·         to keep a promise I made to myself. When I was 10/11/12, I used to watch the telly. I saw a lot of the crap that was going on in Alabama & Mississipi. I said to myself that, if I was an adult, I’d have marched with Dr King. That never happened, of course, & nor did I go to South Africa, but, with this trip, I had the time, money & opportunity to stick 2 fingers up to apartheid. ·         to give em summat: Palestinian songs sung by my choir Raised Voices; I’m in the process of sending these to a bunch of groups in the West Bank ·         to have an adventure. (I was never in physical danger, but the suburb that I stayed in was ritually tear-gassed on Friday afternoon while my group was out. The flat I stayed in had empty tear gas canisters in a kitchen drawer. And all about me were tales of tear gas &

Spring tour basics The structure of the week was that every night we stayed in Abu Dis, & every day the minibus took us to places of interest. One way to describe Abu Dis is to say that it’s a suburb of Jerusalem; another is to say   it’s a village. Before the wall, one could drive from Abu Dis to a central part of Jerusalem in 4 mins; after, it took 30 mins. When our tour guide Abed was young, he went to college in a central part of Jerusalem & used to walk there. There were 11 in the group; four females; 7 males. The two main groups were 3 young women & 5 retired/semi -retired male trade unionists. One woman was about my age: 67; one man was black & London Caribbean; one woman was French Algerian & came from Paris; another was English Pakistani or mixed race. This last was from a small Muslim group that I’d never heard of before, not Sunni, not Shia. I’ve forgot the name of this group. Most were secularists; one was a Jew & probably secul