Since the end of Ramadan it has been stop and start to say the least. Emotionally it has been tough with many old and good friends either leaving or being foricbly removed. I also received quite devastating news which pulled me away from the olive trees of Palestine to the old oak trees of Yorkshire. As I sat in a cold Barnsley church on a typically dull yorkshire morning whislt watching my best freinds' fathers’ coffin being carried down the Isle, I was at once again reminded of the fragility of life and how easily everything we take for granted today can so easily be taken away tomorow.
The winterblues have arrived early and boy it's cold. Lydia, a cloes friend and talented violin player I've been playing with for the last 4 months has also had to return home to be with her best friend who's is terminally ill. I wish her and here friend all the best.
In Nablus itself there have been mutiple arrests in the area by both PA (Palestinian Authority) and IDF (Israili Defence Force) forces. One of the detainnes is a local volunteer for Project Hope. Probably one of the sweetest and kindest men you would want to meet. A university student, artist, singer and Muslim. He's my age and it's his 10th time in Jail now without charge. He will yet again have to restart another year of university to cater for his time in prison which now stands at three years in total. The reason for his arrest lies in his affiliation to the resistance during the last 'intifada'. A stone throwing youth who was venting his frustration at occupation and tyranny.
The illegal settlements on the outskirts are alive again though. Building has resumed and Army presence increased. Tensions are running high. Only a few day's ago Israeli settlers broke into a mosque south of Nablus attempting to burn it down and graffitying on the walls. In Nablus itself there have been settler demonstration outside another mosque they want buldozing down.
The direct peace talks brokered by the US lasted as long as the cameramans flash. Netenyahu and his right wing mix of rabbis, rascists and mass murderers (The Likud Party) have succeeded in embarrssing yet another American administration and are destroying any chance of peace in the forseeble future. It's not Netenyahu’s first time dismantling peace initiatives either. During his first premiership from 1996 - 2000 he did exactly the same. Smiles, champagne and hand shakes behind land evictions, assasinations and huge settlement expansion. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the creation of Erretz (Greater) Israel from the mediterraeninan sea to the Jordan river is still top of his agenda.
It bewilders me how history repeats itself so frequently. As the sqeaky voiced yorkshire foreign secretary William Hague battles and pleads with Netanyahu to simply 'extend' the settlement freeze his predeccessor from the last conservative government 15 years ago Malcom Rifkind was pleading in exactly the same way. In 1996 Mr Rifkind stated that "The start of construction can do nothing but harm the peace process." He stated this when Netanyahu levelled the hillsides of Jabal Abu Ghunan in Palestinian East Jersuslem to make way for 6,500 housing units for 30,000 Israeli settler homes. 'This site was chosen in order to complete the chain of Jewish settlments around Jeruselem and cut off contact between the Arab side of the city and its hinterland in the West Bank.' (Avi Shlaim 'The Iron Wall' 580.)
So . . a step from peace is a lunge towards war and further misery for the inhabitants of the depressing prison.
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