Prison protest

Outside the Red Cross building in Tulkarem every Tuesday morning, members of the Prisoners’ Families Club gather for their weekly protest at the detention of their sons. Here in the north of the West Bank, I have learned that it is common to find people with family members with prison experience. Last week, as he was chatting to us in the street, our taxi driver waved at his cousin the other side of the road. ‘He just got released a month ago’, he told us. ‘He’s 36 years old now; he went in at the age of 17’. At lunch, a couple of days later, one man recalled his teenage sentence of seven months for throwing stones at Israeli tanks.

When asked what the charge might be, the reply is often ‘resisting the occupation’, said with the irony of those who have to live with it. At the Tuesday event, Malak and her friend Nadia did not speak of the charges, simply of the sentences: fourteen months for Malak's son, twenty years for Nadia's. Only half-joking, Malak asked me: ‘Can you end this occupation?’ to which Nadia added: ‘Put pressure on the British government!’

Estimates vary on the exact figure of Palestinian prisoners held now in Israeli's detention centres, but it is most often given as 10,000. Of these, and a concern to human rights organizations, 560 are currently held without charge or trial for up to six months at a time under the system of administrative detention. (These sentences can be – and often are - renewed several times).

Conditions in Israeli prisons are reportedly 'appalling'. After the collapse of talks in March to agree the prisoner exchange of the jailed Israeli corporal for Palestinian prisoners, there are now plans by the Israeli government to make these conditions worse – with the intention of convincing Hamas to release the corporal. Family visits are to be reduced, there will be fewer chances of studying, and access to TV, radio and newspapers is to be cut. .

On national Prisoners' day in April, families all over Palestine carried portraits of their children in processions and vigils like the one in the Tulkarem. On Tuesday, there were journalists and photographers from the local media, recording interviews.

They come regularly to film and report, apparently. It's not always easy to know the effects of media attention - but in this case, one that their mothers hope for is that on prison television screens their sons can see that they are not forgotten: as long as they still have any access to TV, that is.

One thing's for sure: Malak and Nadia will be back next Tuesday.

Access to your own land

Every farmer in this part of the West Bank has t0 show a permit to an Israeli soldier at a gate before they can reach their land. Most of these permits are for three months. Each time a farmer renews his permit, he has to produce the deeds that show his entitlement to it, his own ID and his security clearance. Renewals can take up to four months to arrive.
At the locked gates for the villages and olive groves of Attila and Deir al-Gushun outside the town of Tulkarem, those farmers with permits wait every morning until the Israeli soldiers arrive. Our job, as Ecumenical Accomaniers, is to witness the situation, record the numbers and waiting times and send logs on to other organisations gathering data for human rights monitoring. The thirty or forty farmers that we have met and waited with (together with their donkeys and tractors) are a lot less impatient than drivers on their way to work in the routine traffic jams in Britain.
Maybe it is because they are the ones with permits. For every one putting up with the frustration of having young men with guns guarding the road to their own land, there may be another five at home still waiting for the next permit to arrive.

Sunday in Ramallah

Arriving early is a good idea when y0u are new to Ramallah. On a Sunday morning before 9, there is already much to see. My two hours' journey from Tulkarem had been (with 6 other passengers) in Palestine's favourite mode of transport: the yellow minibus 'service'. I had come to attend
Quaker Meeting.
Inside the Friends' Meeting House, an hour later, I was welcomed by two others already seated and noticed the cool stone, painted benches, windows open to the sounds of traffic outside - and this splash of colour on the wall.
After meeting, I studied it more closely. The collective work of a group of American Quakers, it is a quilt, donated to Ramallah's meeting house two years ago after the building had been renovated. Kathy Bergen, te Program Coordinator for the Friends International Center there, had plates of Easter biscuits and coffee to offer us all after the meeting. Kathy is the author of an article on the effects of occupation for Palestinians published in an issue of 'Cornerstone' that had helped my learning in November, while I was preparing to come to this country.
On my journey back through the sunlit hills and olive groves to Tulkarem an hour later, the armed soldiers at the three checkpoints on the way there was one reminder of just one of these effects.