Picking Olives from a tree - To the tune of "Picking mussels from a shell"

And if the headline doesnt mean anything to you try looking up "Squeeze" on YouTube! My first full day in Nablus and it wasnt spent in Nablus. Before I go into the days events I want to expand a bit on what ISM does and how we operate on the West Bank, I think its only fair that any followers know the basics. ISM is a non violent group that shows solidarity to and support for Palestinians that match the non violent aspirations of ISM. We are Palestinian lead and only work with organisations that operate within communities such as Popular Committees. We work in regional groups,as I am now in Nablus we cover the Nablus region. We work as an affinity group with consensual decisons made without a leader! This can be a tad difficult when a quick decision needs to made, but I know that feeling well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway on to today, we had two actions to perform, one working with farmers harvesting their Olive crop in the village of Qusim on the outskirts of Nablus and a demo in Burin. There are 5 of us in Nablus and so we consensually agreed to split with 3 of us going farming and 2 going to the demo.

I got the plum role of picking olives in the backing sun for 8 hours, though I didnt pick that many as the Palestinians consisted of 3 women and about 10 kids, I hope to put a vid on of the kids singing when I learn how to do this later tonight! I got the job of childrens entertainer and tried in vain to teach them a couple of Burnley songs, but I am going to be here for a while so the will learn the words to "No Nay Never"!

The area where the olive trees are is close to the settlement and the army and settlers constantly harrass and stop the Palestinians from harvesting their crop, though today was quiet on that score. The area comes under the DCO or District Commanding Officer, think of the Fat Controller with fuck off big guns! He can and does put some pretty amazing restrictions on when and where the farmers can harvest. For example, he can say that they can only harvest on a Friday and that only the oldest and youngest members of that family can go into the groves. This does happen regularly and unsurprisingly has a massive impact on the economic well being of the families concerned.

A word about the kids, my Arabic is non existant and their English not much better but communicated by me putting olives in my eyes and genrally messing about, they started to call me Meester John, which gave me an idea for the Regional Committee....but maybe not! My comrades today were F a Canadian 75 year old and F A German Muslim woman.

We got fed around 11, a meal prepared in the fields consisting of bread, eggs,a tomotoe stew thing, cauliflower and sliced fried potatoes! My eyes lit up...........Chip Butties! Northern heaven! They did taste amazing even without salt.

So blog followers, random browsers and Zionist commentators. I am going to leave it there and try to work out how to put vid and pics on the previous posts. Thanks for following this journey so far and for the comments, they are all welcome, well some are!

One final thing: Burnley maintained their 100% home record and a place in the Europa League beckons for 2010! UTC!