The School Run

Well after 4 days in the South Hebron hills in the camp of Susiya I am now back in Ramallah before heading up to Nablus, I have showered for the first time in 4 days and had a decent Arabic coffee and am waiting until D1 returns from visiting his mate here in the city so as I have alot to catch up I thought I would make a start.

Anyone who knows me knows that me and kids are not all that compatable, we get along in small doses but they really are too noisy and cant make cofee all that well but I cannot stand by and watch them abused in anyway, I guess we are all like that, well most of us! Every school day in Hebron the first job of the day for ISMers and other groups such as the Christian Peace Team (I know I know!) monitor the various checkpoints that the kids have to cross to ensure that they are not uneccessarily detained, these are infant and junios school aged kids not the surly teenage ones, little under 10 kids. So on my first morning D1, D2 and me made our way down to the Abramini mosque area to meet up with the CPT and split for checkpoint monitoring. Not a lot happend the kids who are used even at that ages of heavily armed soldiers blocking their way to school, got through ok with little or no hassle from the IOF. After things had quietned we were stood talking to the CPT a woman from the US and a guy with dual Palestinian and US citizenship. One of the IOF decided that the guy from the CPT looked alittle too Arabic for his liking and called him over and demanded that he leave the area, the CPT guy showed the squaddie his American passport but this did not deter our military muppet and he tried to isolate the CPT guy from the rest of us which we werent having, anyway to cut a long story short things got a little fractious and D2 got detained the CPT guy got released and after 10mins or so of me and D1 arguing with the copper that had turned up D2 was also released after being told that if they saw him there agiain they would lock him up "for the rest of your life". Any way we wandered off and decided we wanted to go meet some people in the old market which meant that we had to pass the scene of the shenanigans. Which we did and guess what? D2 didnt get locked up even for a minute let alone the rest of his life!

I guess that this for me was something different, something I could get involved in and try to make a difference howver small, but for Palestinians who go through this day after day with no hope of it ending anytime soon the despair and degredation must be immense. In 3 weeks I will come home in 3 years they will still be going throught his day after day week after week.

When I got to Ramallah and cehcked me emails someone had commented anonymously on my first post and it wasnt complementary, I pondered allowing it on the blog or not and in the end decided for balance I should, but I will respond to Mr or Mrs Anon now. I will hopefully get another chance to catch up later today because a lot went on in the small village of Susiya in the 4 days I was there, so until then.............. tata