The BBC is still following Aleem Maqbool on a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. There is lots of Palestinian life being opened up, showing up these beautiful people for who they really are, their challenges and frustrations and joys. Take a read of Part 2 and now Part 3 of the diary, and look at the map.
On Friday evening Aleem tells how his guide has been working at a centre for disabled people. (here - about 1/3 of the way down the page) Later on the way the issue of scarcity of the water supplies and the way most of it is going to Israel. There is a small video of the hills here. In Nablus he visits a bath house that was there when Mary and Joseph made the journey, and wonder whether they had been able to rest there.
On saturday (same web page - here at the top) he makes a crossing of the Hawara Checkpoint out of Nablus, where it is not uncommon to wait two hours or more; a foreign passport and accompanying cameraman made it faster. Even emergency vehicle are delayed here and at the many checkpoints in Nablus. Good inteview with a doctor at the checkpoint here. He tells how 75 babies have been born at the Hawara checkpoint, and several women who had just given birth have died there awaiting medical attention. After another checkpoint and a reminder of the personable young Israelis behind the soldiers uniforms, he visits the Israeli settlement at Shilo to stay for the night, and thus hear another set of stories. Video here.
Read part three of the diary is here. Aleem talks to his hostess, a resident of Shilo, who is totally unphased by his mention that some see this as an illegal settlement.
"We (Jews) are the only ones with history here, we were here first and we should be here now. It's totally immoral to say we can't be," she says. "I don't care what the world thinks. They didn't care when the Nazis started against the Jews and when Jews were murdered. So why should I care?"
From Shilo he walks along a valley past Palestinian villages and with Israeli Settlements on the hilltops. In Bir Zeit he stays with a Palestinian Christian family. Their previous home had been occupied by the Israeli army to set up a checkpoint, and their son recently had been held in administrative detention for 6 months. His hostess was delighted at having in her hands a pass to Jerusalem for Christmas.
From here he walks to
al Bireh (where Mary and Joseph a few yeas later discovered that their 12 year old had gone missing and was later found at the Temple in Jerusalem.
Its a simple idea, this journey, but it makes a point that is greater than any purely political point --though there is clearly a lot of political implication here. My experience is when you hear people on both sides of a conflict their basic human needs are so much the same. I believe what I believe, but can that ever cause me or anyone else to deprive someone else of what they need? Freedom of passage. Security of home. Water. Medical attention. Freedom to go about my life without detention - at least with no evidence of wrong.
Its a shame that Aleem didn't seem to get beyond rhetoric with his Israeli hosts in Shilo. I do care, and I know many who care. But to say "we are the only people with history here" is so .... sad. Yes sad, for it betrays that they are so locked into their position that they cannot even look down the hills and ask who it is that lives in those villages and has cultivated those fields and olive trees for the last 2000 years.
