WASHINGTON — As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates head out Monday on a rare joint trip to the Middle East, it's not clear what they can accomplish.

Aides to Rice and Gates say the trip has three primary goals, each crucial: to persuade Iraq’s neighbors to do more to help stabilize the country, to counter Iran’s growing ambitions and to try to get real movement on peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

But America's credibility in the region has plummeted. The U.S. has failed to stabilize Iraq, destroy al Qaida, pacify Lebanon, isolate Syria or bolster moderate Palestinians. Instead, its policies have fueled Sunni Muslim extremism and emboldened Shiite Iran, which America's moderate Arab allies consider the two greatest threats to their rule.

So far, its support for Israel's ill-fated war in Lebanon and its efforts to undermine popular radical groups such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon have borne little fruit. Along with its support for autocrats such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, such actions have undercut American claims that it's championing Muslim democracy.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the Bush administration’s time in office. Leaders of friendly Arab states have lost confidence in President Bush’s ability to deliver on his promises and are wary of sticking their necks out too far to cooperate, according to diplomats and some U.S. officials.

“Our credibility is in tatters. They are not going to commit because they don’t trust us. That doesn’t mean they are not concerned about Iran. It just means they just don’t know what we are going to do,” said one senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to reporters.

There are also signs of disarray within the administration.

On the eve of the trip, unnamed U.S. officials told The New York Times that Washington believes Saudi Arabia has been unhelpful in Iraq by not supporting Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's government. The administration publicly disavowed the report, but said that Saudi Arabia could do more to help. The leaked complaint seems unlikely to make life easier for Rice and Gates when they arrive in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, early in the trip.

The Bush administration also is divided over Iran, with Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushing for an aggressive military response to Iran's reported aid and training for Shiite militias attacking U.S. troops in Iraq, senior officials said.

Gates and Rice will attend meetings together in Sharm al Sheikh, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Rice will then head for Israel and the Palestinian territories to meet with Israeli leaders and Mahmoud Abbas, the weakened Palestinian Authority president whose administration was run out of Gaza by the Islamist group Hamas. Gates is scheduled to visit other gulf states.

Senior Pentagon and State Department officials said the trip is intended to reassure Arab leaders that the U.S. will uphold its security commitments in the region, even as Congress debates pulling troops out of Iraq.

But Arab diplomats in Washington said their governments need more than reassurance. They said that while the U.S. has promised a more active role, they haven't seen a clear plan for Middle East peace or regional security.

Indeed, after Bush called two weeks ago for an international Middle East peace conference, some Arab leaders concluded that the speech lacked specific goals and simply repeated the broad hopes that he's articulated before — stability in the region and moderate, inclusive governments.

“There is no clarity,” one Arab diplomat said on condition of anonymity because he didn't want to disagree publicly with the administration. “The trip in and of itself is not important. What’s important is that the administration commit to dealing with the substantive issues.”

The gulf states want to know how a possible drawdown of troops in Iraq would affect their security and whether it would lead to fewer troops in other parts of the region.

More than what Rice and Gates say on the trip, “people are monitoring the debate in Washington. Everybody is watching that very closely and then will draw their own conclusions,” an Arab official in Washington said.

Sunni-led gulf states fear Iran, but aren't confident that the United States has a strategy for dealing with Tehran, the diplomats said. U.S. officials say they're in the early stages of building an alliance with the gulf states.

“Iraq may be an immediate destabilizing influence. But Iran is something we collectively need to deal with in the long term,” said Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other U.S. allies in the region want the United States to reach out to Hamas, which now controls Gaza. But Rice has repeatedly ruled out dealing with the group, which is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

"The strategy is based on the assumption that you could isolate, weaken ... Hamas," while strengthening Abbas and his Fatah faction, said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland. "It cannot succeed. ... Everybody agrees that you can't simply isolate Hamas."

Gates and Rice will encourage Arab leaders to attend the international meeting on Middle East peace that Bush called for in a July 16 speech. The gathering is tentatively scheduled to take place this fall.

Israel and the United States hope that officials from Saudi Arabia, other Persian Gulf states and Morocco — none of which recognizes Israel — will attend. But that appears far from assured.

Before the Iraq war, Washington had strong ties with the gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia. But the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated government and the rise to power of Iraq’s majority Shiites shifted the balance in the region. With an unstable Iraq and their own Shiite minorities politically awakened, many governments feel U.S. actions have weakened their grip on power.

Some countries, such as Egypt, have maintained close ties with Washington, but Saudi Arabia and others have begun to distance themselves.

Rice and Gates have their work cut out for them. With 18 months left in office, it will be difficult to reshape the way the region sees the United States, said William Quandt, a professor of international relations at the University of Virginia, who as an aide to President Jimmy Carter helped craft the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.

“I don’t think they have a real strategy that has much chance of working,” Quandt said. Gates, who joined the administration in December, “may be able to calm things down a little. But that won’t change the course.”

First of two parts

On a recent November morning, in between his administrative hospital rounds and amid various workers’ strikes, continuing political uncertainty and growing worry that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was on the verge of yet another cycle of spiraling violence, Dr. Tawfiq Nasser pulled out his wallet and showed a visitor his identification cards.

“In this country, we have a habit of collecting cards,” the Palestinian doctor said dryly.

He held up three cards in quick succession: a magnetic security card to expedite his way through Israeli checkpoints; an identification card issued by the Palestinian Authority; and a third card certifying that he works for a nongovernmental organization: in this case, for the Lutheran World Federation, for which he serves as head of the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem and also oversees the hospital’s program of village health clinics in various parts of the West Bank.

Nasser’s main focus, and worry, however, was about a permit due to expire the next day that allowed him to enter Israeli territory and return to his office in Jerusalem. A strike by Israeli bureaucrats was suddenly complicating his life -- without a new permit, he and his staff would be stranded.

The sudden concern about the permit overtook Nasser’s rapid-fire explanation about the fragmented health care system in the Palestinian territories. He argued that as long as an occupation exists, with its attendant checkpoints, delays and transportation snafus, villagers closer to one city to will be forced to go to another for their basic health care. And as a result, their health will suffer.

With a sudden, unexpected snafu about permits added to the mix, Nasser began to lose patience, becoming increasingly impassioned and angry as he spoke to a visitor. “All of our lives are run by bureaucrats in a settlement. You tell me this is no occupation, that it this is just security,” he said.

“Tomorrow, I don’t know if I can go to work,” he said, his voice rising. “And who is punished? The patients. Hamas, they’re not punished. It’s my patients.”

Declarations of impatience, frustration and outright anger are becoming increasingly common among Palestinians these days -- particularly those whose faces and voices are too rarely seen or heard in depictions of Palestinian reality in the West.

The “moderate” sector of teachers, academics, students, government officials and doctors -- the vanguard of Palestinian “civil society” who are not questioning the permanence of the state of Israel, even though they are clearly fed up with the politics of the Israeli occupation -- have, by dint of professional training and patience, kept day-to-day Palestinian society running. They have done so amid an ongoing political stalemate between rival political factions, militants and the Israeli government, and a humanitarian situation that has been worsening by the week.

Weary of politics but keenly aware that just about everything in their contested land is highly political, they are increasingly pessimistic about any resolution to their plight.

Something of their situation was summed up recently by Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem, a longtime champion of Palestinian rights, when he met earlier this month with a group of American journalists who write for Catholic publications.

Speaking of the situation in the Gaza Strip but also about the fate of Palestinians generally, Sabbah said: “They are not terrorists; they are people who are living under oppression and who are reacting. And not all of them are reacting. There are Palestinians who don’t react at all, who go on living their lives in despair and humiliation and poverty. They go on living under occupation without any reaction.”

Others feel similarly -- with a pronounced touch of pessimism. “We’re going nowhere,” Rafik Husseini, the chief of staff to President Mahmoud Abbas, said during an interview at the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in Ramallah.

Sulieman Harb Shalaldeh, the mayor of the municipality of Sier, near the city of Hebron, expressed the hope that he could soon govern normally.

“Let us keep the politics outside so that our people can continue their lives,” Shalaldeh said recently to the group of journalists. Shalaldeh has to deal with competing political claims, day-to-day-tensions, and now strikes by frustrated Palestinian workers who have not been paid since U.S.-led international sanctions and cuts to the Palestinian Authority by the Israeli government were imposed in March. The cuts by the Israelis alone have resulted in a monthly loss of $50 million in customs receipts.

The mayor’s comments were echoed by a teacher who greeted her American guests with fresh fruit, cakes and tea. “The majority of Palestinians, 90 percent, have no relationship with politics,” she said. “But politics are reflected severely in their daily life.”

So is history. To an outsider what is perhaps most striking in Palestinian refugee settlements and other public spaces are murals depicting uprooted villages lost for 50 years or more, with some still clinging to keys and land titles of areas now occupied by Israeli homes, public spaces and even shopping malls.

Given the overwhelming sense of history and grievance that prevails here, the teacher’s name is all the more revealing. The woman speaking was named Palestine Hussein.

Facts on the ground

The phrase “facts on the ground” is often used to describe the reality of what Palestinians see as the things that make a viable Palestinian state and society difficult if not outright impossible: Israeli settlements, outposts, settler roads, checkpoints, the routing of a 420-mile separation barrier. But it just as easily could describe the deleterious humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories themselves.

The territories’ gross domestic product stands at $1,183 per capita, according to the World Health Organization. Unemployment rates overall stand at 25.3 percent, while rates of poverty overall are 56 percent. The poverty rate in the impoverished Gaza Strip stands at an astonishing 80 percent.

“The population’s socioeconomic conditions and access to health care are severely affected by lack of contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza and restrictions on movements,” the World Health Organization said in a recent summary.

Current conditions -- exacerbated by an unsettled political situation -- are believed to have worsened humanitarian problems: Chronic malnutrition has long been a problem in the territories and has been particularly acute in Gaza, where a 2003 study by CARE International indicated that 13.3 percent of small children in Gaza suffered from chronic malnutrition -- 11 percent higher than a “normally nourished” population would suffer.

What precipitated the current crisis was the January victory of the political faction Hamas in Palestinian Legislative Council elections. Hamas’ victory in turn led to international sanctions that have cut assistance to the Palestinian Authority -- a move that Palestinians have decried as unfair and unjust.

“You wanted democracy and now when you see the fruit of our democracy you say, ‘No, we will boycott you.’ ” Sabbah said about the popular reaction to the move: “This is wrong, unfair and unjust for the Palestinian people.”

The Israeli and U.S. governments said sanctions are justified because Hamas is a terrorist organization. Palestinians -- and this includes those aligned with the rival political faction Fatah -- acknowledge and even embrace Hamas’ militancy. But they have also stressed what they say is Hamas’ political and humanitarian roots and argue that Hamas is no al-Qaeda. In fact, they contend, beginning in the 1970s, Israel itself helped foster the creation of Hamas as an Islamic alternative to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization.

The Israeli and U.S. governments have interpreted the Hamas victory as a worrisome sign of growing Palestinian and Islamic militancy, while Palestinians have tended to view the Hamas victory as a protest vote and a referendum on what they say was a corrupt and out-of-touch Fatah elite that had, the sentiment went, cravenly compromised with Israel during the 1990s. (While Hamas controls the Palestinian legislature, President Mahmoud Abbas is aligned with Fatah.)

Over dinner at a Ramallah restaurant, Nader Said, a development studies specialist who teaches at Birzeit University, said public sentiment went something like this: “Let’s try Hamas; we know Hamas won’t work, but let’s stick to our identity.” He said that Hamas had hit a deep public nerve.

However one defines Hamas and interprets the elections, the results proved a smashing blow in at least one respect: Western sanctions remain in place against the Palestinian government, with assistance being cut off until Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist and renounces violence against Israel.

These demands form the core of contention between various the Palestinian factions and were cause for continued dispute recently between Hamas and Fatah over a new compromise prime minister. The current prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, has said he would resign if it would help restore international assistance to the Palestinian government.

The practical result of all of this is that salaries for some 140,000 government workers are not being paid -- prompting a joke by Husseini, the presidential chief of staff. He said recently on a Sunday evening that he was beginning his second work shift, at no pay. “I knew this would be a 75 percent reduction of pay,” he said. “I didn’t expect it would be 100 percent.”

Jokes aside, the sanctions have not only caused obvious hardships but also prompted a 70-day teachers’ strike, as well as walkouts by other public employees. Worsening day-to-day public services have become the norm.

“The boycott has had a devastating and cumulative effect,” said Tom Garofalo, the Jerusalem-based country representative for Catholic Relief Services. “Things are declining geometrically.”

Maybe not indefinitely, however: The end of the teachers’ strike Nov. 11 proved a major relief, and Arab nations that had joined the boycott have announced they will drop it, in part because of anger over a recent Israeli military attack in Gaza.

Nonetheless, reminders of what has been a stark, confusing and dispiriting time are everywhere: A school built with assistance from Catholic Relief Services in the village of Sier recently stood empty. A group of school administrators and parents huddled around a small administrative office and said both they and students have felt stranded and isolated by the strike and the international boycott, which they said have worsened the day-to-day hardships imposed by the occupation.

“What can we do?” said headmaster Ahed Mohid Jebreen who, like the parents, spoke about their coping mechanisms in an economy that has stalled -- be it borrowing from shop owners (and piling up debts), or selling family jewelry to pay bills.

“All the world is punishing us for our democracy, and that is not fair,” Jebreen said. Such punishment, he and the others stressed, is not punishing Hamas, but punishing the struggling Palestinian middle class and poor people.

A recent survey spearheaded by Said’s Development Studies Program confirmed those anecdotal observations: Of 1,200 persons surveyed in September, nearly three-quarters said their daily lives and living conditions had become worst since the January elections.

The survey also revealed that while Hamas’ popularity has declined precipitously -- from 50 percent in April to a mere 31 percent five months later -- a majority of those polled still thought Hamas should form a coalition government. And a majority, 62.3 percent, also said Hamas should not be expected to recognize Israel immediately. The poll also found that distrust of the United States was as widespread and deep as could possibly be: a full 94.4 percent said the United States had not played a constructive role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian standoff.

This tense environment has also affected the response of American humanitarian agencies, such as Catholic Relief Services, that receive U.S. government funding for projects in the Palestinian territories. Catholic Relief Services has to abide by a no-contact rule with all Hamas officials, though it can still keep contact with such national bodies as the Palestinian president’s office.

As a practical result, that means the Catholic agency “has had to roll with some big changes,” Garofalo said. It has also made it occasionally difficult for local staff who, like any “on-the-ground” humanitarian workers, must deal with local authorities and governments no matter what their political affiliation. “We can function, but it has been difficult for our staff who work in Hebron, Bethlehem and Gaza,” Garofalo said.

These and other difficulties have changed a society that despite its many challenges was, in Said’s words, vibrant and hopeful. Now, day-to-day life seems more fragmentary and pinched, with horizons eclipsing. “The whole dream of a Palestinian state is in danger,” he said.

“We’ll do the small things we do each day,” he said. “But the big picture is desperate.”

He paused for a moment. “We’re asked, “Why do you have fundamentalists?” he said. His response: “It’s because you are closing all of the windows of fresh air.”

That is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Gaza, a place other Palestinians call everything from a prison to a mental asylum.

Potential powder keg

It doesn’t take long to learn that Gaza can break your heart.

A sunny Mediterranean outpost that contains some of the most crowded and densely populated urban areas on the planet, Gaza is an impoverished and dispiriting place until you listen to college-age students and young people speak passionately about furthering their skills in computer sciences and English -- although they do so amid the more-than-occasional and not terribly distant cracks of gunfire rounds.

Kidnappings are common here -- though it is said that they often stem more from boredom than from any political or even monetary motivation -- and have added to the sense of a powder keg in the making.

Now in the hands of the Palestinian Authority after a series of well-publicized withdrawals by Israel, Gaza is distinctly different from the West Bank, where Israeli and Palestinian communities collide and jut into each other. In Gaza, a sense of isolation and even imprisonment has taken root, resulting in ennui at best, contempt and extremism at worst.

“Throw whatever you want at us” is how presidential chief of staff Husseini describes popular sentiment in Gaza. “They are desperate. They have no hope. And they have nothing to lose but their chains.”

It is from Gaza that small, homemade rockets are often fired into Israel, prompting what Palestinians have called Israeli overreaction, but what Israel has declared as justified security measures of self-defense.

“I know the Gaza people are suffering,” said Bahij Mansour, a one-time member of the Israeli diplomatic corps who now heads Israel’s department of religious affairs and who spoke on Israeli policies recently to a group of Americans. But he said that Israel feels justified in protecting its borders along the Gaza Strip.

It is Gaza, in the town of Beit Hanoun, that drew worldwide focus recently when Israeli artillery killed 18 Palestinians -- including 13 members of a single family -- in a military operation that was criticized internationally and resulted in a United Nations Security Council resolution of condemnation that was vetoed by the United States. Israel, apparently embarrassed by an incident that killed primarily women and children, called the shelling “a mistake.” The move prompted new threats of suicide bombings, as well as fury throughout the Arab-speaking world and even talk of a third intifada within the occupied territories.

If the long-term ramifications of the Israeli action and the Palestinian response remain to be seen, it is not hard to imagine that the voices of Palestinian moderates in Gaza may become harder to hear.

Mohammed Ismail, 22, is one such voice. Active in a Gaza youth leadership program, Ismail is a one-time English student, an avid reader of Ernest Hemingway, and has hopes of studying English at the graduate level. He acknowledged that Gaza residents have reached a level of anger where they are “not afraid of losing everything.”

At the same time, though, he knows there are liberals in Israel who do not support their government’s policies toward the Palestinians and wishes there was a way for them to make common cause with Palestinians like himself.

One reason he believes that should remain a priority is because of a simple truism, recognized by many but maybe by not all on both the Palestinian and Israeli divide.

“We are here, they are there. We’re not leaving, and they’re not leaving.”

Chris Herlinger, a New York freelance journalist, recently traveled to Israel and the Palestinian territories as part of a prize for Catholic Relief Services’ Eileen Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence, which he won for reporting on Darfur for NCR in 2005. Photographer Paul Jeffrey, also an Egan Award winner, assisted with the reporting for this article.

We are either living in a reverie or in denial. When someone you know gets injured in this conflict, you expect to have feelings of outrage, deep sadness, or at least the manifestation of these feelings should be the normal outpourings of grief, sorrow and concern. And yet, news of casualties of a latest Israeli atrocity or an inter-factional battle does not faze people as it once did.

I want to be in hysterics. I know it is not something ordinary to say, but the truth is, this conflict has made people accept as normal, things that elsewhere would elicit deep reactions of wailing, or at least tears, or the momentary satisfaction of venting anger by breaking dishes across a room. Are the restrained reactions that many Palestinians have are merely a self-defense mechanism? Or are we really in denial about what is going on in down town Ramallah or on the beaches of the Gaza Strip? Has the daily dose of grim stories become such an ordinary thing in our life that we wake up each morning, wanting, needing a fix of the usual blood-drenched front page that we pour over while doing something as normal as having our morning coffee and scrambled eggs?

So, shouldn’t I be in hysterics? When I heard that a photojournalist that I know, Osama Silwadi, had been shot while doing something quite unexciting as to look out his office window during a procession on Ramallah’s main street, I cannot describe the feelings that went through my head. Funny, but I thought emotions are not supposed to be cerebral, and yet, I block feelings, like so many Palestinians (and even some foreigners living among us) have become used to doing, in order not to allow myself the luxury of sinking into a depression every time I hear a story of a child killed or a family annihilated, because there are far too many to count. Many of us have learned over the years that if you allow yourself the slightest chance to let the situation overcome you, you are done for and you will be unable to function.

Osama used to be a photojournalist for AFP and Reuters before he decided to become a freelancer and create a Palestinian image bank (www.apollo.ps). He is a father of three children, who now lies in a coma in a hospital bed in Tel Aviv, so far away from his family and friends in Ramallah that no one can visit him or offer his wife the support she needs at this time.

As Osama watched the procession below on Ramallah’s main street from his office window this past Sunday, boys were shooting into the air to commemorate a fallen comrade. I say boys because my (female) mind cannot accept the fact that mature men would be so irresponsible as to shoot in the air in a densely populated area, where the chance of a stray bullet hitting someone is not a remote possibility, but a certainty. And so, the bullet traveled from the barrel of one of those boys’ guns into Osama’s now non-existent spleen, up near his heart to lodge finally in his spinal cord.

The prognosis is not good and we all hope and pray for his recovery, knowing that when he finally wakes up from his coma, he will find that his reality has changed so dramatically around him and he will have to grapple with whether or not he will be able to resume his life as he had once lived it. All those times in the field when he knew that he was a taking chance on life by snapping shots of stone-throwing youths confronting soldiers, or non-violent protestors against the Wall, did he never stop to think that life is so fragile in any case that even a simple walk under rickety scaffolding or taking the wrong turn in a road can result in a fatal accident?

Not to sound like a cliché, but such is life, whether you have lived in a conflict zone all your life or not, you cannot cower in your house forever in the off-chance that you might be struck by lightening. Perhaps, however, people who have gone through trauma feel invincible and the sense of danger is blunted and lightly brushed aside, and so it could quite have possibly been those thoughts that went through Osama’s mind seconds before the impact of the bullet ripped through his body.

It is odd how yesterday morning, when I heard the news, all I could think about is how ordinary this news sounded, despite the fact that Osama had been on my mind quite often these past few days, because I was looking at some recent photos I had taken with his voice about light, lines and frame running through my head. I realized with some unease that I lost the ability to be shocked, indeed a friend told me once that he also lost the ability to be astonished by such things as the first flowering of spring or the birth of a child and that is how I feel sometimes, like I am a car in neutral mode most of the time. And while I am deeply saddened by what has happened to Osama, I am unable to reach down into that deep place where I will allow myself to feel more than the very superficial of feelings and I know that tears will not come.

It completely worries me, this sense that we are becoming a nation of zombies, who have turned off the tap of basic human responses to bad and good news alike that something like the recent inter-factional fighting is not so shocking or unexpected. Once you stop being shocked, then you stop being afraid, and once you stop being afraid, you can do anything out of the bounds of acceptable human behavior. The signs of intimidating armed men running unrestrained among the population should be dealt with immediately and decisively.

More importantly, the indications that we are heading toward a civil war that so many are trying to suppress and deny, will become a full-blown reality if this is allowed to continue and then there will be no turning back to a time when Palestinians put the national interests before the factional, if ever there were such a time. If that should happen, there will be more innocent bystanders like Osama, who will pay the heavy price of the craziness that we have sunken to in recent months, and ultimately Palestine will hemorrhage outwards and be drained of its wealth of people, who today still have the ability to save it from becoming yet another tragic tale for the history books.

Authors in the Frontline

On his first visit to the Gaza Strip, Daniel Day-Lewis meets the Palestinian families living in the heart of the danger zone — and the psychologists who are counselling them

Mossa'ab, the interpreter, leads the way, carrying a white Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) flag. Its psychology team, myself and the photographer Tom Craig are in full view of an Israeli command post occupying the top floors of a large mill. It is draped in camouflage netting, as is the house close by. It is to this house that we are heading, across 200 yards of no man's land; the last house left standing in an area once teeming with life.

Civilians have been the main victims of the violence inflicted by both sides in the Middle East conflict. In the Gaza Strip the Israeli army reacts to stone-throwing with bullets. It responds to the suicide bombs and attacks of Palestinian militants by bulldozing houses and olive groves in the search for the perpetrators, to punish their families, and to set up buffer zones to protect Israeli settlements. It bars access to villages, and multiplies checkpoints, cutting Gaza's population off from the outside world. MSF's psychologists are trying to help Palestinian families cope with the stress of living within these confines; visiting them, treating severe trauma and listening to their stories. Their visits are the only sign sometimes that they have not been abandoned.

Israel's tanks and armour-plated bulldozers can come with no warning, often at night. The noise alone, to a people who have been forced to suffer these violations year after year, is enough to freeze the soul. Israeli snipers position themselves on rooftops. Householders are ordered to leave; they haven't even the time to collect pots and pans, papers and clothes before the bulldozers crush the unprotected buildings like dinosaurs trampling on eggs — sometimes first mashing one into another, then covering the remains with a scoop of earth. Those caught in the incursion zone will be fired on. Even those cowering inside their houses may be shot at or shelled through walls, windows and roofs. The white flag carried by humanitarian workers gives little protection; we'll have warning shots fired at us twice before the week is out.

Sometimes a family will not leave an area that is being cleared, believing if they do leave they will lose everything. It is a huge risk to remain. Sometimes a house is left standing, singled out for occupation by Israeli troops. The family is forced to remain as protection for the soldiers. Last year an average of 120 houses were demolished each month, leaving 1,207 homeless every month. In the past four years 28,483 Gazans have been forcibly evicted; over half of Gaza's usable land, mainly comprising citrus-fruit orchards, olive groves and strawberry beds, has been destroyed. Last year, 658 Palestinians were killed in the violence in Gaza, and dozens of Israelis. This ploughing under, house by house, orchard by orchard, reduces community to wasteland, strewn and embedded with a stunted crop of broken glass and nails, books, abandoned possessions. As we weave our way towards the home of Abu Saguer and his family — one of several families we will visit today — we are treading on shattered histories and aspirations.

Abu Saguer's own house is still standing, but its top floor and roof are occupied by Israeli soldiers. His granddaughter Mervat is with us, a sweet, shy seven-year-old with red metal-rimmed glasses, her hair in two neat braids held by flowery bands. She wears bright-red trousers and a denim jacket. Last April her mother heard an Israeli Jeep pull up briefly at the military-access road in front of their house. Some projectile was fired and when Mervat reappeared — she had been playing outside — she was crying and her face was covered in blood. They washed her. Her right eye was crushed. A month later in Gaza an artificial eye was fitted. It was very uncomfortable, so a special recommendation was needed from the Palestinian Ministry of Health to finance a trip to Egypt for one that fitted properly. Mervat needs this eye changed every six months, so the ministry must negotiate with Israel each time for permission to cross the border. Fifty cars are permitted to cross each day; each must carry seven people.

Abu Saguer has five sons and four daughters — "You'll go broke with more than that," he says. He lives near the big checkpoint of Abu Houli in southern Gaza. He wants the photographer, Tom Craig, to take his picture and put it on every wall in England, Germany and Russia. He is 59. At 12 he went out to work, and at 16 he began to build the house he had dreamt of, "slowly, slowly" as a home and as a gathering place for his extended family. He had grown up in a house made of mud in Khan Yunis, which let the water in whenever it rained, and all his pride, hope and generosity of spirit had invested itself in this ambition. He had worked in Israel, like so many here, before the borders were closed to all men aged between 16 and 35.

For over 20 years, Abu Saguer had his own business, selling and transporting bamboo furniture. During the second Gulf war all his merchandise was stolen. After that he relied on his truck for income. He had cultivated 300 square metres of olive trees, pomegranates, palms, guavas and lemons in the fields around his home. After the start of the second intifada (Palestinian uprising) his crops were destroyed by the Israeli army — for "security". A road that services the Israeli settlements of Gush Katif had been built, and during our visit the traffic passes freely backwards and forwards, along the edge of the barren land where his orchards once flourished.

On October 15, 2000, Abu was at home with his wife when Israeli settlers emerged on a shooting spree. He and his family fled to Khan Yunis. After four days he returned. He was hungry. There was no bread, no flour. He killed four pigeons and prepared a fire on which to grill them. The soldiers arrived suddenly, about 20 of them, and entered the house. He followed them upstairs. "Where are you going?" he asked. One smashed his head into a door, breaking his nose. They kicked him down the stairs and out of his house. They kicked half his teeth out and left him with permanent damage to his spine. "If you open your mouth we'll shoot you," they said. They left, returning in a bigger group an hour later, to occupy the top of his house, sealing the stairway with a metal door and razor wire. The family has lived in constant fear ever since. The soldiers urinated and defecated into empty Coke bottles and sandbags, hurling them into his courtyard. They menaced his children with their weapons. After two years of this an officer asked: "Why are you still here?" "It's my house," he replied.

For four years, Abu Saguer has been afraid to go out, afraid to leave his wife and children alone. He is a prisoner in his own home, just as the Palestinians are prisoners within their own borders. The facade of self-government is an absurdity. The Strip, with its 1.48m Palestinians, is a vast internment camp, the borders of which shrink as more and more demolition takes place, and within which the population rises faster than anywhere else in the world. Meanwhile, about 7,000 Israeli settlers live in oases of privileged segregation. This is a state of apartheid. It's taken me less than a week to lose impartiality. In doing so, I may as well be throwing stones at tanks. For as MSF's president, Jean-Hervé Bradol, has said, "The invitation to join one side or the other is accompanied by an obligation to collude with criminal forms of violence."

The late Lieutenant-General Rafael Eitan, the former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), once likened the Palestinian people to "drugged cockroaches scurrying in a bottle". In 1980 he told his officers: "We have to do everything to make them so miserable they will leave." He opposed all attempts to afford them autonomy in the occupied territories. Twenty- five years on, it seems to me that his attitude and policy have been applied with great gusto. Every movement here in any of the so-called sensitive areas, which account for a large, ever-increasing proportion of the Strip (borders, settlements, checkpoints), is surveyed and reacted to by a system of watchtowers.

These sinister structures cast the shadows of malign authority across the land. On our third day, as we stood at the tattered edge of the refugee camp at Rafah, the forbidding borderland between Gaza and Egypt, bullets bit into the sand a yard and a half from where we stood. It was in this place — was it from the same watchtower? — that Iman el-Hams, a defenceless 13-year-old schoolgirl, had been shot just weeks before. She ran and tried to hide from the pitiless death that came for her. I felt her presence; the sky vibrating with the shallow, fluttering breath of her final terror.

I read this transcript before I left home; the cold facts ran through me like a virus. It is a radio communications exchange by the Israel Defense Forces, Gaza, October 2004. Four days later, crossing into Gaza, I'm still shivering: what the hell is this place we're going to?

Soldier on guard: "We have identified someone on two legs [code for human] 100 metres from the outpost.

Soldier in lookout: "A girl about 10." (By now, soldiers in the outpost are shooting at the girl.)

Soldier in lookout: "She is behind the trench, half a metre away, scared to death. The hits were right next to her, a centimetre away."

Captain R's signalman: "We shot at her, yes, she is apparently hit."

Captain R: "Roger, affirmative. She has just fallen. I and a few other soldiers are moving forward to confirm the kill."

Soldier at lookout: "Hold her down, hold her down. There's no need to kill her."

Captain R (later): "...We carried out the shooting and killed her... I confirmed the kill... [later]... Commanding officer here, anyone moving in the area, even a three-year-old kid, should be killed, over."

A military inquiry decided that the captain had "not acted unethically". He still faces criminal charges. Two soldiers who swore they saw him deliberately shoot her in the head, empty his gun's entire magazine into her inert body, now say they couldn't see if he deliberately aimed or not; another is sticking to his damning testimony.

Every weighty bag of flour for Abu Saguer's household must be broken up and lugged across the 200 yards of wasteland. Everything must be carried. We are smoking apple-flavoured shisha in the courtyard after a lunch his wife made of bread, tomatoes, olive oil, olives and yoghurt, all from the small plot left to him. "Take some puffs so you can write," he says. He speaks with great urgency and my pen lags behind. On November 7, during Ramadan's month of fasting, a three-tiered perimeter of razor wire was laid, encircling his house. This forced him and his family to use the military access road, walking his children past tanks to get to school. It's a much longer and more dangerous route. After a week of this he was shot at from the watchtower. Abu Saguer gathered his wife and children, then they sat down in the road. All afternoon they sat.

"I didn't care if they crushed us there and then. I wanted a resolution," he said. Jeeps passed, nothing happened. After dusk they went in to break their fast. The next day a senior officer approached them in the road.

"What's the problem? Are you on strike? What is it, are you upset?"

"Yes."

"A lot?"

"A lot, a lot, a lot."

"Are you upset with us?"

"I'm upset with the whole lot of you."

"Why?"

"You're forcing my wife and children to walk in front of tanks and bulldozers — I want a donkey and cart."

"Big donkey or small donkey?"

"Big, to pull a cart."

"Impossible." (Abu Saguer, his eyes twinkling, smoke streaming from his nose and mouth, says: "If they'd said yes, I'd have bought a very big donkey to bite his nose, and donkeys that bite are very inexpensive.")

"Give me a gate, then."

"We don't have gates."

"I'll make one."

He makes a gate from two pieces of wood and a wire grill. They ask him to buy a padlock. He buys one. A soldier supervises as he cuts through the bottom tiers of razor wire (they won't allow the top one to be cut) and he installs his little gate. "If the gate is left open and anything happens, we will shoot you."

Sue Mitchell, the MSF psychologist, asks: "What's it like for you to tell this story?"

"I release what I have in my chest," he says. "I can't sleep. I woke this night at 1am. I thought it was sunrise. I woke the kids and told them to go to school. I look around and see that my life has been ruined. I'm like a dry branch in the desert."

Psychologists have been visiting the family since shortly after the occupation of their house began. Each time, they have to apply for access to Israeli authorities; it's usually granted three times out of four. Sue, a 41-year-old Australian, has a wonderfully gentle presence. She quietly steers her patients to and fro between the pain of their memories and a recognition and acknowledgment of their dignity, courage, generosity and good humour in the face of this desperation. She encourages them to voice their fears, tell their stories and, particularly with the children, act out their experiences.

Abu Saguer is a man of great affability. Because of his resilience, his wit, his tenderness with the children, it's easy to think of his survival in heroic terms, but often he has periods of deep depression, disorientation and forgetfulness. "I'm not scared any more, I can't explain it, I just don't care. There's one God, I'll die only one time."

The soldiers have decamped for the moment, but the family is never sure when they will come back. Part of their home has been lost to them. We walk through those rooms that the troops occupy. The curtains chosen with care by Abu Saguer's wife long ago billow inwards, in unsettling contrast to the camouflage netting in front of the window. His gate is visible from here. I imagine him approaching across the broken ground, struggling with a bag of flour, stooping to unlock and open that little gate.

As we leave, Sue calls her base. Each visit must be registered with and approved by the District Civil Liaison (DCL). We hear that a doctor has been shot dead while treating a wounded boy at a crossroads in Rafah that we passed yesterday.

Entering Gaza for the first time at the Erez checkpoint, we saw some Israeli kids in army uniform — we'd seen them on the way from Jerusalem, hitchhiking or slouching at bus stops, dishevelled, their uniforms accessorised with shades and coloured scarves. Weapons were slung across their backs. They looked like they should have been on the way to school. One girl at Erez wearing eyeliner and lipstick, friendly with the implied complicity of "We're on the same side," said: "I'm laughing all the time — I'm crazy." Most of them appeared indifferent, almost unseeing. We walked through the concrete tunnel separating these two worlds. In the eyes of their bosses, we are a menace because we're witnesses. All humanitarian workers are witnesses. The UN has been on phase-four alert, the highest level before pulling out completely.

They're a little tired of being shot at. We travel south from Erez toward Beit Lahiya through the area "sterilised" during "Days of Penitence". That was Israel's 17-day military offensive in northern Gaza that started on September 29, after a rocket fired by the Islamic militant group Hamas killed two toddlers in the Israeli town of Sederot, a kilometre away on the other side of the border. These home-made rockets have a five-mile range, so Israel sent in 2,000 troops and 200 tanks and armoured bulldozers to set up a 61/2-mile buffer zone and "clear out" suspected militants. Days of Penitence killed 107 Palestinians (at least 20 of them children), left nearly 700 homeless, and caused over $3m in property damage.

Towards the end of it, even Israeli military commanders were urging Ariel Sharon to stop. He wouldn't listen. So there is not a building left standing that hasn't been acned by shells and bullets, many of them with gaping mouths ripped out by the tanks. A vast area has been depopulated and ground into the rubble-strewn desert we find wherever we go. A Bedouin encampment has settled, impossibly, on one of these wastelands. Half a dozen smug-faced camels and a white donkey stand behind the fence waiting for Christ knows what; the air is heavy with their scent. The families have constructed hovels of sheet plastic, branches and jagged pieces of rusting corrugated iron. They look like the last scavenging survivors of doomsday. As we head southwest towards Gaza City, the Mediterranean Sea appears like a mirage, shocking in its beauty: Gaza's western border.

We arrive at the MSF headquarters in Gaza City for the daily logistical meeting. Hiba, a French-Algerian about to complete her mission, has perhaps the most stressful job of all: to daily organise and monitor the movements of each of the six teams working here. She has to seek "co-ordinations", which, in the veiled dialect of occupation, means permission to enter and leave any sensitive area. This she achieves, if possible, through an Israeli DCL area commander in the department of co-ordination. We'd met one of them — just a kid like the others — at Erez. "Oh, Hiba, she takes it all too personally," he'd said. As if the whole thing were a game, with no hard feelings, between consenting adults. Even with this "co-ordination", an MSF team may arrive in the area only to be refused access by the local Israeli officer in charge (or, in some cases, to be shot at). No reason need be given. "Security," they're sometimes told.

Hiba is constantly assessing, reassessing, adapting. At any moment the heavily fortified Israeli checkpoint at Abu Houli, in the centre of the Strip, can be closed, effectively dividing Gaza into two parts. It may remain closed for four, six, 10 hours. It might be a security alert or an officer's whim. Yasser, Sue's Bedouin driver, once waited for three days to cross. We were held up there. A Palestinian officer, identifiable by the size of his belly, had overridden his leaner subordinates and waved us to the front of the queue. A babble of aggressive commands was disgorged from the IDF bunker through new burglar-proof loudspeakers. Recently a gang of young boys had made a human pyramid and stolen the originals. "Wah, wah, wah," the boxes yell at you from within their razor-wire cocoons.

Hiba rests only when the teams return safely to their bases in Gaza City, or in the south where another MSF apartment allows visits there to continue if the checkpoint is closed.

At the southern MSF base in Abassan I'm awoken on our third day at 4.30am by the call to prayer, then again at 7am by the surprising sound of children in a school playground. In any place, in any language, the sound is unmistakable. Gleeful and contentious. When you're in bed and you don't have to go to school yourself it's delicious. Are they taught here, among other things, that they have no future? The windows on this side of the apartment overlook a playground of pressed dirt with a black-and-white-striped goal of tubular metal at each end. The school, conspicuously unmarked by bullet or shellfire, is a long two-storey building, built in an L-shape along two sides of the pitch. It is painted cream and pistachio and resembles a motel in Arizona. (Later, in the refugee camp at Rafah, we'll drive past one riddled with bullet holes, and meet a grinning 10-year-old who proudly shows us the scars, front and back, where the bullet passed through his neck one day at school.)

After waking, I move to the back of the flat, to the kitchen. At the far side of a hand-tilled field warming itself in the early sunshine stand two pristine houses, white and cream, like miniature palaces. The field is hemmed at one end by a row of olive trees, and at the other by a large cactus.

A middle-aged man and woman in traditional clothes move the drills in unison. The distance between them maintained, gestures identical, they advance, bent at the waist, planting one tiny onion at a time plucked from a metal bowl. If an occupying force were ever in need of an image to advertise the benevolence of their authority, this would be it. I wonder what awaits them. I try but fail to imagine the roar of a diesel engine, the filth of its exhaust, as a bulldozer turns this idyll to dust.

Later, sipping cardamom-flavoured coffee, I look down on a fiercely contested football game. Half the kids have bare feet. There's a teacher on each side, in shirt and tie. One tries a volley which, to shrieks of delight, sails over the wall behind the goal. Two little boys watch, arms around each other. They turn and hug for a long time, then wander off still arm in arm. Sue Mitchell arrives. The co-ordination we needed has come through. After the warning shots fired at us from the watchtower at Tuffah yesterday, we'd thought maybe the Israelis would refuse it.

Yasmine is a grave, self-possessed 11-year-old. She emerged from her coma after a nine-hour operation to remove nails embedded in her skull and brain. An exploding pin mortar had been fired into her house. Her father was hit in the stomach and can no longer work. I've held this type of nail in my hand. They are black, about 1½ in long, sharpened at one end, the tiny metal fins at the other end presumably designed to make them spin and cause deeper penetration. We sifted through a pile of shrapnel at the hospital, all of it removed from victims. These jagged, twisted fragments, some the size of an iPod, were not intended to wound, but to eviscerate and dismember: to obliterate their victims. Yasmine lives a short drive away from Abu Saguer, in a ramshackle enclave with a courtyard shaded by fig trees. Across a sterilised zone lies her cousins' house, but it remains inaccessible (the cousins, including the most withdrawn child Sue Mitchell has ever met, are also her patients).

On the other side of a coil of razor wire, laid within feet of Yasmine's house, runs a sunken lane gouged out of the sand by tanks. When Sue first met her, Yasmine was terrorised, screaming and throwing up during the night. Such symptoms are common. In areas such as this, leaving your house day or night means risking death; staying there is no more secure. Nowhere is safe.

Under Sue's guidance, Yasmine and countless other cousins have prepared a show which, after many last-minute whispered reminders and much giggling, they perform for us. Yasmine is undoubtedly the force behind this. Her power of self-expression is immense. As she recounts the story of her wounding, her voice rides out of her in wave upon wave, full of pleading and admonition. Her crescent eyes burn within a tight mask of suffering; her hands reach out to us palms up, in supplication. At the end the tension in her fierce, lovely face resolves into the shy smile of a performer re-inhabiting her frailer self when the possession has lifted. Then there is a play, with sober, stylised choreography and a chorus of hand jives. A silent little girl whose expression is deadpan, unchanging, play-acts being shot by soldiers during a football game.

This four-year-old has witnessed much of the horror that has befallen the family. She lies obediently on the ground, splayed out and rigid. The mourners, curved in a semicircle around her, pretend to weep and wail, but they're all laughing behind their hands; we laugh too. Then they sing: "Children of the world, they laugh and smile, they go to sleep with music, they wake with music, we sleep with shooting and we wake with shooting. Despite them we will play, despite them we will play, despite them we will laugh, despite them we will sing songs of love."

Yasmine doesn't join the others as they cluster around us to say goodbye. Looking up, we see her leaning on the parapet of the roof, smiling down on us. Silent. Her dark face is golden in the rich, syrupy light of dusk.

Sue Mitchell is one of three psychologists here for MSF. Each will work with about 50 families during their six-month stay. The short-term therapy they offer is invaluable, but in some way it seems like a battlefield dressing with no possibility of evacuation for the injured. These stories are unexceptional. Every room in every humble, makeshift, bullet-ridden dwelling, in each of the labyrinthine streets of the camps, contains a story such as this — of loss and injury and terror. Of humiliation and despair. What separates those of Abu Saguer and Yasmine is that we carry their stories out with us. The others you'll never hear about.

HOW CHILDREN LEARN TO SURVIVE ON THE FRONT LINE

Violence and bloodshed are the backdrop to the lives of the children of Gaza. That they cling to hope and their dignity leaves psychologists such as Sue Mitchell deeply moved. With one group of young patients, she has produced a practical guide to help them and children in other war-torn areas. The children of the Abu Hassan family — 10 of them, aged from five to 13 — were caught in Israel's Days of Penitence offensive. "They'd been shot at, attacked, some of their houses had been demolished, they'd seen people blown up, and had been confined in the smallest room of their house for two weeks by Israeli soldiers," says Mitchell. Faces they drew in the sand showed inverted semicircle mouths and large tears.

"I was feeling my heart small and I was unable to talk. I thought I was going to die," said one. Mitchell was inspired by how they coped with the trauma, and wrote down what they told her. The result is a booklet in the children's own words, How to Manage the Effects of a Military Attack: Tips for Children. "Invent games that make you laugh and help you breathe," says one child. "Look at each other's faces. If you see someone is distressed, talk to them," says another. And there are dreams for the future: "Eat olives — the olive tree is the tree of peace."

"They're delighted by the book," says Mitchell, "but they also underplay their strengths. They say, 'We're not so special; all Palestinian kids know how to do this.'"

Maha Abu Dayyeh is director of the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) in Jerusalem.

MAHA ABU DAYYEH: "AS LONG AS THERE IS A SOCIETY THAT RESISTS THERE IS HOPE."

My office is close to my house—I just walk across the street. Now, the Wall ends just before the intersection of where I cross. When its construction is completed, I will have to drive all the way through Qalandia checkpoint, turn right around, and cross the check point again and go to Dahiet Al-Barid, before I can get to my office.

I live on the left the hand side of the street going from Jerusalem to Ramallah which is the Jerusalem side. However, all the services for my daily existence will be on the side that will be blocked off. Think about getting vegetables or food, or getting maintenance and household support. Half of all Jerusalemite Palestinians are going to suffer from this because electricians or maintenance people all live in areas that are blocked off. Because they will be harder to get, they will be more expensive. Life is going to become much more expensive, and not only monetarily.

We also will pay heavy social and emotional costs. We will become disconnected—literally and figuratively—from family and friends. Going to them in Ramallah or Beit Jala, places actually not very far from here, will be very difficult.

Practically speaking, the Wall is imprisoning us. The gates are not in the house itself but beyond the house. To go in and out you will need to have a special permit, and you will need to pay for it. On top of that, there is destruction to the environment in areas close to the Wall because of the digging in the streets, the dust, the fuel, and the fumes.

Dust and fumes are always in the house; you can't ever get it totally clean. Going in and out of the house means jumping over rubble and concrete, over all kinds of building refuse. You destroy your clothes, your shoes. You have to have extra budget for all those expenses. And the Wall blocks the view. You can see only a few meters beyond. You wake up in the morning and face the massive, ugly, grey cement blocks. We are living in chaos.

One has to realize how the Wall specifically and the overall living conditions also block us psychologically. When you are psychologically blocked, your thinking is also blocked. Your ability to be creative is blocked. Your ability to feel is blocked because you have to protect yourself all the time from feeling frustrated. These are what destroy the person. It's a sort of psychological torture.

You always have to be on the alert. You can't be relaxed. You always think how you are going to deal with the next obstacle. You can't ever plan and fully expect to complete one plan. You always have to have plan A, plan B, plan C. It often happens that you can’t achieve the goals you worked so hard for. All the time you face disappointments.

An outsider to this situation has to go through this to understand what it really means. The Wall is one of the most violent forms of psychological and physical aggression directed against the Palestinian collective and against the Palestinian individual. This is especially true for those whose daily existence requires them to cross the Wall or go around it.

Maybe there are a few people in the center of Palestinian towns who can manage and who do not have to move, but these are very few. The majority of the people have to cross the Wall all the time. You cannot cross without a permit issued by the Israeli government, so the Israelis control our movements. They decide who is able to move or not. In so doing, they control the lives of the Palestinians. They decide who is important or not; what is valuable or not; who can go to work or not.

On a day-to-day basis, these decisions are up to soldiers who guard the gates. These soldiers on the ground make a lot of their own, independent decisions. They can sexually harass the women if they want to. They can choose to be easy, hostile, or violent. And when they have violated the rights and dignity of Palestinian people, they can always find an excuse and the government will cover up the violations. We live our daily lives within this violent situation.

Because of the current situation the number of women who are able to reach our office is declining. We are not able to help as much as we could. It forces us to open more centres throughout the region, which is more expensive, unnecessarily expensive. It is a terrible waste of resources. We end up using our money on administration, on rents, on other overhead expenses including transporting staff, rather than on doing program work.

There is nothing like one's own real experience. I internalized the violence of the Wall after I heard that it was built around Qalqilia. But hearing about it and internalizing it in an intellectual way are incomparable to the actual experience of having to go around or walk or drive by it. You drive next to the Wall but there are also buildings bordering the other side of the road. They built the Wall in the middle of the street and you're stuck between it and the buildings in a narrow channel, like cattle.

You know what happens with cattle: The cattle are lined up and the machine takes them one by one while they can't move, like in a cage. The same happens to us. You cannot run away. You cannot backtrack. You cannot go left or right. You are stuck between the Wall and the other buildings. You're in a line and whatever happens, you cannot act on your own or control your own destiny. This happens all the time.

You get the feeling that, inevitably, you are going to be destroyed, killed, stampeded, caught in the middle of a shooting, as if you are living your life in one giant, ubiquitous crossfire. You are constantly on the alert, and feeling very vulnerable. To say this is a disempowering experience is an understatement. In fact, you are being choked unmercifully, cold-bloodedly.

All our lives we have to deal with crises. You become weaker as a person. Your capacity to tolerate difficulties becomes much smaller. You are emotionally charged most of the time.

Personally I am deeply affected when I observe the children. The kids are nervous all the time, agitated, so much of their energy and effervescence is restrained. They are afraid, especially of soldiers. When they see a patrol, they all run away and start crying. If they start crying, I start to cry myself. And that shows I too have been, and continue to be, traumatized. It is a new thing in me. I am affected by the whole situation. It is a horrible way particularly for children to grow up.

Freedom, for me, is the ability to walk endlessly without being stopped. To be able to keep moving forward. For me this ability is physical and also mental. To think without being restricted. I find that my ability as a thinking and moving human being is handicapped because my physical movements are continually hindered and restricted.

Freedom also is being able to do what I want to do, see my friends when I want to see them. Freedom is not to be restricted irrationally and arbitrarily, that is, when I don't understand why I am restricted. In my childhood I never could accept a "no" without an explanation. I wanted to see friends, to be with people, to have activities, and to be able to participate with my friends in joint activities. And to be able to think freely and to express my thoughts freely without being shut up or being told that I am stupid or unrealistic or otherwise blocked in my ability to think.

As an adult living under Israeli occupation, I see the same patterns. The restrictions and hindrance are more sophisticated but the same principles are still there. There is an English expression, “the sky is the limit.” That means that one's imagination and ability to be an actor in the world should be far-reaching, limitless, unrestricted. But in the Palestinian context, the Wall is the limit.

As an individual, I cannot complain. Indeed, if I compare myself to many other people, I am a lucky person. I am able to travel abroad, and meet very interesting and creative people. They help me overcome my own thinking blockages. I think with them, learn from them.

When I return home, I am better able to overcome my own limitations in thinking freely. Traveling and seeing other realities enable me to regain my sense of balance. When you travel you see that the situation here is abnormal and the normal should be what people out there experience. When you stay here you get used to the situation and come to believe there is no other way of life.

So my level of anger is elevated when I come back and see the situation again. My anger means that I am alive. My anger makes me act more, be more constructive with my colleagues, with my kids. I try to help them cope with the situation they are in. Being able to use my anger to help others is important to me because it gives me energy.

If I can maintain my anger at a steady level, I am energized. Anger means that I am trying to act on what happens. I think people need to be angry all the time about the situation. People have the right to be angry and express their anger. It's a sign of living, a refusal to die.

Through anger, you say no to a brutal situation. We should not walk quietly in the face of brutality. One should resist, for instance, by showing anger to the soldier and by breaking the rules. Refusing to respond to instructions given in the Hebrew language is a form of resistance. Everybody has a chance to resist by any small way or means. It builds one's strength. Resistance is not the same as survival. Survival is barely making it, just going on with your dealings.

Resistance is acting consciously, purposefully on your situation. Some people just choose to survive because they are tired of resisting and fighting; I can't blame them. I consistently hope that not all people in our society fall into that mode. So far, it looks like they are resisting and fighting.

My organization supports coping strategies but also the fight to maintain humanity, the refusal to be dehumanized, to maintain hope. When we do our educational programs in the community, we just remind people of the issues of justice and the rule of law. You can always find hope for building a better life.

I personally refuse to be killed emotionally or psychologically. I will not give up. I am a resister. As long as there is a society that resists there is hope. I see people resisting as a profound, courageous expression of choosing life. I see it all around me. It may not be tangible in the immediate, but when people choose life, there is hope. I see happy children too all around me. As long as there are kids laughing there is hope.

Toine van Teeffelen is development director at the Arab Educational Institute (AEI) in Bethlehem. This interview is part of a series made for United Civilians for Peace.

I was half awake when my alarm clock went off, it was 3:00am already, my bag was crammed with books and papers, I did not have the strength to pull myself together and close it, in my head I could picture the long journey along Allenby Bridge, personally my worst nightmare.

I walked silently to the door, dragging my bag and picturing the moment when I would arrive in Ireland, which seemed so far away when I remembered the route I had to go through, from Ramallah to Jericho, Jericho to Amman, then from Amman’s airport to Dublin.

When I got in the taxi I could see the faces of people covered with sleeplessness and exhaustion yet to come, yawning took over the scene and I was lost between the desire to close my eyes and drift to a more comforting place and the obligation to stay awake and carry on pointless conversations about the weather and the situation on the Jeser (bridge in Arabic), people trying desperately to be optimistic and skip that agonizing journey, at least in their heads.

We drove through the wrecked roads and as the morning approached, the colors of dawn seemed to steal the darkness of the night as we went further on.

When we arrived in Jericho, it was already 6 am.

I could see the sea of people miles away from their actual destination, carrying cards with numbers issued by the Israelis, which by the time I arrived already seemed countless.

After waiting in the bus and then in line on the Israeli side of this short but never-ending bridge for a time that seemed like eternity, we reached the Jordan valley, and for me then everything seemed different, the color of the sky, the smell of the hot summer air and the brown scenery.

My flight to Dublin was drawing soon; I tried to imagine what it must look like, the green hills and Saint Patrick’s Day, the cloudiness and the mellow sunshine, vague images constantly crossed my mind but when the plane landed, it was nothing like the picture in my mind.

I could see the reflection of Dublin’s beautiful houses and mountains in the clouds, and as I reached the registration desk, a kind gentleman asked me where I was from. When I said Palestine, he smiled, and for the first time in a long time someone did not correct me or look at me strangely, he recognized Palestine and yet smiled!

I felt welcomed, even before stepping into the roads of Dublin, the warmth of the people seemed to steal the unusual coldness of the weather, at least for me since I was used to Ramallah’s hot Julys.

Glencree, peace at the edge of the world

Glencree center for peace and reconciliation, 12 miles away from Dublin city center was my next stop, an astounding facility built in the middle of nowhere.

This thirty-year-old Peace Centre was originally built as a British army barracks. Its purpose was to capture local Irish rebels who were fighting during the United Irishman’s Rebellion of 1798 (Civilian Uprising against the British Occupation). In September 1974 it was re-established as a renowned Peace and Reconciliation organisation.

The location was extraordinary, it startled me, the silence of Wicklow’s mountains was so peaceful, for the first time in four years silence felt comforting and not soon to be shattered by Israeli bombs.

Six delegations arrived that day to participate in Glencree’s international youth exchange program, a nine day program meant to introduce young people to different conflicts.

Our first activity as participants was to prepare a presentation about our country’s conflict, tell our side of the story to allow people from other parts of the world into our own struggle as ordinary people.

We-the Palestinian delegation- decided to tell four different stories, about checkpoints, the Annexation Wall, the April 2002 incursion into Ramallah, and a comparison between the current and the past intifada.

I wanted to say so much but was overwhelmed with the short time we had, and was striving to deliver my side of the issue in a manner in which everyone sitting in that small conference room would be able to relate to.

When my turn came, my heart was beating so fast and I was scared I would stumble on my own words, but as I started telling my story, about my experience during the invasion of Ramallah, a little peace and confidence crept into my senses, and I could hear people breathing heavily behind my voice.

Memories came back to me and I could see clearly in my head the events of the day Israeli soldiers came into my home, their green soiled boots, their rugged voices and their vicious guns, and in five minutes I was back into that black day.

As I finished telling my story, I looked around and saw tears on sad faces, I could feel despair in people’s claps, and I hated myself for a moment.

I realized in that second that I was suffering everyday, that my life makes other people cry and feel helpless, and at that exact moment I woke up from all my peaceful illusions and my daily prophesies about a better future.

Our session seemed to prolong for ages, seeing people’s faces broke my heart, their confusion about this inhumane occupation raised my attention to something I am getting used to, the incomprehensible inhumanity of the Israeli occupation.

They asked us all sorts of questions, from the history of the conflict to whether we would ever be able to forgive this enemy. I began to ask myself whether I would, and the lack of a clear answer suffocated me, I could not forgive or reconcile, with the occupation or myself, not at that moment when the feelings of fear from that specific day haunted me.

When you are living inside the conflict, you try your best to live each day separately, you try to leave the mountain of pain on another side of your soul and wake up every morning with a clean slate, again, you try but it never really works.

When the cold night fell on Glencree that day, I was exhausted, breathless and numb, I saw myself growing older by day, the wondering eyes of people as I passed, wanting to do something to console me, not knowing whether they should smile or laugh or simply hug me to retrieve that glow in my dark eyes.

After a restless sleep, little Irish sunrays tickled my face and I was ready to move on.

Belfast: my West Jerusalem

To give us a better understanding of the conflict in Northern Ireland, we packed our bags the next day for a three day trip to Belfast, Bellycastle and Derry or London Derry.

The trip was very long; the deserted green roads seemed to stretch endlessly, then all of a sudden, we stopped at a semi border and were given 10 minutes to “exchange” our euros, then it hit me! We were in a different country, counting British pounds and buying The Times.

The whole idea was not alien to me but I was looking at the scenery and dozing off, the only difference as we crossed the border was the straight, less bumpy roads.

We arrived in Belfast shortly thereafter. The weather was darkening, and as a result, our only option was a bus tour through the streets and neighborhoods of Belfast.

River Lagan is not the only barrier cutting through the capital of Northern Ireland, there is a deeper wound slicing Belfast in two halves, the divide between the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

Belfast seemed like it was built differently on each side of the so called “peace” wall. I wondered about the naming since on each side of the wall was hatred for the opponent, and so much tension and hostility.

When we entered the Catholic streets, you could see colorful Irish flags covering the place, busy streets and people. Driving further, we saw huge Palestinian flags drawn on the wall, I started jumping around the bus to get a closer look on a liberation sign for my war-torn country and nation, stamped on the walls of a European city thousands of miles away, and I celebrated some freedom with myself.

Five minutes later, we entered a deserted Protestant neighborhood, the first thing that caught my eye was a huge mural that said “prepared for peace but ready for war,” it took me a decent amount of time to digest the words and realize that they did not make sense. What puzzled me more was the complete change of view, that area was so cold and empty and just that second it hit me.

A few days before my trip I had gone to Jerusalem for the first time in four years, although because I have a West Bank ID, Israel does not allow me to enter my own capital.

I had begun my “illegal” trip by walking down the streets of the Old City which were alive, busy and colorful, and then I had gone for a drive in West Jerusalem. Just as I entered that area, my heart froze and nothing felt the same, the streets, the people and the spirit of Jerusalem were completely different, and being in the Protestant area in Belfast at that moment felt exactly the same. I dreaded being there, I was afraid of my own reaction, I did not want to hate Belfast like I hated West Jerusalem, but it was too late.

I wanted to crawl out of that city as fast as possible; I felt the British and Israeli flags covering that area blindfolding me, but then the voice of the tour guide saved me.

He was talking about the hostility mounting in the city daily; he pointed at windows of Catholic neighborhoods, more precisely, the lack of windows, since Protestant stones invaded their peace and shattered hundreds of beautiful houses on both sides of the road.

There was tension all over the place, you could feel it from your bus seat, all the hatred stole the scents of Belfast, and left it haunted by ghosts and long endless winters.

I was strangely relived when we crossed the Belfast border into oblivion again, on our way to Ballycastle (in Co. Antrim), a beautiful northern coastal town which was our next destination.

Derry: lost in the middle

Packed and ready again we drove on to Derry; the unique thing about it is that it has two names, Derry for Catholics and London Derry for Protestants, two names for one small town.

Our first activity was an open-top bus tour. The tour guide was from Derry and he knew the city’s history by heart, I could feel his love for this separated city and the passion he was trying to transmit to us, despite the sudden rain that soaked and partially blinded us as we started driving.

Just as I was drifting away with my thoughts through the rain drops, I was faced with a big mural that said FREE DERRY; looking closely I saw murals of Bloody Sunday.

On January 30, 1972, British soldiers opened fire on an unarmed peaceful demonstration killing 13 people and injuring a number of others, the march was considered “illegal” by the British authorities. That event left a deep wound in Derry’s people that refuses to heal.

Free Derry was one of the first areas that were “freed” by Irish republicans, the walls and buildings were bursting with colors and pictures portraying that single sad day that carried freedom on its tail.

When we returned that evening to our hostel, the owner asked us where we were from; when I said Palestine he smiled, and again I felt very welcome just from the name of my country, something that rarely happens in the world.

We sat down for some coffee and the man turned out to be a full bred pro-Palestinian and so was his wife; and when they asked us about life back home, about how the world perceives us, I felt like I was a queen of some fairytale country.

Waking up to morning in Derry was just as spectacular, light drops of rain were falling from the cloudy sky, and it looked and felt like Ramallah’s intimate winter.

After having a delicious Irish breakfast, we got ready for our walking tour, on Derry’s wall and around free Derry.

Despite the rain, we could sense the separation between the two neighborhoods, the wall was like a knife that harmed anyone who would get close, and the grayness of the weather added a rather depressing touch to the empty pathway.

The scenery changed as we arrived to Free Derry, the murals looked so real up close, one could see and feel Bloody Sunday in front of their eyes, the enthusiasm, injustice, anger, cheering, shooting, chaos, blood, disbelief and lots of sadness.

Reading the names of the thirteen innocent victims made me wish we had a huge mural in Ramallah carrying the names of the thousands of innocent Palestinian victims, maybe this way when peace finally comes people will still be able to stand next to it everyday and say a little prayer, but then again, will there ever be peace or a mural big enough?

Back to Glencree: deeper understanding, common ground

Participants were exhausted with the amount of ideas they had to bear with after our trip to the North, seeing Belfast and Derry allowed us to form concrete ideas about the deep complex conflict in Ireland, but again, seeing is believing.

The road back to Glencree felt more familiar, I could recognize the change of colors as we passed by the pastures, but as we arrived to the main road leading to it, we could see clearly the narrow military road, Glencree’s barracks were the only survivor in that former-war zone.

Entering the main door felt different that day, we were accustomed to everything now, our bedrooms, the food, the conversations and mostly each other.

After a week I got to see the people behind the different faces and names, they were amazing, aware, hungry for more knowledge, and triggered by our testimonies to make an actual change in their understanding of our conflict.

I got to thinking about their impressions and how they could help. Being with people who made the effort to get as close as possible to the core of the issue helped me understand their immeasurably positive impact on our cause. Each individual, whether from Warrington, England or the Basque country could help spread the word.

Our final days were focused on brain storming and discussion sessions, our final art project and a trip to Dublin.

Since we reached Glencree late in the afternoon we had one short session, where several questions were addressed, mainly about our impressions at that point, and what we are to bring back to our countries after this rich trip.

Amid the discussion, several people inquired about the lack of reconciliation and peace centers in the West Bank and Gaza, mainly for children. I couldn’t agree more with the great need for such projects, but I was also wondering, what would a little kid think if he went to a center and learned about the equality of humans and love and peace, only to be forced to return home through a checkpoint manned by gun wielding soldiers, only to be woken up later that night to the sound of Israeli guns shooting at his kin? Would he remember any peace songs at that moment?

Later on they asked each individual about what they would take back with them home, and in a rather gloomy manner I answered that I would take back hopelessness. I could see people lift their heads up in surprise, and I went on to explain that if the Protestants and Catholics who believe in the same Christianity cannot find peace, what is our destiny, two nations entirely different in beliefs and power?

I felt guilty afterwards, because even though I did not believe that any peace is viable in the near future, these people have provided me with enormous strength to speak, write and stand up for years to come, each one of them gave me a priceless portion of courage and respect for my nation and self.

Dublin: beautiful Ireland

I was longing to see Dublin, and I couldn’t have been more right, it was beautiful, the Irish accent roaming the streets, Irish music flowing from the stores and pubs, I loved being in Ireland at that moment, I loved the streets, the colors of the sky and most of all the people.

We walked around the streets then had coffee and cakes, Dublin reflected a beautiful face of Ireland and Europe.

At about 7 pm we headed to the theatre, we went to see a play called “A Night in November” by the Irish playwright Marie Jones, performed by John Dunleavy.

The play is a one-man show, where Kenneth Norman McAllister, a Protestant middle-aged bureaucrat, who is trapped in a loveless marriage and a boring job, wakes up.

A night in November takes place when McAllister takes his hateful father in law to a football game between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, and is repulsed by the hostile behavior of the Protestant fans. At that moment the obvious truth hits McAllister between the eyes and pushes him into a different world.

Dunleavy’s face embodied every bit of emotion perfectly; I could feel my face wrinkle as he spoke and moved around that small stage, McAllister was changing right before my eyes, I was a witness to this unique transformation.

McAllister was alone, he was heading towards justice by himself, thousands of thoughts could have thrown him back into his peaceful narrow existence, but the light was too bright, there was no way back to blindness.

Kenneth started befriending his Catholic boss at work, and through him he saw the life he always wanted, the simple life that contained some love, empty of pretentiousness and coldness.

I saw myself and family in the Catholic boss, their house, their garden and the little details of the life they loved to leave reminded me of home, the flowers my mother leaves on the kitchen table every morning and the smile she has on even amidst the darkest days of invasion, she has hope.

I always say this is one of the very few virtues of being in an area torn by conflict; you concentrate on the little pretty details of life and become more human in order to survive the inhumanity that rapes you.

Later on, McAllister takes a huge leap towards “them” and decides to go to New York with hundreds of football fans to watch the match between the Irish Republic and Italy in the 1994 World Cup.

His challenge wasn’t leaving his old chauvinistic neighborhood to the airport, but leaving his old self behind and dressing in a green soccer jersey to support his Irish team, he was ecstatic, I saw a different face for the same actor, he displayed his emotions nakedly, and even I felt Irish for a moment.

He was welcomed by all the Irish people, he was one of them, they offered him rides and homes to stay in, for the first time in his life he felt like he belonged to a country, to a color and one crazy cheering crowd, he couldn’t have been more proud.

The similarities between the imaginary crowd and my people back home were staggering. Our unity, our homes and our suffering are, the same despite the vast differences between the two conflicts; we are all humans therefore our reactions are the same.

I left the theatre feeling differently about everything, it was like a leap of faith had just hit me in the face, we are not alone, never, we are surrounded by people who feel the same way we do, while I was scared in my house when Israeli tanks drew near, someone in Derry was scared of a British soldier who jumped out of his bushes in the back yard, while I was walking down the streets of Ramallah after one vicious bombing happy to be alive, someone in Belfast was celebrating surviving yet another attack.

Even though we all become so swallowed in our own conflicts, there is always this moment when we become one with humans elsewhere suffering as well, and it feels so powerful, it opens up a new window for us to breathe after a long suffocation.

We walked to our bus that night, and I could feel myself skipping through the streets of Dublin.

The final art project: flying back to childhood

To leave a lasting mark in Glencree, we had to finalize our exchange with a joint flag, so we woke up next morning prepared to launch ideas and draw a huge flag.

Before doing that, we were asked to write what stops us from using colors and drawing everyday on a piece of paper, it got me thinking about why I don’t own crayons or a coloring board, but failed to find an answer.

It’s not because I always have a million things to do, it’s not because I am busy or because I am preoccupied with this restless occupation, it is because I am growing up, I left behind childhood in a hurry and leaped prematurely into adulthood, although I promised myself not to do so. I always told myself I’m going to keep this little crazy child inside, and never give up on her, I just needed a reminder.

We had to draw our own little painting then take various ideas and put them on the big white board that was about to be invaded with colors.

We became kids, and it was such a relief. I drew a sun, rainbows and things I have forgotten existed inside me, and it was truly therapeutic.

Finally, we decided to draw darkness at the corners of our flag, representing our worries and sorrow, and then a sun bursting out of it, representing hope.

When I saw people’s different paintings I realized we all have fear and darkness inside, no matter where we lived or what we did, we all have our ghosts and demons, and we all were brave enough to confront them.

The flag was flowing with light, we all looked at each other proudly, I was 13 again, and wished I could be stuck there forever.

There was another colorful world waiting for us behind all our internal and external conflicts, a world that we could run to, any moment of the day.

The only way out is through

It was time to go home, that whole experience was over, I went that night to our meeting room to collect some papers, and as I was closing the door behind me I could hear our voices from the previous night, their faces weren’t leaving my head, I became accustomed to their laughs, words, solidarity and support, it was all so hard to leave behind.

I loved being a Palestinian that week, although it was hard to talk and remember my traumas all the time, I felt people’s hunger to understand and be part of our cause, not because they were pro-Palestinian or because we fed them with thoughts, but because our cause is a just cause and it would trigger any human being to rebel and seek freedom.

I had bits of ever person, event, city and county preserved in me. Sitting in the bus on the bridge waiting for endless hours wasn’t as exhaustive as it used to be. I closed my eyes and saw every detail of this trip clearly. My soul was still right there in Glencree, enjoying the wintry breeze.

Now I look at things from a different perspective. Just this morning I was stuck for an hour at the Qalandia checkpoint, but I knew there were people all around the world talking compassionately about me and thousands like me, as familiar faces belonging to an oppressed nation, refusing to stand still or die in ruins.

Those people with different colors and nationalities refused to be silenced or brainwashed, they opened their hearts and eyes to the truth and chose to go through that hard path in order to find peace.

I appreciate and will always remember each and every one of them. I think now is the time we go to the people, for they will help us find salvation. If you were in my place you would feel their energy, they gave me so much strength to go back home and write everyday in order to make a difference in their nations and mine.

The only sad part is the amount of hate and conflict still darkening our world; it is scary to try to imagine what might happen if we do not find peace soon, destruction is slowly eating up our planet; we have to take a stronger stand, sometime soon.

Ireland will always be in my memory and thoughts; it left a remarkable impact on my life and it will always feel a little bit like home. .

Palestinians crossing through the opening of a temporary wall in Bawabe, adjacent to the Passionist monastery (Louise Juul Hansen)

"No! These are my guests, and this is my house!" The admonition is delivered to Israeli soldiers attempting to stop a group of Palestinian women crossing the grounds of a monastery. The messenger is Father Claudio Ghilardi, a Passionist priest from Italy. His message is clear: at least as far as the monastery grounds are concerned, he will not permit the harassment of Palestinians by soldiers. The soldiers desist as long as Father Claudio is present. The Palestinians continue on their way, attempting to cross the monastery and reach Jerusalem on the other side. The continuation of their journey depends on whether soldiers are waiting at the exit, but at least they were able to get this far, thanks to Father Claudio's intervention.

Father Claudio cuts an elegant figure in his long black robe and matching black beret. He seems weary on this particular day, however. He relates how he has been chasing Israeli border police off the grounds and dealing with soldiers all morning. The source of his weariness can be seen looming in the distance; it is Israel's "separation wall." An ugly concrete behemoth standing about 30 feet (nine metres) tall, dwarfing the much smaller but more aesthetically pleasing stone monastery walls, the "separation wall" stands poised to invade, as the two gaping holes in the monastery wall attest.
For now, work has stopped only a few feet from the monastery grounds, thanks in part to the interventions of both the Italian consul and the Vatican apostolic nuncio, but much damage has already been done. And Father Claudio does not think that this reprieve will last for very long. "This is not a barrier," he exclaims. "This is a border. Why don't they speak the truth?"

The Santa Marta dei Padri Passionisti monastery is located at the confluence of East Jerusalem, Abu Dis and Al-Izariyyeh (Bethany), the latter the biblical home of the sisters Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. It seems that the Israeli authorities want to build their wall right through the monastery grounds, in contravention of the 1997 agreement between the State of Israel and the Vatican respecting ecclesiastical property. Not only will the people of Bethany, Abu Dis and parts of East Jerusalem be cut off from the rest of Jerusalem economically, but the 2,000 Christians living in the vicinity of the monastery will lose their spiritual centre as well.

Father Claudio's church, named for St Martha, is now empty. The faithful are not allowed to come to the church because it is situated on the Jerusalem side of the grounds. They can enter the monastery on the Bethany side but are not allowed, when soldiers or police are present, to approach the Jerusalem side where they could conceivably exit. Many of the Christians who used to fill the church come from the bordering towns of Abu Dis and Bethany, and most lack the permits to enter Jerusalem. Due to these conditions, Father Claudio celebrates mass where they are allowed to go in a church belonging to the neighbouring Comboni sisters' convent on the Bethany side.

The monastery forms the centre of a Catholic "complex" that includes three nearby convents. The Sisters of Charity run an orphanage for 45 children; the Comboni Sisters have a school for 38 elementary-aged students; and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Douleurs in Abu Dis have a rest home for 74 elderly Bedouins. The convents and the people they serve will be cut off from each other and from Father Claudio.

On top of all the religious and property issues, there is the matter of the archaeological importance of the grounds. The monastery is the site of some large cisterns dating back to Roman times and 12 large tombs belonging to members of the early Jewish-Christian community, with inscriptions in Aramaic. Some of these finds have been disturbed or damaged by the activities surrounding the construction of the wall. "When they came, they damaged these sites," Father Claudio says. "The government does not respect the history of this land – a history that is important to the Jewish people as well."

Much has been said by the Israeli government about its need for a wall to stop terrorist attacks within its pre-1967 borders. Much has been written criticizing the placement of the wall in some places deep within the West Bank, de facto annexing much Palestinian land. Israel has stated that the "separation fence" or "barrier," as the government prefers to call it, is necessary to separate Israelis from Palestinians.

Even if one accepts the government's argument that the wall is necessary for Israel's security, most Palestinians can't understand why it has to go through this area. "There are no Jews here. It's not going to separate Jews from Palestinians. It will separate Palestinians from Palestinians," comments Emad, who currently holds a Jerusalem ID and can make the short walk to get to work, but will be unable to do so if the wall through the monastery is completed.

And what will the wall do to the dwindling Christian community in the Holy Land? Christians once made up a thriving and healthy 10-15% of the Palestinian population. They now are officially only 2%, and some say that the actual figure is closer to 1%. Building a wall right through the monastery, separating Christians from their church and community services, will only cause the further exodus of Christians from the Holy Land.

"We have lived here for over 100 years, under Turkish, British, Jordanian and now Israeli governments, and no one ever tried to stop the people from coming to pray. This wall will stop people from coming to church to pray. Why? It is scandalous," protests Father Claudio.

Israel has denied charges that it is trying to force the churches out, but its recent policy denying most visa applications for clergy and lay church workers, making it difficult if not impossible for the churches to continue their work, will also cause erosion in the Christian community here.

Despite difficulties, Father Claudio vows to stay

Driving along the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives on our way to see Father Claudio, we pass Beit Fage (Bethpage), where Jesus stopped to eat some figs on his way into Jerusalem. It is from here that Christians begin their Holy Week celebrations on Palm Sunday, following in the footsteps of Christ as he descended from the top of the Mount of Olives and into the Old City of Jerusalem. Soon, Bethpage will be cut off from many of the Christian communities outside Jerusalem because of the wall, making the Palm Sunday procession an endangered tradition for the local population.

Upon arriving in the area known locally as "Bawabe," we can immediately see part of Father Claudio's problem. A temporary concrete wall blocks the road that used to connect East Jerusalem with Bethany. There is a small opening where, today, a soldier is checking IDs. This wall runs perpendicular with the monastery, meaning that part of the property is on what would be the Jerusalem side of the wall and part on the other side. The wall is covered with graffiti: "Love God, love people;" "Peace comes by agreement not separation;" and "God leads us to peace." Going towards Bethany and Abu Dis is not a problem, and the soldier pays us no mind, nor does he pay any mind to the Palestinian students crossing on their way to Al Quds University or the many other Palestinians going in that direction. But he checks all the IDs of the Palestinians coming into Jerusalem. Those without the blue Jerusalem ID or the proper permits are not allowed passage.

There is a sea of taxis and mini-vans that serve as shared taxis here, on both sides of the Bawabe wall. There are also makeshift stands selling everything from fruit and vegetables to shoes and t-shirts. These entrepreneurs try to take advantage of the foot traffic Israel has created with its plethora of checkpoints; it is a booming cottage industry of sorts in an area that has an unemployment rate of 60% or higher. We make our way through the crowd, to enter the seeming oasis of peace and tranquility that is the Santa Marta dei Padri Passionisti monastery.

The grounds are actually a beehive of activity. There are soldiers all over the place attempting to stop Palestinians, and Father Claudio is intervening on behalf of his "guests." Members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) are acting as witnesses and advocates. All this in a beautiful pastoral field dotted with olive, almond and pine trees that, at this moment, is simply pandemonium.

Mostly, the Palestinians trying to cross are people who work in Jerusalem but don't have the proper permits. There are also people crossing to get medical attention, since facilities in some parts of the West Bank are few and far between. This morning, Father Claudio was woken up at 4 a.m. by the sounds of tear gas being fired by border police in what is essentially his back yard. Soldiers have been maintaining a constant presence on the grounds, and recently, the border police have started making regular appearances as well.

"These people help me when the soldiers are in the area," Father Claudio says, referring to the Ecumenical Accompaniers. Alexandra Rigby-Smith, an accompanier from Sweden, was working at the monastery today. "Many of the people were scared," she said. "We tried to help them get past the soldiers so they could go to work, the hospital, university, to see family, etc. One Bedouin woman was shaking, she was so nervous. We were able to get some people through, but one pregnant woman, who was on her way to the doctor, was refused a pass. That was very frustrating."

Father Claudio tells us that a few months ago, soldiers found explosives on one of the Palestinians crossing the monastery. But he doesn't see that as a reason for collectively punishing the entire community. One of the soldiers tells a member of our group that the Palestinians dug a tunnel below the monastery grounds to bring explosives into Jerusalem. We inspected the "tunnel", and there is definitely an opening large enough for a person to get through, but not much more.

For Father Claudio, it is hardly surprising that people try any way to get to the other side where they can find work: "The father of one family I know with eight children hasn't worked in one month. I help them spiritually and I give them some food. Much more than that, I cannot do."

But Father Claudio does do much more. People see the monastery as a safe haven. The sick come to him and he takes them to the hospital in his car, using his status to get around the closures. He has had to rush women in labour to the hospital as well. Were it not for him, these women would have had to deliver their babies at home, a situation that adds to the infant mortality rate in Palestine. The people call him "abuna" - our father - even if they are not Christian.

But even Father Claudio is not always able to circumvent the authorities, and he's not immune from the troubles either. He shows us a scar on his arm. "This was a gift from the army," he tells us. "They fired tear gas and it hit me right here."

Father Claudio takes us around the monastery on an impromptu tour, pointing to buildings owned by the Latin Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Anglican Churches. Some of the buildings are used as low-cost housing for local Palestinian Christians. The wall will separate all of these community centres.

All the while our group is walking along a dirt path between the rows of olive trees, Palestinians are scurrying by us in the other direction trying to cross. Soldiers are stopping them and the ecumenical accompaniers are advocating for them. When Father Claudio comes by, he tells the soldiers not to bother the Palestinians and, curiously, they listen without argument. Of course, he can't intervene on behalf of every Palestinian who tries to cross and he can't be present at all times.

"This wall doesn't respect the human rights of the Palestinian people," Father Claudio says. "It doesn't respect private property because the Israeli government takes the land to build it. It is not the land of the government, it is the land of poor people. What more do they want from these people?"

Father Claudio gets some help with the many caretaking chores from another Italian priest from Abu Dis. Otherwise, he is essentially alone, but it was not always this way. Before the outbreak of the current Intifada in 2000, there were five priests living in the monastery with him. They all left because of the fear and uncertainty caused by the situation. When asked if he will be forced to leave as well, he replies defiantly: "The only way I will leave is if they kill me. This is my home. These people are my family."

Our tour ended at Father Claudio's church, where the absence of worshippers is symbolic of the disappearing presence of Christians in the Holy Land. Located just a few hundred metres away is the traditional site where the Gospel tells us Jesus called into the tomb of Lazarus and brought him back from the dead. If the wall is completed, it may take a miracle of a similar magnitude to bring back the Christian community here.

Larry Fata, a Catholic teacher and journalist from USA is managing editor and communication officer of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, launched in August 2002 by the World Council of Churches. Ecumenical accompaniers monitor and report violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, support acts of non-violent resistance alongside local Christian and Muslim Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, offer protection through non-violent presence, engage in public policy advocacy, and stand in solidarity with the churches and all those struggling against the occupation.

All is calm all is bright. Isn’t this what the famous Christmas hymnal says about Bethlehem? Well, Bethlehem nowadays is neither calm nor bright, unless one considers the almost unbreakable 24-hours curfew imposed on the people of Bethlehem as calmness, or sees the headlights of the thundering Armored Vehicles and Tanks, roaming the streets of Bethlehem at night, as brightness. Yet, calmness and brightness are not the only concepts being redefined by the curfews imposed on the Palestinians. The stifling stillness of the long curfew hours, which is lifted once every 4 days for 4 hours only, has redefined the meaning of time and space.

Once the curfew is lifted, everyday activity that one needs to conduct outside of one’s home has to be squeezed into 4 hours. The dilemma for each Palestinian, every time the curfew is lifted, is deciding upon what would be the most important things to do during these four hours. Is it going to work, going to school, paying the doctor a visit, visiting relatives, getting engaged or married, going to funerals of loved ones, taking the children for an outing, going grocery shopping, or a million other things that normal people do. For those fortunate enough to be among the 50% of the Palestinian population who still have jobs, they go to work. Yet, how much can one achieve at a workplace in less than 8 hours a week? Since not everything can be done in 4 hours, one has to cancel many activities or perform them during the curfew.

Going to work every time the curfew is lifted does not leave me any time to do other things. Therefore, I decided one late afternoon to break the curfew’s artificial calmness and go for a cup of coffee to a friend’s house. Not tempting fate too much, I made my way though the backyards of the neighborhood’s houses. The second-floor veranda was the perfect place to have coffee while enjoying the cool breeze and the beautiful weather of that day. With every sip of coffee, thoughts about the maddeningly motionless daily curfews, the oppressive sieges, the brutal disregard for human life, and the unprecedented levels of poverty were slowly moving to the back of my mind. Half an hour into what was until then a pleasant visit, the familiar ominous sounds broke the stillness of the area. A huge tank, five armored vehicles and two jeeps made their way into the narrow, one-way street, stopping in front of the newly renovated Shepherds Hotel. Screaming children and howling dogs started running in all directions, while women in housecoats stood by their doors calling their children to come inside. A few men looked out of their windows, while the rest hid, worried that the soldiers were there to arrest them.

My friend and I remained in our places and watched as the cannon of the tank rotated slowly, stopping at an angle facing the hotel. The five armored vehicles opened to unload 30 to 40 soldiers, making clicking sounds with their automatic rifles as they took shooting positions against the front wall of the hotel. Dragging two of the neighbors from their houses, the soldiers ordered them to open the hotel. We later understood that the hotel owner, who lives in Beit Sahour, anticipated such a scenario and gave his property keys to the neighbors to save the hotel door from being bombed. The soldiers flooded the hotel once the doors were opened, but kept few soldiers in the street to keep watch.

Not long after that, three young Palestinian men were brought out of the hotel and told to go home. One of the workers was from Hebron and he was told to go there immediately. The possibility that he might get shot at, while driving home during curfew, did not seem like a good reason for the soldiers to allow him to stay in Bethlehem, at least till the morning. One soldier then asked for the telephone number of the hotel owner and arrogantly told him over the phone that he and his company will be his “guests for the next two weeks.” The owner had no way of saying no, since under the guise of “security” he has no legal recourse to stop the Israeli army from moving into his hotel. Moreover, he is not the first hotel owner in Bethlehem to suffer damage to his property, since occupying hotels, shelling them, burning them, and stealing their contents by the Israeli army has become the norm rather than the exception in Bethlehem. I kept thinking about my father and his hotel, The Bethlehem Inn, who has been occupied since the beginning of the Second Intifada, with no legal recourse for us whatsoever to get the Israeli army out of our property.

All of this was happening, while my friend and I were still watching from the veranda. Suddenly, one young soldier spotted us from across the street and started motioning violently with his left hand, while keeping his right one on the trigger. “Go inside,” he ordered in hysterical broken English. Inside! I am already inside! It took me a few seconds to understand that this young soldier was redefining inside to mean anything that is not visible, to him at least. My being “outside” within the “inside” was bothering him. Not only is he imposing a curfew on me, he is also redefining what is outside and what is inside within my own private sphere. Thinking back to why this soldier wanted me to go “inside,” there are many reasons why. It could be that his male ego was offended that I was not scared enough of him to run inside and hide. Yet, it could be because he was ashamed to be seen trespassing on the property of powerless people, or because he did not want any witnesses to what he and his friends were about to do.

Whatever the reason was, I tried to retain my self-control, took another sip of coffee and ignored him. He would not go away. He screamed again, louder this time “Go inside, I tell you.” Now, no one tells me what to do, least of all a kid with a gun trying to pretend to be a man. I mustered my most authoritative voice, wagged my finger at him, as one does for misbehaving little children, and told him “You go home. I am in the right place. You are not.” It worked. He stood still for a moment, said something to a fellow soldier standing next to him, and went on with the business of trespassing on our space. Not long after that, the head of another soldier, wearing dark sunglasses, suddenly appeared from an opening in the roof of one of the parked Armored Vehicles. He looked around, spotted us on the veranda, and screamed something at us in Hebrew. Please God, not another brat, I am thinking. I poured more coffee, took a sip, and continued talking. He screamed again and I continued drinking. Ignoring him must have made him angry, since he went back inside and brought out a gun twice as large as the ones that the other Israeli soldiers had. He pointed the gun at me. I was scared, but I took another sip of coffee and remained in my seat. He moved the gun about 90 degrees and then pointed it at me again. My heart beating a bit faster, I took another sip of coffee and remained seated. My friend was getting nervous and somewhat hysterical telling me to move inside, since my life is not worth much to this soldier. I had to think very fast, and decided that stubbornness to prove a point was not the best tactic to follow in this case. I moved inside.

Now, wanting to go home became a problem. How was I supposed to leave my friend’s house, with all of these trigger-happy Israeli soldiers in the street? All of a sudden, the whole neighborhood became responsible for trying to get me home as soon as possible and as safely as possible. The women, in their housecoats, stood by their windows and kept watch. One woman called my friend and said that the soldier at the door looks distracted by things that must be happening inside the hotel. She told my friend that I should go down and wait for her to tell me when he turns again so that I can run out in the opposite direction across the back yard and into the back street, where I can go home from there. I waited in the stairway for 10 minutes, the longest 10 minutes in my life, and then I heard her saying “go.” I ran like I never did in my whole life. My heart was beating hard and fast, and it was not all the caffeine’s doing. Needless to say, I still drink coffee. But I wonder every time I drink a cup whose coffee this Israeli young soldier is spoiling now.

Dr. Nuha Khoury, is the Deputy Director of Dar al-Kalima Academy in Bethlehem (www.annadwa.org). She can be reached at [email protected].

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel did little to advance the cause of Middle East peace yesterday when he warned the Palestinians that if they did not move to uphold their end of an agreement soon, Israel would act unilaterally. He is right that the Palestinian Authority is required, under the American-sponsored peace plan known as the road map, to dismantle terrorist networks, and has failed to do so. But he is wrong that the plan views that step as a precondition to Israel taking its own painful steps, namely the freezing of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and an end to confiscation and demolition of Palestinian homes and property. The sides are to act simultaneously.

Mr. Sharon did make a bit of history in the speech, which comes at a time of soul-searching within his party due to growing public impatience with violence and hard economic times. He said that any unilateral moves by Israel would include moving some settlements "to reduce as much as possible the number of Israelis located in the heart of the Palestinian population." This is the first time that the leader of the conservative Likud Party has promised to remove Jewish settlements in occupied lands. But no details were offered, and it seems likely that Mr. Sharon hopes only to move some isolated settlements alongside others still within occupied areas, rapidly complete a physical barrier and, in effect, tell the Palestinians that he has nothing further to say to them.

His promise to remove about 100 settlement outposts put up in the last few years is welcome, although it was not the first time he has made it. The hilltop outposts are not only a stick in the eye of Palestinians but also illegal by Mr. Sharon's own reckoning. Their dismantling, along with humanitarian steps that he offered — removing closures and curfews on Palestinians and reducing the number of roadblocks in the occupied areas — are vital. But they are insufficient, and his threat that if Palestinians do not make a move "in a few months" he will act unilaterally seems likely to increase violence and instability.

The speech, at a national conference on security, included some important assurances — that Israel has no desire to govern the Palestinians and that he wants "a democratic Palestinian state with territorial contiguity" and "economic viability." But until Israel matches such promises with real action on its own side, they remain in the realm of rhetoric.

Mr. Sharon's words reflected a noticeable shift on the Israeli right recently. Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister, has been speaking about the need to face the reality that Jews will, in the coming years, be a minority in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, meaning Israel and the occupied areas. For Israel to remain both Jewish and democratic, he said, it must leave large swaths of conquered lands and move tens of thousands of settlers.

Israel does indeed face a demographic problem, something Israelis on the left have been saying for years. It is heartening that key members of Likud seem finally to understand. Unfortunately, they fail to realize that drawing a boundary that maximizes the Jewish population is not enough. A viable Palestinian state needs to be built in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians have failed terribly at moving in that direction. Their leadership has been bankrupt and their resort to terror unpardonable. But it is as much in Israel's interest as their neighbors' that Palestinian statehood succeed, and Israel can do a great deal to help bolster the weak Palestinian Authority. In particular, Israel needs to find a way to remove its settlers and soldiers not from a few isolated parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but from nearly all of them.

I thought it was bad three years ago. Now the landscape itself is changed. New settlements spring up everywhere; more than 60 since I was here last. You can watch their metamorphosis from a handful of caravans, to some Portakabins, then basic bungalows and, finally, the bristling, concrete hilltop fortress that is an Israeli settlement. Hardly a Palestinian village exists without an Israeli settlement lowering down on it from above. Everywhere there is construction going on - illegally: wide, Israeli-only highways to connect the settlements to each other, great mounds of rubble and yellow steel gates to block the old roads between Palestinian villages. And there are people waiting; waiting with bundles, with briefcases, with babies, at gates, at roadblocks, at checkpoints, waiting to perform the most ordinary tasks of their everyday lives.

All this, Israel tells the world, is in the cause of security. On my first morning here we drive up through the West Bank to see the biggest construction of all: Israel's "security fence", a monster barrier of steel and concrete that separates farmers from their land and refugees from their homes. Brute technology hacking away at a living body of land and people. It rears up to block the sunset and the evening breeze from the people of Qalqilya, then spreads out to swallow great stretches of land cultivated over hundreds of years by the neighbouring villages.

This section of the barrier has been built right up close to the western side of the village of Jayyus. From the windows of the village hall you see it slide down the hill, snake into a huge S and vanish around the farmland to the right. Running along the inside of the barbed wire is a deep trench. There is also a patrol road, a swept sand track to reveal footprints and an electronic fence with hidden cameras. Alongside this barrier, at short intervals, red signs in Arabic, English and Hebrew proclaim: ANY PERSON WHO PASSES OR DAMAGES THE FENCE ENDANGERS HIS LIFE.

You cannot read the signs from here, but you can see them punctuating the acres that the mayor of this village has spent the past 40 years of his life cultivating. From his office window he can watch - on his land on the other side of the barrier - his olive trees waiting to be harvested, his guava trees dropping their ripe fruit on the ground. In each of his three greenhouses, 40,000 kilograms of cucumbers are hardening.

From this village of 3,000 souls, 2,300 acres have been confiscated for the barrier. And on the other side of the barrier another 2,150 acres, with six groundwater wells, are inaccessible, 12,000 olive trees stand unharvested, and the vegetables in 120 giant greenhouses are spoiling. Three thousand five hundred sheep have been driven off the land; actually, 3,498, because one man has lost two lambs. Three hundred families are totally dependent on their farms. Now their harvest is rotting before their eyes and they cannot get to it. They are feeding their flocks the husks from last year's planting.

There are yellow steel gates in the barbed wire but they are closed. Farmers are busy making phone calls, some are going to see the Israeli military to demand that the gates be opened. Eventually, soldiers arrive. Harvesting is a family affair so the soldiers face a crowd of men, women and children. What they do is this. First they collect all their identity papers. Then they call the people out one by one. Today they have decided that no male between the ages of 12 and 38 will be allowed on his land. Also, no woman will be allowed unless she is over 28 and married. So the majority of the farmers - men, women and teenagers - stand at the gate, the Israeli soldiers and the barrier between them and the harvest that is their sustenance and income for the coming year.

Two men set off to try and find a way of infiltrating their own land. The rest make their way back to the village hall. On the mayor's desk lie some 600 permits that appeared in the village this morning. They are issued by the Israeli authorities and made out to individual farmers. About half of them are in the names of people who can't use them: babies, infants, a couple of men who have been in Australia for 15 years. But that is not the point. The point is that the people know that if they use these permits they are implicitly accepting their terms: three months' access with no recognition of any rights to the land. They suspect that after three months Israel will start playing games with them. Permits like these were one of the mechanisms by which their parents and grandparents were dispossessed of their land in 1948. What should they do? Use the permits and try to salvage their crops and deal with the rest later? Boycott the permits and starve?

The next day a Jewish Israeli woman gives me a copy of the military order on which the permits are based. It names the West Bank land now trapped between the barrier and Israel's borders the "Seam Zone". It states that the people who have the right to be in the Seam Zone without permits are Israelis or anyone who can come to Israel under the Law of Return. That is, any Jewish person from anywhere in the world. But in this district alone, 11,550 Palestinians have their homes in the Seam Zone. "It is Nuremberg all over again," she says.

Today, the mayor is beside himself as he tries to get advice from the governor. One man tells me that his father, who is 65, is talking of buying explosives. "There will be no life for us anyway without the land," he says. The fighters and the suicide bombers have generally come from the urban deprivation of the camps. Now they will come from the villages, too.

Monday, Jerusalem al-Quds

Our taxi driver says: "The Israelis are clever. They build the wall and now everybody is talking about the wall. The wall is just a wall. It was built and it can be removed. The real questions are the borders, the settlements, Jerusalem and the refugees."

Wednesday, Bethlehem

It is less than two months to Christmas and the streets of Bethlehem are empty. There are no tourists, no pilgrims. On Star Street many of the shops are closed. The market where the neighbouring villages brought their produce to feed the town is deserted. The closures imposed by the Israeli army mean that farmers cannot come into Bethlehem and Bethlehemites cannot leave the town. The Monument to Peace built to celebrate Bethlehem 2000 has been demolished by Israeli tanks. The International Peace Centre - built on land where Turkish, then British, then Jordanian police stations each stood in turn - was used by the Israeli army as its headquarters when it besieged the Church of the Nativity. "They put up a crane with a box on top," says the friend who is taking us round, "with lights and a camera and an automatic sniper. And recordings. They played terrible sounds: explosions, animals, people screaming. All the time. Into the church."

In the church today, an old priest dozes on a chair. Two Franciscan monks are silently busy about the Armenian altar. A young man - one of the besieged "gunmen" - explains the Tree of Life mosaic to a group of schoolgirls. Three young women in hijab sit in a pew reading. And Christ and the Madonna observe us from the walls.

The settlements of Gilo, Har Gilo and Har Homa surround the city. Israel's military edicts are doing their best to strangle her, but Bethlehem will not lie down and die. The Peace Centre hosts an exhibition of Nativity scenes sent in by schools from all over the world. Annadwa, a new cultural centre, is buzzing with activity. The staff there are young and dedicated. They are headed by the softly spoken Reverend Dr Mitri al-Raheb, a gentle and impressive man who is fluent in many languages and has a beautiful and stylish wife. They run an exhibition space currently featuring a Norwegian artist, a gift shop that sells its merchandise on the internet, a workshop, a state-of-the-art media centre and a theatre. Today, Al-Raheb has been refused a permit to travel to a church meeting in Washington DC.

Every road out of Bethlehem is blocked by mounds of dirt and a checkpoint. Imagine driving along as you have always done, between Hampstead, say, and Regent's Park, when you come upon a barrier of earth thrown up the night before. Soldiers stand at the barrier in full battle gear, yelling at you in a strange language or a pidgin version of your own. They tell you to get out of your car - you're not allowed to drive here any more. If you're allowed to carry on, you will do so on foot. They yell at you to line up and they take their time checking your papers, questioning you - Where are you going? Why do you want to go there? Prove to me that your daughter/best friend/dentist/music teacher lives there. A few metres away you can see the new highway that cuts across your old road. Cars are speeding along on it, driven by men and women of that other people, the people that the soldiers belong to.

We stand at one of these checkpoints, my son taking photographs of the pedestrians waiting to be allowed to walk to the next village. Two soldiers leave the checkpoint and stride towards us, raising their M16s to the level of our heads and shouting: "No photographs! Give me your camera. You! No photos."

"Where's the notice that says no photography?" we call.

"Everyone knows. Give me the camera. I can shoot you. You take photo of me..."

"We took photos of the people waiting."

"You took photo of me. I can shoot you..."

"What's the problem? Are you ashamed of what you're doing? Show me the paper that says we can't take photos." This is Tony, our Palestinian guide. He's a film editor with an international press agency and has a US passport.

"I don't need no fucking paper. I can shoot you, that's my paper."

"Show me the paper."

"This is Israel, I do what I like. I can shoot you. Here I do what I like."

"This isn't Israel. This is the West Bank."

"West Bank? What is this West Bank?" The soldier turns to his friend questioningly.

My son tries to chip in but I stamp on his foot.

"Look: in there, is Palestine. You do what you want. Here is Israel. In your country, can you take pictures of secret soldiers?"

After a bit more of this Tony gets out his mobile and phones the army. The soldiers take off their shades and turn into unhappy young men: "You think I like to do this? You think I like to stand all day wearing this, and this, and this? This I have to do so my mother is safe in Tel Aviv." We suggest it might be a happier situation all round if they did this on the green line. "Green line? They can creep under the green line. Look: we give them everything. They always want more. We give them land, we give them water, we give them electricity. They want more..."

"But you are stealing these people's land. What about the settlements?"

"That is for the politicians. We don't know about that. It is the politicians." They go back to the checkpoint. We keep the camera. Tony has to take our photos to the army censor for clearance within 48 hours.

Tony's family's business is on Star Street, close to Manger Square. Four years ago he and his father pooled their savings and built a spacious home on five floors: one each for Tony and his three sisters, the parents at the top. He is married to a diaspora Palestinian who has come back from Europe to live with him in Bethlehem. Two weeks ago his first child was born. I guess he is thinking a lot about what kind of life his child will have here. On the walls in the street the portrait of Edward Said has taken its place alongside the pictures of Christine Saada, the 10-year-old girl shot in her father's car in March, and Abed Ismail, the 11-year-old boy killed by a sniper in Manger Square.

"Look at it! Look at it!" The arc of Tony's arm takes in the brand-new conference centre completed in 2000 and shelled by the Israelis a few months later. The large hotel and leisure complex set up next to Solomon's Pools and also shelled by the Israelis. And then the wall. Here it comes, creeping up on the west of Bethlehem...

Saturday, Birzeit

Three years ago, Birzeit university was 20 minutes' drive from Ramallah. Now, on a good day, it takes over an hour to get there. The Israeli army has blocked the road at Surda and though today the checkpoint is not manned, people have to get out of their transport and climb on foot over the rubble. I'm told that anyone attempting to remove rubble is shot at and that the rubble is replenished from time to time by the army.

We climb over and proceed on foot for one kilometre till the next roadblock. Alongside the road a market has sprung up with stalls selling food, drinks and housewares. There are horses and donkeys for hire, mule-drawn carriages and small carts pushed by men. There are also some young volunteers with wheelchairs for the infirm and elderly.

We walk along in the crush and I'm thinking of how one of the tasks of the occupation is to push people into more and more primitive conditions. But I am also thinking that this doesn't really matter, that it's manageable, that it's not the worst thing that can happen. Then I hear a low but spreading murmur - "They've come, they've come" - and a Humvee appears at my shoulder. The car is squat and broad and its windows are completely black. It is shouting incomprehensible commands throughits Tannoy as it moves in jagged, erratic bursts among the crowd. People step quietly out of the way but no one looks up. This, in general, is how the people treat the Israeli army: by ignoring it as much as possible. But I can feel in my stomach and my spine that the Humvee is here to show us all who is master, who runs this road.

Getting to class here is an act of resistance and at the university the Kamal Nasser Auditorium is full. No one wants to talk about the occupation. For three hours, these students and their teachers want to talk literature, theatre, music. And they want to do it in English.

But over lunch they tell me that earlier in the day the Humvee had parked across the university gates and the Tannoy had sputtered insults. "Provocation. They provoke the students and hope one of them throws something then they can begin to shoot." One young man tells me that a few days before, when the checkpoint was manned, he had been among some 200 students that the soldiers had detained there. Eventually, as the students protested about being made late for class, one soldier had a bright idea: every young man who had gel in his hair could go through. "Today," he said, "gel will buy you an education."

Sunday, Jerusalem al-Quds

Daphna Golan teaches human rights at the Hebrew University. She takes her students out to the "field", the West Bank, to research specific topics. The right to education, for example. Today, they have been south of al-Khalil (Hebron). The settlers there have been terrorising children on their way to and from school. The kids' journey should take 20 minutes but to avoid the settlers they go by back routes which take them two hours. I ask how old the children are. "Seven or eight. Today they went the short way because we were with them and the settlers could not harm them but we could see that the children were very, very frightened." I ask how the settlers terrorise them. "They beat them. And they are armed. It is very strange," she says. "You know, these are not the settlers that you imagine. These are young people like hippies. Long hair, bright clothes, rasta hats. They grow organic vegetables. They carry their guitars and their guns and they are vicious."

How many stories can I tell? How many can you read? In the end they all point in the same direction. Every Palestinian I meet (and many Israelis) tells me the same thing: what Israel wants is a Palestine as free of Arabs as possible. This is the big push, the second instalment of 1948. Israeli policies make life unbearable so that every Palestinian who has a choice will go. The ones left behind - the ones with no options - will be a captive population, severed from their land, from their community, caged behind barriers, walls and gates. This is the labour that will work in the industrial zones Israel is already building near the barrier.

The Palestinians describe what is happening as ethnic cleansing. They also say that they have lived through 1948 and there is no way they are leaving. Dr Nazmi al-Ju'ba has the optimistic job of restoring old Arab architecture in Palestine. "The Palestinians have many options," he tells me, smiling. "We can live in a binational state, we can live in a Palestinian state, we can live under occupation - but we will live in any case. And we will live as a collective; as a Palestinian nation."

Thursday November 20, Jayyus

The farmers took the permits. Finally, they could not bear to watch their harvest die. And then the games began. Abdullatif Khalid, the engineer who runs the Emergency Centre at Jayyus, tells me he has just come back from a smallholding owned by four brothers. They are struggling to feed their flock of 150 sheep. Since the beginning of November they, like all the other farmers, have been dividing a day's food over five days. They are trying to slow down the process of starvation. Some of their ewes have miscarried and some of their lambs have died. They drive their sheep to the yellow steel gate in the barrier. They have their permits and the Israeli soldiers have no problem letting them through to their pasture. But they refuse to let in the sheep. They have no orders, they say, to let in sheep.

Khalid says that all the sheep owned by the village are going to starve, while their pastures lie across the Israeli security barrier. "Can somebody intervene here?" he asks. "You know when birds get stuck in oil slicks or whales get beached, everybody rushes to help them. Maybe helping the Palestinians is complicated. But the world could help the sheep. That should be simple."

Source: The Guardian