Eye witnesses:
Ecumenical Accompanier's reports
8.11.08 Is it a military manoeuvre? No, it's olive harvest in Yanoun.
A Landrover from the Israeli military District Coordination Office, the DCO, comes into the village of Yanoun. Three armed officers climb out of the car and look down the valley. They are pointing and giving directions and...
7.11.08 Until when will this go on? House demolitions in Jerusalem continue
It all started at 10:00 on the morning of the 5th of November. It began with a call from a member of the Sabeel, to an intern of the Church of the Redeemer. A house demolition was to take place at any moment in the Shufat...
7.11.08 No place like home
Fawzieh Al Kurd is a remarkable woman. As you approach the house where she lives with her family – one of a row of dwellings on a hillside in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah – your first impressions are of...
31.10.08 House demolitions continue in the West Bank
On 30 September 2008, about 38 structures were demolished belonging to eight households of the Mughayir al Dir Bedouin community, near Ma’ale Mikhmas settlement. The EAPPI was there to witness the destruction and hopelessness at...
6.10.08 A pleasant experience at the Jubarah checkpoint
Of the two checkpoints at Jubarah, the one nearest the village, the villagers say, is the worst. Our first encounter with the soldiers was strange. As we walked up, the soldiers, who all looked very young, had just turned away a...
6.10.08 Fridays of Ramadan at Bethlehem Checkpoint
We have been through four of these so-called Ramadan Fridays at the Bethlehem checkpoint, each time spending about 6 hours there, watching over 5000 people squeeze through bars and past each other. These people want to go pray;...
6.10.08 Yanoun: One village, two descriptions
The village of Yanoun, where I'm placed in as an Ecumenical Accompanier, is a place that could be described from two different perspectives, one pastoral and one less pastoral. The pastoral description is of a small village with...
2.10.08 Muted Eid Al Fitr in Yanoun
It must have taken Umm Mustapha* all morning to get her daughters ready to go out. A mother of six from Yanoun, a tiny village in the West Bank, she would have been up at dawn, making breakfast, locating clean pairs of jeans and...
26.09.08 Mixed fruit salad in the Holy Land
It is the 16th September 2008; it is a warm day and not much of a breeze. We have an early appointment with an Israeli woman activist, Gila Svirsky. She is well known for demonstrations with the peace movement, Women in Black,...
12.09.08 Our first day in Tulkarem
None of us new EAs slept well last night, our first in the town, We had travelled up from Jerusalem by public transport and all had been stunned by our first sight of the menacing stretch of 'the Wall', or 'Separation Barrier'...
