Christmas in the Holy Land - Slices of Palestinian life
This video features photos taken across the West Bank. Watch the photos by clicking here.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Christmas in the Holy Land
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Christmas cards from the Holy Land
School picnic in ancient Tel Rumeida overlooking the mosque of Abraham |
School kids and Israeli soldiers at a Checkpoint |
Teachers and children each day like outlaws in their own city |
The Annexation wall in Jerusalem |
The Wall which seals off Little old Bethlehem from its lands |
The Structural Violence of Checkpoints - here Qualandia, north of Jerusalem |
The grave of Arafat, in Ramallah, criticised by many Palestinians, yet still respected by them as a leader. |
Arafats Monument in Ramallah |
Kathinka Minzinga photo captures the casualness of the occupation |
The checkpoint on entering Beit Ummar, 10 km south of Bethlehem |
The "security" fence which surrounds the settlement of Karmi Zur, seizing yet more land from Palestinian farmers |
The Israeli settlement of Karmi Zur, close to Beit Ummar, built on land expropriated from Palestinian farmers. |
Palestinian peace activist and Jewish American Michael in Hebron |
Palestinian engineer Issa and Israeli filmmaker Michael work together in the community house of Tel Rumeida |
Micha'el from Breaking the Silence, Israeli ex-soldier & human rights activist |
Palestinians at Friday prayer at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron. IDF in background |
Incursion by Israeli soldiers into Hebron |
Incursion by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian controlled part of Hebron, this time to allow Israeli settlers "celebrate" a historic site. The orange marches in Northern Ireland come to mind. |
To protect 500 settlers in Hebron the Israeli army just shut down the centre of historic Hebron, destroying the livelihoods of 1000s of palestinians. "Chevron" is pure injustice. |
checks stops searches, all a part of daily life in occupied Hebron. |
Settler mural in Hebron showing a very different perspective - return & liberation!!! Great, any chance the Palestinians refugees of 1948 can return to their homes in Israel? |
forced closures have devastated the centre of old Hebron. Once the commecial heart of the whole West Bank, |
In Hebron's old souk, settler's live overhead, hence the wire netting, to prevent trash being thrown down. |
SETTLER TOUR 2: these tours are the cause of regular incidents |
This is a road block north of Hebron, which we encountered on our way to visit the Maswade family. This causes local families to have to make a detour of 4 km over rough ground. |
Michael from Eappi, pictured at the Maswade house. Close up of the palet windows. |
I took this picture on my way north to Ramallah to attend the Quaker ceremony there. It shows the olive grove destroyed for security reasons |
Close up of the destroyed olive grove. |
Sunday, January 17, 2010
"Its Different Here" - It sure is - Photos from Hebron
It doesn’t convince in Hebron, the Palestinian city of 170,000 people where I’ve lived for the last 3 months, and where the security zone around 700 Israeli settlers who’ve decided to live in the centre of that city, deprives 40,000 Palestinians who live in that zone of many of their basic rights.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Living Near a Settlement
At 9.30am, my team mate Michael and I met our translator in downtown Hebron.
We haggled with a taxi driver for a price and travelled out to the northern end of the Givat Harcina Settlement to visit Mazen. Mazen rings our local contact in the United Nations regularly and is very nervous about attack from the settlers. We felt it would be good to visit. Our translater rang ahead to see if it was ok to call.
Through our translator, we explained the EAPPI programme to Mazen, and our presence in Hebron. Michael mentioned that he had been at an action with Israeli activists at nearby Buria Hill, where teenage Israeli settlers set up an outpost. Mazen asked if we had any news about the outpost. He said he took part in his first activist action there with Ta’ayush(an Israeli/Palestinian activist group) and Youth Against Settlement(a Palestinian nonviolent resistance group). He had never dared before.
Mazen’s house, and 2 other neighbours, are somewhat isolated just near the back of Harsina settlement. There has been more consistent trouble from the settlements since, after the beginning of the 2nd Intifada, the settlement fence was extended outwards. Now a rear gate of the settlement faces almost directly onto Mazen’s front gate.
Mazen showed us pictures on his phone of graffiti (in Hebrew, which said: “Kill The Arabs.”), and the smashed intercom. Inside the high walls and barbed wire of the compound (in place since 1992), where 4 families live, there were traces of a Star of David spray-painted on the path. Mazen also pointed out panes of glass that had been replaced, having been broken by stones.
Mazen had reported all this to the police, who said that nothing could be done as the people involved were under age, however, Mazen has seen adults also involved.
Mazen has also been in touch with the Red Cross, who gave him their 24 hour number. TIPH had also once, and had a look around, but they said that they don’t usually operate in that area. (TIPH are the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, observers from a number of countries present in Hebron since the Baruch Goldstein massacre of 1994.)
The road leading to Hebron has been closed for 7 years, forcing Mazen and the neighbouring families to take a long roundabout on a dirt track. Mazen asked what people in our countries thought, and what we thought the future held.
We asked Mazen if he would like us to came back and visit. He said we could call on Fridays, as he worked as a truck driver. As we left to go, his teenage boys shook our hands tightly, and said in English “We thank you very very much for coming, please come back again.”
video i made of Palestinian farmers trying to access their lands
This situation you see here, is repeated all over the West Bank.
Síocháin.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Hebron City and Region Maps
This map from http://www.ochaopt.org/ shows the network of control by the occupying Israeli army around the Hebron area.