A visit to the absentees

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I have already visited refugees in refugee camps here at the West Bank. A week ago, I visited the homes of some Palestinian refugees inside Israel. It is not the homes they are living in. But it is the homes that they are still remembering and wishing to return to.

Around 750,000 Palestinians fled during the internal violence and the Arab-Israeli war between 1947 and 1949. Of the 150,000 that remained within today's Israel, 40,000 were internally displaced. However, more Palestinians have been internally displaced after this, among other things because of war and house demolitions. As I have mentioned before, UN called for the return of the refugees in resolution 194, passed on 11th of December 1948.

Israel never allowed this return. Instead it defined the refugees as "absentees" and took over their property, first by emergency ordinances and in 1950 by the Absentees' Property Law. Those who were internally displaced also lost their property in this way, as they were defined as "present absentees". An example of this is the city of Akka, where those who didn't flee, took refuge in the old city, where they were forced to remain. Families who had their homes outside the old city were defined as absent and thus lost them. How much was taken from Palestinians in this way, is highly disputed. The Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property in 1980 suggested about 70 percent of Israeli land. The refugee organization Badil says 80 percent.

According to the Israeli organization Zochrot, out of the around 700 Palestinian villages, approximately 500 were destroyed. Most of the villages were destroyed during the war, as Israeli forces blew up the houses, occasionally leaving churches, mosques and cemeteries. Zochrot also estimates that parks belonging to the Jewish National Fund contain 86 destroyed villages. Zochrot is working to make the public in Israel aware of this part of their history, among other things by making signs marking the villages, which you can read about in this article from Haaretz.

We visited one destroyed village now turned into a park, Lubya. There were 2726 people living in Lubya in 1948. Now you find only pine trees there, planted by the Jewish National Fund. If you go there without knowing the history, you will probably never guess what this place used to look like. Only when you search for it, you find little signs: stones and marks of foundation walls on the ground. Olive trees that used to supply people with food.





In another village we went to, Shajara, more of the buildings were still standing. For instance, there was still a well with steps leading down to it.



One interesting point about refugees and return, is that most Israelis live in urban areas, while the majority of the refugees come from rural parts of the country. According to Badil, it is estimated that in 90 percent of the communities that the refugees come from, there is no conflict with existing built-up Jewish communities.
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An image in captivity

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It's four in the morning, the thirteenth of December. Gjermund and I are walking through the Gilo checkpoint, on our way back to Beit Sahour after a week in Norway. There this morning is a special one, it is the time for celebrating St. Lucia. Although Norway has been a Protestant country for almost 500 years, at this day children dress in white and walk in candle processions while they sing about St. Lucia. Afterwards people eat yellow buns.

At the Gilo checkpoint this morning is nothing special. Like every morning, at four o'clock people are already waiting in hundreds to get through the checkpoint, so that they can reach work in time. There is no waiting room, just narrow lanes separated by iron rods. It looks more like a cage than anything else. It's outside. It's cold, the wind is blowing. Some people are lighting cardboard to get some warmth from the fire. By the entrance to the lane the desperation not to be the last person to get in is clear to see.

Just two days before this there was a candle procession in Bethlehem, not for a saint, but for a document. It's called the Kairos document, or "a cry of hope in the absence of all hope". It is a theological document, written by Christian Palestinians, as an encouragement to other Palestinians, and as an appeal to the rest of the world.

The authors describe a harsh reality. The tragedy has reached a dead end, they say. Still they do not give up their faith in a good and just God. To the contrary, they claim to be "inspired by the mystery of God's love for all". Because of this God and this love, Christians cannot give up their faith in humanity either. So the Kairos authors declare that all people are created in God's image and therefore carry a dignity that is from him. The occupation distorts this image in the people who are occupied, but also in those who are occupying. Therefore the occupation is a sin. And therefore an end to the occupation would mean liberation for both.

The love Jesus talks about is a love for enemies also, because they too are loved by God. But it is also a love that resists evil and injustice. If the church takes side, it is with the oppressed, the Kairos document reminds us. Church members are asked to read the document and to come and see the realities for themselves. The international society are asked to insist on international law. If it is not respected, it will be replaced by the law of the jungle.

I recognize the interpretation made in the Kairos document. The checkpoint lane is a cage. But so is the booth where the soldier is sitting. It is the image of God that is held captive.


From the wall.
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Latest on Umm Salamona

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While I have been to Norway for a week, Lars has been back to Umm Salamona. There between fifteen and twenty trees had been uprooted and burnt with acid by settlers. You can read more at his blog, At the Bank. For background, see my two latest blogs from November.
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Trees and threats in Umm Salamona

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After a week in Egypt, I`ve been back to Umm Salamona (see the blog "The hills are alive" for background). A lot has happened since last time! As much as 450 trees have been planted, almond and olive trees, as well as pines, which have strong roots that will protect the soil. Still the trees are only children, tender little plants hard to spot unless you come close. In spite of this they will be a strong defense for the land they are planted in, hopefully.


People removing weed. One of the planted trees in front.

450 trees. 2550 to go. It seems like a tremendous task as we tear away the weed, plant by plant. But Awad is working to enlarge support and resources. Next week he will have a meeting with the Palestinian minister of agriculture to ask him to provide a bulldozer. UN has promised to pay workers to help out, and the authorities of Bethlehem are also involved.

Others are not so happy about tree planting in Umm Salamone. Israeli authorities seem to be especially upset by all the internationals involved. The land owner, Ra'ed Taqatqa, has been threatened on several occasions. The civil administration manager of the settlement Azyon has warned him that the internationals are not good for him. He has a permit to travel to Israel in connection with his work which will now perhaps be withdrawn. A soldier told him that he would be kidnapped and that he would make Ra'ed press the thorns of the weed into his hand.

How can a hilltop be so important? Of course it is part of a bigger picture. The settlements are a way of making the West Bank part of Israel, by claiming Israeli sovereignty on Palestinian land (as the settlers are still Israeli citizens and protected by Israeli soldiers), taking nature resources from Palestinians and justifying the military presence deep into Palestinian territories, with the check points and closures that go with it.

It is part of a bigger picture, but still it is also just this: A man who is not allowed to do whatever he wants with his land, who is not allowed to take whoever he wants there. Someone who tries to steal something, steal it by way of law (as they use the old Ottoman law about uncultivated land), steal it by way of power (as they can withdraw the permit), steal it by way of brutality and threats, steal it by whatever means they have. It is the ways of the strong, but maybe, maybe the child trees in Umm Salamona will be stronger still.

The hills are alive

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Umm Salamona is a village south of Bethlehem. In Umm Salamona there is a hilltop lying close to the big settlement of Efrata. The inhabitants of Efrata and two other settlements in the area want to use this hilltop for a cemetery. The Palestinian family owning the hilltop has taken the case to court, and the supreme court ruled that the land had to be cultivated within three years, otherwise it would be confiscated (and beyond doubt given to the settlements). This is according to an Ottoman law that Israel often uses to take land from Palestinians.

The land owner, Ra'ed Taqatqa, with the local TV team in the background.

Some kind of apathy seems to have stricken the owner family at this point. For two years and ten months, nothing happened. Then Awad Abu-Swai discovered what was going on, and mobilized people in order to start cultivating the land. Awad is the same person as I wrote about in my September blog about the village Artas, which is also threatened by land confiscation, and where he has initiated a similar project. Every day people come to remove weed and stone and prepare the land for planting trees. Next week almond trees are coming, and in December olive trees. The plan is to plant a total of 3000 trees at the hilltop in Umm Salamona.

Lars, Gjermund, Christine and I came there on Monday because we had received an SMS from a friend, saying that Israeli authorities were coming to inspect. It was necessary to have as many internationals there as possible, to show the support that the project had. We were around thirty internationals there that morning, and local TV had also come. "Don't talk to the soldiers", Awad warned us. "Don't throw stones or burn weed"(we were carrying stones to build walls) . It was important not to give the Israeli authorities anything to complain about. But the authorities never showed up. They didn't want to with so many internationals present, I was told. They only wanted to speak to the land owner alone.

Removing weeds. The houses with the red roofs in the background belong to Efrata.

So we spent the morning carrying stones and building walls. It is a battle against time in Umm Salamona. Two months to prepare the whole hilltop and plant 3000 trees. Will they make it? I don't know. The theft and the injustices in this place makes my heart heavy. But it leaped when Awad mentioned the almond trees. It reminded me of a poem by Nikos Kazantzakis:

I said to the almond tree
"Sister, speak to me of God".

And the almond tree blossomed.

The wall we built that morning.

A Bedouin suburb

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This week I joined a tour to a Bedouin village. It was arranged by an Israeli peace activist, Rotem. I had imagined something remote and exotic, but Rotem took us to what I would describe as a suburb of Jerusalem. The village, Anata, is actually within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, as they were defined when Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967. But it is going to be outside the wall that is separating Jerusalem and Israel from the West Bank. All in all the wall is going to separate 55 000 Palestinians from the city that they are now residents of, while it will include three Israeli settlements that are now outside the city line. The wall is thus a good example of Israel's policy when it comes to Jerusalem: As many Jews and as few Palestinians as possible.

The Bedouins in Anata used to live in the Negev desert in the south of today's Israel. Today around 160 000 Bedouins are still living in this area, where they are suffering under Israeli discrimination, many of them denied such basic services as water and electricity. As far as I could understand, the Bedouins in Anata had been forcibly displaced by Israel. It seemed to me that their life in Anata was a mere shadow of what it used to be in the desert, because the space was so limited. For instance, the sheep were kept in small sheds, and could very seldom go out, because there were not enough plants for grazing. Instead the farmers had to buy food for them.



A shack for sheep. I forgot my camera at home, so Gjermund has taken the photos. Thank you, Gjermund!

Some of the bedouins still lived in tents or shacks, while others had moved into houses. However, building permits are hard to obtain for Bedouins as for other non-Israeli citizens of Jerusalem. The story of Salim Shawamreh and his family is an illustration of this. For ten years he tried to get a permit from Israeli authorities to build a house on his land. He was given different reasons why he couldn't build: that the land is sloping (hasn't been a problem for construction other places in Jerusalem), that the land is agricultural land (which it is not). In the end they just told him that they had lost his documents. Salim got the picture and built the house without a permit. It was demolished. The Israeli Committe Against House Demolition (ICAHD) built it up again, and three more times it was demolished, every time rebuilt by ICAHD. When we were there, the house was still standing, but Salim and his family are not living there. The experience has been too traumatic for them.



Salim's house. Rotem to the right, and Yusif, our host, to the left.

Between 2000 and 2008 673 Palestinian homes were demolished. More than 60 000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem are living with the risk of having their homes demolished. If you want to read more about this topic, see this UN report.

We did have a good time with the bedouins. We had a wonderful meal together, and then the women and men split and drank tea in two different rooms. We chatted together, watched Turkish soap operas on TV and then slept on matrasses on the floor. Was it exotic? It was both different and familiar. Islam, for instance, one of the women, married fifteen years old, and now, at my age, she has four children. But her favourite actress is Angelina Jolie.

A Geography lesson

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Last Sunday I had a lesson in Geography. My lesson consisted in a visit to one of the three shepherds' fields in Beit Sahour, namely the Catholic one. As I have mentioned previously, Beit Sahour is known to be the place where shepherds received the news about the birth of Jesus. There are three different compounds held to be the place of this event in Beit Sahour, belonging to the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Protestant churches respectively.

I have lived in Beit Sahour for a while, but as we walked through the gate and passed the rosary sellers, a whole new world opened up. Tourists whom I so far only had seen through the windows of their buses, strolled around the area. They were from all parts of the world, it seemed. Many of the groups had brought their own priest and were holding services. The air was humming with prayers and singing. For me, coming from a Lutheran context, witnessing the phenomenon of pilgrimage was something quite special. Religion isn´t much about geography in Norway, even though some people have started walking to our cathedral in Trondheim the previous years, reviving an old tradition from our Catholic period.

I guess you can call the shepherds the first pilgrims, as they made a travel in order to witness and worship. The word pilgrim comes from latin peregrinus, meaning foreigner. Still the shepherds were not foreigners in Bethlehem, they were travelling within their own neighbourhood. And these pilgrims in today's Beit Sahour seemed to feel quite at home as well. So maybe pilgrimage can be about being at home in the world, about seeing the religious significance of the geography surrounding us.

Since I have studied Church History and the history of Christian art, I was thrilled to see that there was not only a quite new chapel at the compound, but excavations of a church and monastery from the fourth to sixth century. The remains even included an olive press! I was especially fascinated by all the (according to my lay judgement) well preserved mosaic floors. Almost all the colours were gone, but I kept gazing at all the little pieces, trying to imagine the patterns and writings. Maybe they also said something about geography, about the significance of the ground beneath our feet?



Looking out from the monastery ruins, we could see the settlement Har Homa in the horyzon. Har Homa is maybe the most visible presence of Israeli occupation in Beit Sahour. Does this geography have anything to do with religion? The World Council of Churches think so. In the beginning of September, they issued a declaration calling the settlements illegal, unjust and incompatible with peace. The declaration ends with a prayer:

Jesus Christ, our brother and Saviour,who walked the roads of the Holy Land and lived as one of her people,

walk with those who find their roads blocked and their families divided through illegal actions in an occupied land.

Jesus Christ, our brother and Saviour,

who challenged injustice and offered new definitions of power,

challenge us to express non-violent support to all who suffer and to speak out on the injustice they experience.

Jesus Christ, our brother and Saviour,

who embraced encounters with people from different faith and cultural communities,

embrace and uphold all who seek a just peace and reconciliation between divided peoples in the land of your human experience.

Talking about water

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Since we're on the theme, I thought I could mention the newly published report from Amnesty International this week. It shows how water is distributed very unevenly between Israelis and Palestinians. On average Israelis consume four times as more water than Palestinians do. Israel controls the main sources of water at the West Bank, and spends most of it on Israelis. The average Palestinian uses 70 liters a day, while The World Health Organization recommends 100 liters.

In Gaza Amnesty describes the situation as critical. The only source of fresh water is polluted to the degree that it is unsuitable for human consume. The blockade and the war in December and January are the reasons for this.

To me what this report talks about is something that I have already heard about and seen myself. Driving through the West Bank, it is easy to tell settler houses from Palestinian houses. The latter all have black water tanks on their roofs, because the water supplies -as said in the report controlled by Israel- are sometimes cut off for weeks at a time, so Palestinians have to buy water to use in these cases. The empty roofs of the settlers speak their own language about whose needs are put first. So do the lawns and swimming pools that the Amnesty report mentions.

I have heard representatives of the UN and CARE International talk about the salty drinking water in Gaza and the severe consequences this has for the health of the people in Gaza. "Imagine to make your tea from salty water", the CARE worker asked. Israeli water authorities apparently don't have this imagination. They have already rejected the report as partial and false.

Here you can read what the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen writes about the report. Gjermund also has a comment there. You can find more information on Amnesty´s own website.

The bottom of the bucket

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In Norwegian we have the expression "bånn i bøtta" - the bottom of the bucket. It means that something is really miserable. I thought it was the right way to describe the olive harvest this year. We were told that it was fifteen percent of an average year. It wasn`t hard to understand as we walked from tree to tree in search of some olives to pick.

I asked why there were so few olives this year. The answer was that it had been too little rain. Someone also mentioned an unusually warm period in May. Olive seasons vary a lot from year to year, and it very well be that this year is part of this pattern. Still it got me thinking about the vulnerable balance on this earth of ours.

Some months ago I started reading a book about the climate changes by a Norwegian journalist, Klima - hva skjer?. There it said that not only are some parts of the world going to be wetter, but the dry areas are actually going to even dryer, because a higher temperature will make more of the moist stay in the atmosphere. After some weeks at the West Bank I have started to realize what an abundance of water we have in Norway, and I see how dependant people are on this resource. It`s hard to imagine how life will be in the Middle East with even less water, and trying to picture life at the bottom of the bucket makes me a bit worried.



If you speak Norwegian, and want to read more about the climate changes, try this website.

Why is it hard to pick olives?

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In two days 96 people are coming to Beit Sahour to take part in the Olive Picking Program, arranged by Joint Advocacy Initiative, where I work, and Alternative Tourism Group. The hope is that the participation of foreigners will make it easier for Palestinian farmers to harvest their olives.

Why is that difficult? One of the reasons is that farmers are being attacked by Israeli settlers as they try to work on their field. Often Israeli soldiers passively stand by as this happens, even though they are obliged by law to intervene, and at other times soldiers expel Palestinians from their own land. Another reason is that some Palestinians simply cannot reach their land. Sometimes it is unreachable because of the separation barrier, other times access to land surrounding settlements is made impossible by for instance patrol roads or barbed wire.

In some cases land is being closed off by Israeli authorities. They sometimes give the reason that this is to protect settlers from Palestinian attacks. However, settlers do not stay away from this area, but steal the crops that grow there or even live on and grow the land themselves. In other cases land is closed off by settlers on their private initiative. The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem estimates that settlers have blocked Palestinian entry to tens of thousands of dunums (one dunum is 1000 square metres). Farmers who try to gain access to closed off land face a complex and little forthcoming buraucracy.

Agriculture is the main sector of the Palestinian economy.

An olive tree in Beit Sahour. If you want to read more about the situation of Palestinian farmers, try these two reports from B'Tselem: Access and settler violence

Oh love, aren`t you tired yet?

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What has kept me so busy the last weeks is the Witness Visit, a delegation from different YMCAs and YWCAs all over the world who visited the West Bank and their brother and sister organizations here. I had so many impressions during those days.

Some were impressions of brutality. In Hebron, we walked under metal nets that the Palestinian inhabitants of the old city have put up to protect themselves from stones and rubbish thrown at them by the Israeli settlers living in the floors above. In Jalazone refugee camp outside Ramallah a woman told us about her seventeen year old son who had been shot by Israeli soldiers. They kept the ambulance away until they knew he was dead. Another of her sons had been put in jail for walking too close to a settlement. In a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem a child was crying because he had to walk through the security check without his mother. He was maybe five years old.

And still the greatest impression from the witness visit was the love. In Beit Sahour Nidal, my boss, gave a beautiful speech where he asked the international community to support Palestinians. I thought it was beautiful because I know that he has been committed to this cause for more than thirty years. What a faithfulness! In Jerusalem we met a young man from Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He wasn`t advocating his own rights, but the rights of his neighbours. Do I have the awareness and courage to see the wrongs of my own government like he does? Nyaradzay, the general secretary of the World YWCA, wanted to talk to each and everyone we met, the women at the food production centre, the young people at the vocational training centre. Everywhere she praised people for their hospitality, their good work and the care they showed for others. And she was right. In the middle of brutality and dire outlooks, mothers were still loving, young people still learning and hoping for the future, and children still trusting, smiling and playing. In his song "The Faith" Leonard Cohen sings: "Oh love, aren`t you tired yet?" It is not.



Nyaradzay and women working at the food production centre at YWCA, Jericho.



Children in the YWCA kindergarden in Jalazone.

The end of a month, the beginning of a new year

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A couple of weeks has passed since Eid, the holiday ending Ramadan, the month of fasting in Islam. Since then I have been too busy to post anything on my blog, but here are some impressions from this special time for Muslims.

Our first meeting with Ramadan was a friendly advise from the staff in our office not to eat or drink in public before iftar, the break of the fast at sunset. I have been told that in some countries you go to jail if you eat in public during Ramadan. In Beit Sahour, however, Christians comprise around 70 per cent of the population. As the majority, I suppose they can do anything they like. Not eating in public therefore seems to me like a token of respect and solidarity, and a testimony of the good relationship that Muslims and Christians here claim to have with each other.



My second meeting with Ramadan was a cake surprisingly similar to the Norwegian "svele" made on the street in Bethlehem, as you can see in the picture. I was later served such cakes, filled with cheese and nuts, by Christian Palestinian friends, who told me that they are called katayif, and that everyone eats them for Ramadan.

My third meeting was a TV series called Bab el Hara (The Door of our Neighbourhood), that I watched with my landlords Ammad and Munira. A new season is sent every Ramadan, with one episode each evening. The series takes place in Damascus in Syria in the period between the two world wars. One of the themes apparently was the resistance against the French mandate powers. There were shootings as well as what looked like conspiracy among the women, with the midwife seemingly in a leading position. Ammad told me that in Bab el Hara, Damascus has been put under a blockade by the French, which has made the show especially popular in Gaza.

My fourth meeting with Ramadan was at a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Palestinians need a special permit in order to get to Jerusalem. For many the only chance is during the religious holidays, Ramadan for Muslims, and Christmas and Easter for Christians. This afternoon was one of the last days of Ramadan, and also the day before the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana. The last days of Ramadan are especially important, both the last Friday of Ramadan and Laylat al-Qadr, the night when Muhammad is believed to have received the first verses of the Quran, and so many Muslims want to spend these days in Jerusalem, which is the third holiest city in Islam. Israeli authorities had, however, decided that during Rosh Hashana only men over 50 and women over 45 were allowed in. This went only for the Palestinians. Foreigners could pass through without regard of their age. This confuses me. If there were going to be soldiers on the checkpoint anyway, why couldn`t they let through everyone? This afternoon the checkpoint closed at 5 PM, just as we were walking through from Jerusalem to the West Bank. Lines of upset and dissapointed Palestinians were standing on the other side. One woman was crying. They had waited in vain.

My fourth meeting with Ramadan was my first meeting with Rosh Hashana. I`ve studied Jewish religious holidays. They seem so full of joy and beauty, and I`m sure in Jerusalem Rosh Hashana is. It was sad to see it being used in this way.



You can read about the checkpoints during Rosh Hashana here: IMEU

Dreams and realities in Dheisheh

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In the period of 1947 to 1949, during the armed conflict and the first Arab-Israeli war, around 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes. Today the number of Palestinian refugees is about 4.7 million, according to the UNWRA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). Resolution 194, passed by UN`s General Assembly on 11th of December 1948, states that "[Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date”. Still Israel has not allowed this return, and one third of the refugees still live in camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank. In total there are 189,188 refugees living here at the West Bank. Of these around 13,000 live in Dheisheh refugee camp, which I visited last week.

With 13,000 people on one square kilometer, Dheisheh is, like most refugee camps, a crowded place. Playing grounds consist of a few square meters of asphalt. People build new houses on top of their parents` roofs. Economy has gone worse because of the barrier and the check points, which have made it difficult for many Palestinians to get to their work. Today unemployment has reached 70 percent, we were told.

Many of the walls in Dheisheh were decorated with paintings. In one there were clouds with names of villages that the people here had left. In another one I could see the separation wall and a bird leaving a prison cell. There were sculls and dark colours. There was a mother and a child, sheep and a flute. In the midst of the dreary realities in Dheisheh, I thought I could see dreams of something different, something beautiful.


A playing ground in Dheisheh.













If you want to read more about the Palestinian refugees, you can check out this webpage: Badil

A henna party

In my first blog post, I suggested a description of Palestinian henna parties as a more relaxed version of Norwegian bachelor parties. I have now been to one, and I take that back. There is simply nothing resembling henna parties in Norway.

It was my sweet landlady Munira who took me there. The henna was on last Thursday, two days before the wedding. We went to a big hall belonging to one of the churches in Beit Sahour. Munira told me that all churches here have their own halls used for hennas and funerals. Apart from a few men filming and taking photos, there were only women present. Those closest related to the groom were dancing in a crowd in the front. They had beautiful traditional Palestinian dresses, and some had tied colourful scarves around their wrists. One girl was playing a drum, and others were clapping their hands, singing and shouting.
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After a while it was time to make the henna. My boss, Nidal, had told me that in the old days they made patterns on their hands with it. Henna was thought to give strength to the bride and thus prepare her for the hard work lying ahead of her. Nowadays she only sticks her finger into it. The henna was made by mixing henna powder with tea and dough consisting of water and flour. Parts of it were distributed to people who wanted to use it for their hair. The rest was shaped like a cake and decorated with cloves and a candle.
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When the henna was done, it was taken in a procession through the street to the bride’s home. Still there was the drum, the singing and clapping. Torches were lit and two bottles of arak (licker) and a bible were carried in addition to the henna cake. The mother-in-law to be waved the bible cheerfully to the rhythm.
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We walked into a house and a crowded room where the bride was seated at something resembling a throne. She truly looked like a princess, smiling somewhat shy towards all the guests. The women sang her a special song, she put her finger into the henna and was given gold to hang around her neck.
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The night was still young, but for me it was time to leave. Munira’s relatives told me that there was going to be a party now where the groom would get his share of attention, as someone was going to shave him and sing him a special song, too.

Maybe the henna is nothing like a Norwegian bachelor party, but I would change mine for one any time.
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Holding on to the earth in Artas

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This week Gjermund, Lars and I joined a group visiting a village called Artas. Awad Abu-Swai from The Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign showed us around. Artas is situated just by the security wall, which means that the land is very vulnerable for confiscation. The Israeli government gives different reasons for confiscating the land. Sometimes they say that land that is not cultivated, belongs to the state. Often lack of infrastructure and water makes it difficult for the farmers to work their land.
- Even if it belongs to the state, Awad commented,
- it should be used to benefit the population. But it is not, it is given to Israeli settlers.

In an attempt to avoid confiscation, Awads organization have decided to cultivate new areas in Artas and build small farm houses there, shelters where the farmers can keep their tools. An old dam is going to be fixed and will provide for irrigation. The plan is to make 30 such shelters before December. The inhabitants of Artas cannot know whether their efforts will be in vain. Many trees have been uprooted as part of land confiscations at the West Bank. Still these people are fighting with peaceful means, with water, trees and shelters.

Tea with Aimad and Kristin Halvorsen

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Almost a week has passed since I arrived Beit Sahour, a village just outside Bethlehem. Gjermund and Lars, the two other GoCYs, have moved into one apartment and I into another. I am really happy about the place where I`m living. It lies in a quiet neighbourhood with only pleasant sounds like the calls for prayer and the church bells. Right outside my kitchen window is Aimad`s olive field. I rent the apartment from him and his wife Munira, who live in the same building together with their two grown-up sons.

On Thursday Munira invited me for tea. She had just been to a henna party, a gathering for the women before a wedding (a more relaxed version of the bachelor parties we have in Norway?). We talked about henna, about olives and about Munira and Aimad`s family. Aimad was reading a newspaper from Bethlehem on the Internet. It said that the Norwegian government had withdrawn investments from a company producing equipment for the separation barrier Israel is building on the West Bank. Aimad even read me the name of the Norwegian minister of finances, Kristin Halvorsen. Suddenly a Norwegian politician took part in my tea visit!

The barrier is a big issue for the Palestinians, and with good reason. The Israeli government says that it is built in order to defend Israelis against terrorist attacks. However, it is not being constructed along the border from 1967, when the West Bank was occupied by Israel. In fact more than 80 per cent of it will be on the Palestinian territories. Many Palestinians consequently lose their land, as the barrier, with the belonging roads, fences and trenches, on average is 60 metres broad. Others have great difficulties getting to their fields, which in many cases end up being on the other side of the barrier. This is very serious for Palestinian economy, as agriculture is the primary source of income in the areas concerned. The barrier was declared to be “contrary to international law” by the International Court of Justice in 2004.

There is much to be said about this. Here is a link with more information: B`Tselem
And here is the press release from the Norwegian ministry of finance: Finansdepartementet