My Small Time in Palestine, the West Bank: My small time there, and why it’s important we in the ‘West’ know about it “I have always been interested in ‘challenging’ places. Perhaps because as a middle-class, middle-income white bloke, along with just about everyone else in my position in the UK, I’ve never lived in one or been challenged. 

I’ve made it my business to visit as many as possible: the USSR in the eighties, Belfast at the tail-end of the ‘Troubles’, Soweto during apartheid and Chernobyl after the horrific nuclear disaster. So it was only natural I wanted to experience Palestine; I wanted to see for myself what was happening (no matter how much someone tells you about a place, you always ‘observe’ more when you go yourself) and I absolutely love that no matter how awful a situation appears in the news, aspects of normal life go on.

In the USSR people were fascinated by ghost stories and assumed all British people lived in haunted houses or castles. In Belfast it was the inconvenience of public transport delays when someone inevitably sets fire to your bus. In Soweto entrepreneurs were setting up mini cinemas and making a fortune.

And in Kiev elderly people were attempting to seek compensation for every ache and pain, pointing to their knees and elbows saying “Chernobyl,” whilst younger relatives tutted, knowing they were more likely to have been affected by radiation from their own luminous watches; the wind was blowing the other way when Chernobyl melted down. And in Palestine the deputy head of the education ministry asked: “What do you think our worst problem is in Palestine?” I went for the obvious: “Oppression of the Israelis?” “No!” he said: “We don’t have enough plumbers or electricians….”

Getting there

I had looked into a number of volunteering opportunities in the West Bank, Palestine, and quickly realised I’d entered a dog-eat-dog world where organisations were flogging volunteering in the same way financial ‘opportunities’ and double-glazing are sold in the UK. I found out how, once I’d raised my head above the parapet, that disabled and neglected elephants in Thailand already could no longer live without me. And I had to sign up now, that minute, or they would suffer. 

I then came across the Excellence Center (annoying for Brits it’s not spelt ‘Centre’, as her majesty would spell it) in Palestine’s West Bank. What immediately impressed me was the ‘take it or leave it’ attitude, which some would find off-putting. However, after being hunted down for days by other bodies wanting me to pay to rescue neglected octopi, it was exactly what I wanted. I had to apply and promise not to drink alcohol while I was there, and I was accepted. I was in Derry, in Northern Ireland, when I had to pay for my accommodation via international transfer. I was with a friend, a scholar of the deep and continuing issues around that town, and told him that I had to find a Barclays Bank to pay a man in Palestine. He said that my money was almost certainly going towards weapons, such was his experience of how the IRA worked with its Middle East allies.

Anyway, I put all that to one side, and was sent some instructions on how to get to Hebron from Tel Aviv. None of it seemed straightforward but I wasn’t going on an 18-30 package tour to Torremolinos, so I was happy with that. And then I was contacted again by the Excellence Center with a request: a gentleman from Bradford, northern England, was arriving at the same time as me, would I meet him so we could travel together?

I was asked to get in touch with Abid so we could plan our rendezvous. He had decided that he would wear his Manchester United shirt, as opposed to traditional Pakistani dress; he thought that would make it easier for him to get through immigration at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. I said I’d wear my Queens Park Rangers shirt, which would enable 1) Abid to see me from a distance and 2) the Israelis to see me as no threat whatsoever, like my football team.

I arrived at Ben Gurion the day before Abid. I thought I’d have an easy time of getting in but was mistaken. 

• “Are you meeting anyone here?” he asked.
• “No,” I said. Well I wasn’t meeting anyone that day.

“Why are you here?” asked the border guard. I told him I was going to Hebron to help teach English. All the advice had been to lie and say I was visiting the Dead Sea and show a receipt for a youth hostel, which I’d not turn up to. I couldn’t be bothered with that, the guards would have heard it a thousand times before. They probably have a share in a youth hostel at the Dead Sea (which doesn’t exist) and rake in millions of Shekels from wasted deposits.

• “Why would you want to do that?” I was asked.
• “It’s a nice thing to do,” I said.
• “Are you a teacher?” the guard asked.
• “No.”
• “Then how will you do this?”
• “I’ll just talk to them,” I said. “I think my English is ok.”

He then moved onto Hebron being ‘too dangerous’. I said that I’d let him know how dangerous it was on my way back, which he found amusing. And then after some further theatrical deliberation he let me through.

I got a taxi to my hotel in Tel Aviv and eagerly set about some tourism and to bother the locals with questions. It didn’t go well. I sat outside a bar and some Russians came and sat with me and talked to me in Russian. “Angliyskiy,” I said, meaning “I’m English, I’ve no idea what you’re on about.” This was useful knowledge from my USSR days.  They summoned a friend from elsewhere in the bar who spoke English. “What do you want?” he asked. I said I didn’t want anything, and that his friends had started talking to me. “Maybe it’s best if you leave them alone,” he said. I was only too happy to do that and moved on.

Next on my list of nationalities to upset in Israel were the Croatians. It was World Cup Final day and France vs Croatia was on a huge screen on the beach. What a beautiful setting! I walked along the promenade to find a spot from which I could watch and heard shouts: “Get out of the way, we can’t see!” Some people in the unmistakeable red and white checked shirts of Croatia were shouting and waving at me to move. I walked over to them.

The best way to watch football

“You’re telling me to get out of the way when I’m surrounded literally by thousands of people? And someone else is already where I was?” I asked. “I tell you what, budge up and I’ll sit with you,” I said. Not only did I want to watch the football, I wanted to see what happens when they asked someone not as forgiving as me to get out of the way of the biggest screen I’ve ever seen.

Bizarrely they made space for me and though the entire screen could be seen at all times they were curiously obsessed with ensuring that no-one got between them and it, even though one human in front of that screen was like a butterfly on the Titanic. In the end it became boring as the match seemed of little appeal to them compared with crowd control. I had a further walk around and went for dinner, sitting at the bar of a restaurant recommended by my hotel, after fighting my way through the throngs of French people celebrating their victory.

This was nice because I could chat with the others there and the barman. The consensus of opinion was that I shouldn’t go to Hebron as, in agreement with the border guard, it was ‘too dangerous’. All had served with Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) but didn’t offer any opinions on the Palestinians or the situation. I didn’t push it as I wanted my fool’s passport to continue; I had been in a pub in the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland, when a visitor asked one too many questions about the child-abuse scandal there in the 90s. Not pretty. After several glasses of rosé, my last booze before I adhered to my ‘no-alcohol’ promise, I staggered back to my hotel.

Ben Gurion Airport

Today I was going to meet someone whom, though I didn‘t know it at the time, would turn out to be a lifelong friend. I continued with a bit more tourism in the morning and then left for the airport to meet Abid and then the difficult journey onto Hebron.

Abid and I had communicated via WhatsApp but he warned me that he would have to delete WhatsApp as the Israelis would go through his phone and ask hundreds of questions about his messages. They hadn’t done that to me. I could see that his flight had arrived and Abid confirmed that he was here but the process of getting him through would be quite long. He was right. It was as long as having odd-looking snacks from just about every outlet at the airport; seeing around 20 delightful family reunions and getting several tellings-off from security guards convinced that I was either living at the airport or carrying out reconnaissance for a future terrorist attack.

I was surprised how easily they let me go each time. Maybe my QPR shirt was doing the job? Anyway, after four hours, a bearded chap with a Yorkshire accent, in a Manchester United shirt appeared, looking shell-shocked and wanting to get out of there. I said to him: “You know they’re all City supporters in Israeli border control?” But I sensed that after the interrogation he’d had it was not yet time for humour.

Bethlehem to Hebron

Getting from the airport to Hebron, West Bank was the bit I’d been dreading the most. The instructions about taxis and buses from the Excellence Center seemed quite straightforward, but initial conversations with taxi drivers did not support this. Abid and I agreed a price to get to Bethlehem, but it seemed like the driver was uncomfortable with us. Nevertheless, he took us.

It was interesting looking out of the window, and getting to know Abid along the way. He was a teacher in a college. I loved how one of the first things he told me was that he taught ex-British soldiers, in case I was some rabid right-winger, desperate to prove that all Muslims were out to destroy the infidels. But I wasn’t that person. 

When we started seeing the signs for Bethlehem it made me a bit nostalgic about family Christmases past. But there wasn’t anything reminiscent of a stable with snow around it, wise men and smiling donkeys. If Mary and Joseph had turned up now they might still have trouble finding somewhere to stay but if they wanted their exhaust fixed or some second-hand building equipment, they’d be in the right place.

I saw signs warning Israelis not to enter the Palestinian territories because of the danger to them. I thought about how I looked: “Do I look like an Israeli? Do any Isreali football teams play in blue and white hoops like QPR? Should I be wearing a badge with a picture of the Queen on it, whistling Rule Britannia? In the end I just decided to keep close to Abid, he definitely didn’t look like an Israeli.

The taxi dropped us at what appeared to be a recycled Berlin Wall. We were ushered through a gap, a sort of passageway and emerged, like walking into Narnia, into a marketplace that reminded of trips to Tangier. There was an array of taxis in no particular order and Abid was able to use a bit of Urdu, which had some similar words to Arabic, to find us a driver. Though he had to buy some apples from a stall first, and he offered me one but I went all middle-class English and turned down the offer as it hadn’t been washed.

It was dark by this time so we couldn’t see much. Abid had suggested that I don’t use the seatbelt as it could insult the driver. I thought I would wear it at any cost, I could see the state of the cars. We reached Hebron and had some difficulty finding the college but got there in there in the end, and we were invited in for coffee and a chat about our time at the Excellence Center. We were then taken to where would stay during our time there.

The Sheikh

We were staying at an apartment either managed or owned by a lovely gentleman known as ‘The Sheikh’. I had to look up ‘sheikh’ as I had only seen this word in reference to Saudi ‘oil sheikhs’ and found that it was ‘a venerable man over 50 years of age’. I thought he was wearing well and didn’t look 50, unlike the sheets in my bed. Clearly they were from Brentford Nylons, a UK manufacturer of horrific nylon sheets and other items from the 70s, and hadn’t been washed since the last person had departed. The place reminded me of my sixth-form common room from many years before, but with beds.

I was introduced to my room-mate and other people staying at the apartment. With the exception of Abid they were all younger than my youngest daughter, but I didn’t let that get in my way and did my best not be to ‘embarrassing dad’. But because they had either Arabic heritage or were doing Arabic studies at university, I learnt so much from them and listened intently as they filled me in on what was going on politically and otherwise in the area, where some of them had already been for some weeks. Of course, I did have a little of my own knowledge and carried out further research but their take was vital for me.

On a lighter note, simple things like a PG Tips tea bag and a sprig of mint in hot water were a staple, which I came to love. But our other house guest, a large rat, was not so welcome. The Sheikh ‘sent the boys round’, as we say in the UK, who caught him with their bare hands and literally battered him to death with a shovel. Excellent service, if a little brutal to witness, which you wouldn’t get from the likes of Mercure or Marriott.

I recall my first night, lying in bed, trying to get to sleep whilst setting off a light show on the nylon sheets every time I moved. I could hear the call to prayer, a mysterious and beautiful sound which put me in mind of the many films I’d seen based in north Africa or the Middle East.

The Excellence Center

The initial days at the Excellence Center were frustrating to say the least. I was reminded of when I worked in Italy, when nothing ever happened when you were told that it was to happen. If you expressed any frustration at this you were seen as a bit odd and in the end you had to fit in by arranging meetings and making a note in your diary to turn up an hour late or not at all, that was the only way to get business done.

It was similar at the Excellence Center. On our first day we sat outside the principal’s office for a whole morning waiting to be summoned. We were told to go for lunch and we would meet afterwards but still no-one turned up. So we waited for a bit longer, and so it went on with arbitrary meeting times until at last we all met serendipitously the next day and I was introduced to my Arabic teacher. I immediately got up and shook her hand. The room quietened and there was shock on people’s faces. Abid explained to me afterwards that I should not touch or approach a woman in that way in Palestine; I was already labelled as a sex-pest on the West Bank, as if they didn’t have enough problems. 

Anyway, I got over it quickly and a time was arranged for our first lesson. You can guess what happened: the lesson comprised just me. I was beginning to worry, maybe I should have taken up with the handicapped octopi? I had learnt nothing, not passed on any English skills or even seen much of Palestine. All I had done for nearly 48 hours was sit outside the principal’s office, and I was only there for nine days in total. I was then advised that my lessons would start that afternoon. However, I didn’t believe that for a minute so when a lovely man called Isaac said he’d take some of us on a tour of Hebron that afternoon I agreed to go and, remarkably, he turned up when he said he would, and took us to see some sites and some of his contacts and friends.

Hebron

Isaac’s tour was a thought-provoking introduction to Palestinian life. We were able to see first-hand what the Israeli ‘settlers’ had taken from the Palestinians. Whole areas of land and streets had been taken, some built on and some left derelict. The settlers were also throwing waste into the Palestinian streets, much this could be seen caught in chicken wire above the passageways.

Even more disturbing were the people we met whom the Israelis had attempted to bribe into giving up their properties, and when they had refused their properties were taken anyway. One man we met had lost his wife and his children to Israeli soldiers after the family attempted to hold onto its property.

We visited the mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs where an atrocity had taken place in 1994. An American/Israeli had shot 29 people in the mosque, which led to further repercussions locally and across the world. We saw streets bricked up half-way down as in the Cold War in Berlin, where parts had been taken by the settlers. And we saw much graffiti featuring Handala, a character created in 1969 by political cartoonist Naji al-Ali. Handala remains an iconic symbol of Palestinian identity and defiance. It is said that Handala’s face will only be revealed when Palestine is free.

The boys are back on the Bavaria (non-alcoholic)

After the tour Isaac asked us to accompany him to his favourite haunt, a shisha bar. We indulged in shisha, which I loved and we had the biggest choice of non-alcoholic beer I have ever seen. There was every flavour imaginable, you see nothing like this in the UK. I tried to get to the bottom of the local fascination with non-alcoholic beer with the locals; was it an attempt to ‘live life on the edge’ or did they just like it? No-one was really answering this so I just enjoyed a Bavaria mango flavour non-alcoholic beer. And nodded in a friendly manner at anyone who looked my way.

Abid and I also carried out our own tours of Hebron. We visited book shops; the most delightful food stores, which I could have hung around in for hours such were the aromas of spices; souvenir shops and our special treat, bakeries and cafés. Before I get onto these, I wanted to mention here that I did not imagine for one minute that I’d be wandering around shops, doing ‘normal’ things; I had imagined hiding around corners, waiting for the bullets and missiles to die down before running between bombed-out properties. Hebron was simply nothing like this, and we could walk around and window (or actually) shop as you could in Bromley or Bradford.

Abid was fascinating to the locals. They seemed confused by him, where could he be from? In the end it was easiest to explain that he was of Pakistani heritage but lived in London. Bradford would have introduced a whole new level of confusion. Pakistan was popular in Palestine, it had recognised Palestine’s nationhood, and this resulted in some special treatment for Abid so I kept close to him. But don’t imagine for a minute that I wasn’t welcome; people went out of their way to thank me for being there too, volunteering at the Excellence Center, everyone seemed to know that was what we were doing and they were very grateful. I was very grateful to them for suffering my ignorance and constant ludicrous questions.

Anyway, back to bakeries and cafés. Though we met with other volunteers at the Excellence Center for breakfast most mornings, we wanted to mix it up a bit and indulge in the odd café breakfast on some days or buy unusual bakery goods to take in to our colleagues on other days. These were a bit hit and miss, mainly hit apart from the café where we were presented with something or another under a sea of olive oil. Now I love olive oil as much as the next educational volunteer but I wasn’t going to drink a bottle of it for breakfast. So Abid and I discreetly got rid of as much as we could in order that we weren’t vomiting profusely in the class room at 10am.  I must note here that I was also given a bottle of oil by the hotel in Tel Aviv as a sort of leaving present, olive oil really was a theme of these few weeks. On other days we took into the college bread with sweet coatings of I don’t know what and other things, the names of which we could never establish.

I think the only thing I brought to the party, so to speak, with the other volunteers was my love of restaurants. I had mentioned going out for a meal in some of the places dotted around Hebron and was reminded that they were only students and couldn’t afford them. I read out to them a list of dishes and their prices from menus I’d photographed, noting that they could spend less in these places than they were spending on their shocking meals at our apartment and they shot out to a restaurant with me faster than a Palestinian rat with the Sheikh’s rodent catchers after him.

Again, these places were a delight. They only ever had two problems: everything was chicken, everything, and no matter how extensive the menus (some were the size of wall charts), each restaurant only ever had three things at the most. But no matter, those chicken dishes were always lovely and we had some very enjoyable nights playing hangman on the paper table cloths and practising our Arabic, which was for me only ‘hello’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

Teaching English in the West Bank

I had come here to teach English in the West Bank and help people with their English and as a writer I was looking forward to doing that. I had some experience of teaching English before, teaching senior executives how to use apostrophes, and it didn’t go well. But I wanted this to be different.

Things had changed after Isaac’s tour, mainly because my Arabic teacher had actually turned up for the lesson but I hadn’t, so I was now an accepted member of the crew; when in Rome and all that. I was put into a teaching group with Abid, an American woman called Laurie and a French Canadian whom I called Gregoire when thinking about my French and Gregory in English moments. All lovely, lovely people. Of course there were idiosyncrasies, which I delighted in: Gregory had an amazing habit of planning a lesson in extreme detail so we’d all go in pumped up on how, for example, to help the young people handle a university interview but once in front of the young people Gregory would launch into how buy a loaf of bread in Quebec. I exaggerate but it wasn’t far off. For Abid and I it was frustrating yet amusing but for Laurie I could see that her professional demeanour was being tested. Laurie then decided to take charge of lessons, along with Abid, a professional teacher. Gregory and I then did our bit as teaching assistants, which I must say worked out very well for me.

The classes comprised boys and girls around 14-18 and I was staggered at how they were similar to the UK classrooms I was part of, with the ‘keenies’ at the front (mostly girls) and the naughty boys at the back, distracting, throwing paper aeroplanes, chatting, etc. I had no idea of how to handle this, so I left it to Abid to do his magic.

We asked each other questions, they wanted to guess my age, which was a great ice-breaker but moved onto religion. “What religion are you?” they asked. I wasn’t sure how to answer this, I’m an atheist but didn’t want to offend or be hauled up by the college principal or local Imam for encouraging disrespect of religion. But I just answered honestly and they shrugged their shoulders collectively and moved onto: “What’s your favourite pet?” I wondered if I was being led into controversy again here, I know that dogs are not greatly regarded as pets in the Islamic world, or was I over-thinking the situation? And there was no reason I had to mention dogs? But I did anyway as a longstanding dog-fan, and I didn’t want to lie to them. Again, they seemed ok with that and when we discussed dogs it reminded me of farmers I’d spoken to in Ireland who had working dogs, which lived in sheds and never came in to the house. It seemed the same there, with no particular religious opinion around them expressed. They were also used to seeing wild dogs around, and I had seen a few about. I was tempted to pat them but they were totally disinterested in people.

But the most poignant moment was when they asked me about my parents: “What job does your father do?” This showed scant regard for my age, I was most unlikely to still have a working father, least of all mine as he’s ‘no longer with us.’ I told them what he used to do and asked about theirs: “He is a prisoner of the Israelis,” followed by “He was killed the Israelis,” both of which were repeated several times. I found that the most difficult moment of my time in Palestine.

I had decided to push the envelope on my teaching skills, and got the idea of teaching English through limericks. And this was my example:

• I know a schoolboy from Dubai
• Who was baked by mistake in a pie
• To his mother’s disgust
• He emerged through the crust
• And exclaimed, “What a good boy am I!”

First of all, there appeared to be no concept of a limerick, at least in Palestinian Arabic, so that took more time than I thought to get over. And then we had to tackle what a pie was, not many pies in Palestine, let alone ‘crusts’. And ‘exclaimed’ was another hurdle.  There was much tumbleweed blowing through the classroom by the time we got to the end and I had learnt yet another lesson in culture differences and why teachers need to be trained. But I like to think everyone had some fun, even if it was at my expense.

So much of what happened was that which we see in UK schools every day. Treats were brought in from home for everyone to try, the girls were in the corners giggling about boys and the boys were gushing over pictures of Mercedes. A lovely moment in one lesson was when the boys at the back, who were supposed to have been asking each other questions in English, presented me with some pictures, of me. As I unfolded the sheet of paper with trepidation expecting to see massively exaggerated ears – or worse, I was delighted to find a drawing of me not only with a Merc, but wearing a three-pointed star medallion. I had been accepted by the bad boys of Hebron.

Tourism in the West Bank

Abid and I had wandered about Hebron poking our noses into shoe factories, shops, markets and anywhere else that took our fancy. We even managed to take in a football match in Hebron’s stadium (Hebron 7 Bethlehem 0, if you’re interested). But it was time to venture further afield and one of the Excellence Center staff suggested I took a little ‘holiday’ one weekend. Jerusalem was suggested, apparently I could even ‘drink’ there. I’m not sure why this was mentioned, perhaps my consumption of non-alcoholic beer (mango flavour) gave the staff the impression that I was constantly gasping for a pint. However, I had signed the pledge and would stick to it!

I booked myself into a hotel in Jerusalem. Abid had gone earlier; by way of massive coincidence, his son was in Jerusalem at the same time. Getting there was interesting. When walking past the taxi rank in Hebron most days we were offered trips to all sorts of places, yet now I needed them they all appeared to be on some sort of taxi-drivers’ bank holiday. But as an ‘international’ I could cross into the ‘settler zone’ and get a bus to Jerusalem.

I waited at the bus stop with all the guys with the black hats and ringlets, who were living on the land they took from Palestinians. One of them came up to me and asked me for the money for his bus fare, no-one on the other side of the wall had done anything like that. I refused him. When the bus came I got on and was staggered at how cheap it was to get to Jerusalem. Some soldiers got on the bus too, some of them sleeping with their machine guns on their laps.

I talked to Jewish friends once I was home, they spoke of their embarrassment at this ‘hard core’ of religion who took the land and then expected soldiers, paid for from taxes, to risk their lives whilst settlers just studied the Torah all day, making zero contribution to society or the economy, and embarrassing many Israelis.

Jerusalem is a wonder, one of the most interesting and exciting places I have ever visited. The meeting place of three great religions, with stalls selling very brief ladies underwear near to sites like the Western Wall. 

Introduction to the Holy City

Jerusalem’s ambience is so powerful that there is a hospital with a facility for those overcome by the mystique of the place and imagine they are prophets and/or saviours of mankind. It specialises in taking them back to being the accountants, mechanics and hospitality workers they were when they arrived.

I hung out by the Western Wall for a while, intrigued at what some people were wearing. I asked some of the young men in black suits the meaning of the cords they wore around their waists and they gave me an explanation about the four expressions of redemption. Though that didn’t mean a lot to me, I know that atheists can be amongst those most prone to being sucked into religious cults; ignorance and lack of respect for religion from some means they can’t spot the nonsense from the more generally accepted ideas, so I like to find out what I can, from the horse’s mouth. And like Islam, Judaism isn’t a ‘collecting’ religion so I felt fairly safe.

Though there other major sites in Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock and Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I wasn’t able to visit them as they were closed to visitors that day. In the evening I met up with Abid and his son, which was a lovely thing to do, and share the experience of being there.

Bethlehem

On the way back to Hebron, Abid and I visited Bethlehem, the town that features in Christmas carols, cards and stories of the nativity and is familiar to Christians and confirmed non-believers. We went to the mosque so that Abid could pray. I went in but waited outside the prayer room and was intrigued at the digital reminders of prayer times. I was more intrigued that no-one took any notice of me at all. Not that I’m Tom Cruise or David Beckham calling in, but I thought I’d at least get a “What are you doing here, shouldn’t you be in your place, across the square?”

After this we went to visit to visit the Church of the Nativity. Its grotto contains a prominent site of religious significance to Christians as the birthplace of Jesus. Normally you need to wait for quite a time to get in but Abid and I somehow became a part of an Italian tour and immediately went in with the Italians to see the birthplace. However, we were led out into the basilica where a service, conducted in Italian and Latin, commenced. I realised that this was being carried out for the benefit of the Italians and that we were service crashers. However, when we tried to leave we found that the gates were chained up and were sent back to our seats, possibly as a punishment for sneaking onto the tour, to endure the entire service.

Getting our fingers burnt

On the way back, we visited the Walled Off Hotel at the wall that encloses occupied Palestine and annexes parts of its land. It’s an art hotel financed by Banksy, with thought-provoking and occasionally disturbing art representing the denial of freedom to Palestinians. It’s like an English country house hotel but with multiple scenes of urban and other violence.

Unfortunately, I fell foul of the people here too when I picked up a book that I thought would tell me more about the situation, only to be forcefully told that it was part of an artwork. There is an exhibition too, and I was intrigued to listen to interviews with previous IDF members, ashamed at what they had been asked to do when in the forces, and of the Israeli government’s activities in Palestine.

Last days

The last days of my visit were hugely enjoyable as I became more acquainted with the young people and made more friends amongst the volunteers and teachers. I was asked to help with CVs, letters and even to play snooker at the Hebron Snooker Club (who knew?). A young man had apparently boasted that he was going to get a real Englishman into the club to show them how it was done. I made my excuses as I was hardly Dave Hurricane Whatever, and didn’t know one end of the cue from another.

Abid and I and the other volunteers visited a different café or restaurant every night, like we were Middle Eastern Gordon Ramsays, congratulating each of them on simplifying their menus, as Gordon demands, by not having most of the dishes offered on the menus. I drank my own weight in mango juice and non-alcoholic beer and after a few tearful goodbyes made my back to Tel Aviv, again via settler bus as the taxis had again decided to desert me when I needed them.

Summary

I would go again, in an instant (if they’d have me). I think that says everything. I learnt more about Islam and how observation of religion can vary. I learnt a little of what persecution looks like. I learnt more about the history of Palestine and the challenges in the region. But above all I learnt about the character of the people, their welcome to outsiders – and not to expect them to turn up when they said they would. 

And, of course, my brother from a Bradford mother, Abid, whom I’ve visited a few times now and got to know his family. That would never have happened but for the Excellence Centere. I hope you enjoyed reading the My Time in Palestine, the West Bank article.