RAMALLAH DIARY

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We reach two huge earthroadblocks. We get out, and behind these is a checkpoint of 4 soldiers, we tell them we are visiting friends, and get through. Then a local man takes us to the first of the 4 houses that we are to sleep in. This is a large house, threatened because one of the fathers sons is imprisoned for armed struggle against settlers. The father is a retired teacher, and he and his wife live there, as well as two of his other sons families. The son who is in prison had no ownership of the house, as is the case of the other three houses threatened with destruction. This is what I will need to argue, if the Israeli Army come, that the people who live in the house have commited no crime, and therefore to knock the house down is an illegal 'collective punishment'.

We are all fed, and given the first of our many cups of tea. One of the people brought to meet us is the headmaster of the local school, who wants us to get in touch with the family of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist who was killed in Gaza, by an Israeli bulldozer. He has planted a memorial olive tree to her, in the school grounds. One of the men translates what the mother of the man who owns my house says, she says any price is nothing compared to freedom, "will the Israelis ever win against women like this " he asks.

We are also introduced to our translater, a teacher in Asker Camp, he delightedly announces that his nickname is Tony. He explains that he got this when he went to Bir Zeit University, and he and his friend , both called Mohammit, noticed that the girls talked to boys with Christian names like Tony, so he started calling himself Tony, he said it didn't work for him, I said it didn't work for me either.

The next of the fathers was the ex head teacher of the local school, a very learned man. The following one was a local worker, and the fourth was also an ex head teacher of the school, who had just returned from as 5 month imprisonment without trial. All of the sons, two dead and two in prison were accused of armed struggle against the Israeli occupying army, and settlers. One had escaped from prison, for two days, and had been in solitary confinement for the last 6 months. Neither of the parents can visit their sons, because they are held illegally in Israel.( Occupying armies are not allowed to move prisoners out of the occupied territory).

All of the sons were well educated, and good at school, and it is clear that the head teachers have really got a strong feeling for education in the school. Our first translater had been a young woman, going to Nablus University, who has to leave the village at 6am every morning to take a long route, that avoids checkpoints, to get to college.


When we get up in the morning we realise how beautiful this mountain village is, it overlooks valleys of olive trees. On the other hand it is overlooked by an army post, that the Israelis have partially built on my hosts land. We are fed local produce breakfast, and a vast feast of chicken and rice at lunchtime. We are taken around four previously demolished houses, one of these involved the destruction of two other neighbouring houses. On one of the piles of rubble I photograph a small boy, who had lived in the house, and had two of his brothers killed, one in front of him. We ask the villagers their major problem they tell us it is the checkpoints, never knowing whether they will be open, or being forced to walk huge distances. We finally return to Balata to find that this morning the army had not replaced the rodblocks around the camp. Maybe we are getting to them.

Tonight a tank is parked at the entrance and the boys are throwing stones at it. They do this, because as one of the men in the village explained, not because they can affect a tank, but to show the Israelis they don't want them here. After a while the tank leaves.

4 am awoken by gunshots, an army jeep is on the road outside, about two houses away. it is shooting, but it is not clear at what, it becomes too dangerous to look out of the window. The jeep moves, fires some more, then moves back. It does this for about 20 minutes. It is quite scary, as we can hear another jeep down the road, and that is doing the same, they could be preparing to raid a house. They then both move off and all is quiet again.

Tony Richardson

Another destroyed house