And it’s all thanks to Gordon Brown….

… Which those of you that know me well know is not something that I would often say, especially not in a positive context! However yesterday I had every reason to be grateful to him as he inadvertently helped me to experience more fully what the Palestinians have to go through on a daily basis – or at least those who are fortunate enough to have passes to go into Israel.

Well there we were, having spent the morning at a wonderful church service in Bethlehem (of which I will say more in another posting!) heading back to the checkpoint so that we could get back to Tantur for lunch. There were 10 of us ambling down the road when we get to a group of people stopped in the road and a large number of armed soldiers and policeman blocking there way. Asking around we discover it’s because Gordon is about to come into Bethlehem for trade talks and so they have not only closed the barrier but stopped anyone who was walking or driving in its vicinity. We were stood there for around 10 minutes in the very hot sun with all these guys with guns looking far to seriously like they were prepared to shoot them at any minute when an enormous motorcade screeches past at high speed. Another ten minute wait and then the same motorcade, having picked up Gordon and party at the checkpoint, screeched back at equally high speed taking him to his talks. We did wave but decided he hadn’t seen us since he didn’t stop!
Eventually the solders clicked the safety catches back on their guns and we were allowed to continue on our way… only to be stopped a few hundred meters up the road by a blockage of armoured cars and barbed wire across the road – this not moved for another 15 mins or so. By the time we made it to the checkpoint what should have been a 10 minute walk had taken us nearly an hour – We had given up hope of making it for lunch at that point but were still hopeful of making the bus at 1.30 that was taking us on our afternoon trip to the Israel museum. That was until we saw the queue at the checkpoint – because of course having closed the checkpoint for well over an hour there was now a tremendous backlog of people trying to get through – added to which security was particularly high and so passage through was slower than we had seen before. The hour we spent getting through was a salutary lesson of the reality of life here. We had the chance to talk to many locals in the queue all of whom were amazingly resigned to this sort of thing, many saying that an hour was nothing compared to some times when passage through the checkpoint could take 2 or 3 hours – no joke when you only have a 6 hour pass, the time of which starts ticking down as soon as you enter the checkpoint. How swift passage through the wall is seems to be at the whim of the guards, most of whom are army conscripts and so in their late teens. Tales were told of how, having just got to the front of the queue you find the booth you were queuing at suddenly closed and that your queue is re-routed to another one and so you are suddenly at the back again, or of the air system being turned on or off at random so that it could be unbearably hot then cold then hot again. The people we talked to said “I suppose we should thank the Israelis for teaching us patience” but I am not sure I am able to be so charitable – To me it smacks of people being given to much power at too young an age – and these are people who are instinctively wary and mistrusting of those that they are dealing with. It’s no wonder that such an awful situation has been the result.

So thanks to Gordon we experienced a little of the daily frustrations that face the people of the West Bank and for that I thank him, as I do for speaking out against the wall and Israeli settlements in the occupied territories - It is my prayer that the 30 million pounds he has pledged to help the Palestinians will be the start of something bigger – something that can bring some measure of resolution to this situation – and do so soon.