THE tour was nominally described as a Christian pilgrimage, one of the few ways in which overseas nationals are allowed into the West Bank.

But this was an alternative to the traditional Christian pilgrimages which usually spend most of their time in Israel and pay scant attention to the Palestinian people (including the small but significant Palestinian Christian community).

Our base was Bethlehem and as our bus had Israeli number plates we were able to pass freely — despite the inevitable queues — through the separation barrier and the other numerous check-points we encountered.

We visited Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, East Jerusalem and by way of relaxation had time in the Wadi Qelt, Qumran — where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered — Jericho and of course the Dead Sea where we could look out to the mountains of Jordan.

The programme had been planned in conjunction with the charity ABCD (Action Around Bethlehem Children with Disability). Two of its trustees were among our party of 17.

ABCD works across Palestine to provide hands-on support in dedicated centres for children with physical and mental disability — including trauma — and their families.

In addition to the one-to-one therapy given to the children, the centres also run educational programmes supported by ABCD dealing with domestic abuse and breaking down societal barriers to disability.

We were able to visit three of the centres supported by ABCD including two which were in refugee settlements and were one of the first group of visitors to the West Bank in two years, evident on our first day in Bethlehem.

After our visit to the Church of the Nativity we were approached by a photographer who wanted to take a group photograph. We relented and within the hour he had printed and delivered our photographs imprinted with the Palestinian flag as requested.

His joy in receiving 170 shekels (£40) was overwhelming. This was his first paid work in two years.

Afterwards I sat in the sunshine with a strong coffee on the terrace of the Bethlehem Peace Centre, listening to the sound of an Israeli military helicopter overhead.

That afternoon we were taken to the outskirts of Bethlehem to visit one of ABCD’s funded projects. The Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation is based in a modern building on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem.

Established in 1960, it has its own hospital, plus outpatient services for rehabilitation. One of its remits is to ensure that children with disabilities have access to education and to ensure disabled adults have economic independence.

The centre is not funded by the Palestinian Authority because the focus is on a community-based approach to health, rather than late intervention for individual specific ailments. 

Instead the centre is funded by charitable donations from groups such as ABCD and development agencies based in Italy, Germany and Belgium.

We were taken to the children’s sensory garden at the top of the building from where we looked out onto a newly built section of the apartheid wall directly below us. 

Beyond that were olive groves and beyond that an Israeli hilltop settlement on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem.

The olive groves have recently been seized from the Palestinians and will soon become part of the expanded zionist settlement taking away livelihoods, centuries of olive oil production and the last green space separating Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The main exit out of Bethlehem through the separation barrier is notoriously congested as it is the crossing point for Palestinians to get to work in Jerusalem. 

It can take an hour or more to get through the check-point and many people are turned away on spurious grounds. So, like many Palestinian people, our bus had to make a 40-minute detour to avoid that particular crossing point every time we left Bethlehem.

When in Israel, the road system is segregated with Palestinians forced onto substandard roads. Because our bus had Israeli number plates we had the luxury of being able to use both road systems.

The West Bank is divided into zones A to C.  Zone A areas are nominally under Palestinian control and usually consist of a village off a Palestinian road. At the entry to the approach roads there are large signs in Hebrew, Arab and English warning Israeli citizens not to enter for fear of death.

Zone B areas are nominally under joint Israeli/Palestinian control, and Zone C areas (essentially the majority of the West Bank) are under Israeli control.

One of the ABCD-funded projects is in the al-Arroub refugee camp north of Hebron. The camp was founded in 1948 and has been under Israeli occupation since the 1967 war.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reports that al-Arroub camp has one of the highest numbers of military incursions of all refugee camps in the West Bank involving tear gas, sound bombs and plastic-coated metal bullets.

The camp is characterised by high unemployment, overcrowding and poor living conditions. The sewerage system is substandard and causes flooding of the camp in the winter.

Although called a camp, al-Arroub has all the characteristics of a small town but one which cannot expand outwards. It is sited on 0.24 sq km (0.09 sq mile) and has a population density of 50,000 persons per sq km.

Consequently all new building is upwards, which, given the narrow streets, makes the camp dark and claustrophobic.

ABCD has recently funded a new storey to the existing clinic for additional rehabilitation rooms. 

We saw children receiving one-to-one care for ADHD, physiotherapy and reading projects. 

The clinic was fortunate to have outside play space, not always available in the camps.

From al-Arroub we went to Hebron. En route we diverted and drove through two Israeli settlements. These are invariably built on hilltops. My impression was that they were soul-less and apart from kindergartens had no visible social facilities. 

Nonetheless, there are numerous advertising hoardings throughout the West Bank offering cash inducements for settlers to buy into the settlements.

On our arrival in Hebron as we left our coach, we saw a large vehicle parked to the side and two Israeli security personnel openly took our photographs. We had clearly been followed from the settlements. 

Opposite were a dozen or so young Israeli Defence Force (IDF) personnel with machine guns. In Hebron we were made acutely aware of the ongoing colonisation by Israel of a Palestinian city

As we walked through the old part of the city, our guide pointed to the blocks of flats flying the Israeli flag above the Palestinian market area.

There is now netting above the market to stop the Israelis throwing their rubbish — including soiled nappies — onto the passing Palestinians.

A street adjacent to the market has been colonised and is boarded up for future Israeli development. After a walk around the old town, which is struggling back to life after two years of Covid, we were given a splendid lunch in a family home.

The host told us how his family has owned the property for six generations. They are now coming under increasing pressure by overseas zionist money to sell the family home for an eyewatering sum.

If they relented they would become millionaires, but they are resisting for the sake of their neighbours.

We had been due to visit the Nur Shams refugee camp but due to Covid were not allowed to visit so we diverted to Nablus which is a bustling commercial centre.

We went to the famous olive oil soap factory using traditional methods since the 10th century. On the streets were strawberry sellers from Gaza who have been allowed into the West Bank to sell their crop after a long absence.

We went into the back streets to see various shrines dedicated to those assassinated during the second intifada, including a deaf child who did not hear the IDF’s orders.

We were given lunch by a Women’s Collective who described the work they were doing around domestic violence and child trauma.

Our host was Fatima whose photograph appears in the Palestine cookbook Zaitoun which is available in Britain.

Every Friday at 5.30pm a small group of Catholic priests and nuns take a symbolic walk alongside the separation barrier adjacent to the main Bethlehem crossing.

They do so under the watchful eye of international peace observers. On this particular Friday they were joined by 17 additional participants.

An icon of the Virgin Mary was at the end of the walk flanked by barbed wire. After our silent protest, a group of us adjourned into the Walled Off Hotel, owned by Banksy, which houses a bar and art gallery.

We were visited one evening by representatives from the Hebron International Resource Network, a grassroots organisation engaged in human rights work in the isolated Hebron Hills.

This is very much a local activists’ organisation which has successfully campaigned for overseas funds to help rebuild the shattered lives of Palestinians, rather than rely on any funding from the Palestinian Authority.

The organisation has also forged links with sympathetic Israeli organisations, of which there are many.

One of the larger refugee camps is Jalzone, outside Ramallah. ABCD part-funds the charity, Association for Disabled Rehabilitation and Family Counselling, which specialises in speech and language therapy, medical advice, family counselling and housing issues.

We were joined by well-known local activist Mohammed Abdullah Sarhan who lives in the camp and who was able to show us around both the charity and the camp.

Again, the narrow streets and roads were evident, the houses were three or four storeys and there was no outside space for children to play. We were invited up to a rooftop of a house where we had a view across the settlement.

The rooftops serve as an outside play area and family space, a garden for growing a few vegetables and a place to site the water tanks.

We were told that it was not unusual for the Israeli Defence Force to fire from the surrounding hills at the water tanks even if children are on the roofs.

The owner of the house showed us the legal deeds of the family property from which they were evicted in 1948 and more symbolically the key to the house they left behind.

His and 33 other villages are now under the tarmac of Ben Gurion airport.

We were treated to lunch at the charity and were joined by Bassam al-Salhi, general secretary of the Palestinian People’s Party and elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

He was a member of the Palestinian delegation to The Hague on the issue of the apartheid wall. He spoke of the failure of the Palestinian Authority to uphold democratic freedoms and the failure to hold elections.

Later that day we visited the Palestine Museum in Ramallah, which gave us a wonderful immersive experience of the history, society and culture of Palestine since 1917.

We saw the tomb of Yasser Arafat and the bunker which he and his colleagues were imprisoned in during the second intifada prior to his death in 2004.

Our group had many discussions with the activists and academics that we met on our journey. A strong view is that a “two-state solution” is compromised because the map of Palestine has changed radically since the Oslo Peace Accords.

Zionist colonisation of Palestinian land continues at a pace with the tacit support of Western governments. The main arguments centre around peace, justice and equal rights with Israeli citizens for the Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and for those Palestinians living within the state of Israel.

To this end the activists that we met want to continue to expand links with those who espouse the Palestinian cause in the West and to get Palestine up the political agenda.

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