Summing it all up?
I'm coming to the end of my two-week stay here. I'm trying to round the experience up, but it's so difficult to do. Actually...as I sit in the courtyard writing this I hear shouts and bangs. My first reaction is to tense up - it could be gunfire, an army or settler incursion into the village. I'm ready to pull on my shoes, grab my camera and run into the street.

That's one way of summing it up. There is a constant, everyday awareness of violence in PAlestine. It's violence that can come at any time, any place, from the army or from the settlers. Sound bombs at 3am; sudden curfews; gun-toting settlers in the olive groves; wanton destruction of trees and buildings. I'm trying hard to imagine what it must be like to live here, what's the effct on an entire society when its members live permanently with fear and humiliation?

But we'vewritten quite a bit about the facts of Palestinian life in this journal. There's been another side to our stay here too.

Perhaps the most bizarre remark I've yet heard here was the one made by a Tappuach settler in the groves of YAsuf. He told us that the Palestinians would "cut out our intestines and dance on them in the street". Had the situation not been so tense I would have burst out laughing. WE reached the conclusion that the only threat the Palestinians posed to our intestines would be from constant overfeeding on rice, chicken, hummus, cheese, bread...and then n we really can't eat any more they bring out the pastries and fizzy pop!

The Palestinians have been unfailingly warm, kind and generous to us. There's never been a daqy when most or all of our group hasn't been invited to share food with the families we harvest with, or to stay in their houses.

Sometimes their hospitality reaches absurd heights. Like when a few of our group - Noirin, Maggie and Amy went for a post-harvest lunch with their family (despite the fact that it's Ramadan and the Palestinians fast all day, they always preapre delicious lunches for us!) Having eaten and stayed a couple of hours, Noirin said to the family that they would leave so that the family could sleep before preparing the Ramadan supprt. To her amazement, the entire family got up and cleared the room immediately! Noirin, MAggie and Amy stayed in bewilderment for a while before going out to see what was going on, only to be met by the family's protestations and gentle pushing back into the room. It turned out that the family had misunderstood Noirin to say that they should leave now so that Noirin, MAggie and Amy could sleep in their living room! But they didn't seem to think that this was at all an imposition!

The only times I have ever felt unsafe here have been at army checkpoints or roadblocks, or around ISraeli settlements. I'm sure Palestinians aren't all angels, but I can honestly say that even under severe provocation they have remained astonishingly calm abnd reasonable.

I'm sad to leave, and also afraid that when I return, I will see yet more settlements, Palestinian villages cut off from their groves by the hideous "separation wall" and a mounting desperation amongst the people in the West Bank. I feel that time is reallyl running short for a people whose love of life and sense of community is so strong, and so generously shared