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Home, and, it would seem, to work! I am intending to have a period to reflect, but then diaconal work impinges. Avigail wrote a letter to the editor about Israel which was responded to yesterday (11th October). People seem to think that everything is fine and dandy in Palestine. I don't think that 12 days in occupied territory (and Nazareth, an Arab Israeli city) gives me much knowledge, but we were privileged in the people whom we met as a group, as well as the contacts made individually. It was a huge experience. (and I have looked up "kabod"; often translated as "glorious" when applied to god. Sometimes just heavy or strong, but, as I said, often with the weightiness of authority and position.)

But there is other work too. The RAC web site needed to have a response to tonight's news bulletin and the Prime Minister sounding harsh. http://www.refugeeaction.org/index.html  At least looking for Avigail's letter (not found) a letter from Pamela Curr came up about the Siev 36; the boat that exploded on Ashmore Reef. That is worth reading. http://tinyurl.com/ylp4vac

And the photos. Always the photos. They are gradually being sorted. Some might soon come here as soon as I can get them onto the web somewhere.

In the meantime pilgrimages change you; I don't want to return to life as it was. There are other tasks beckoning. But the experience of an Old City being squashed by a burgeoning modern one, which includes squashing the people who live and work there, is hard to ignore. That most Palestinians do not have problems with check points is only because most of them (95%) cannot use them. What would life be like for me if I couldn't just pop over the boundary into the ACT? No coffee at Tilley's, no contact with friends... life would be so strange and different.

We heard stories of the intimidation and humiliation of going through Israeli border controls. I kept too quiet and compliant when challenged myself. But I wanted, needed to hang on to my camera (literally); and the paranoid soldier who thought I was taking photos of her couldn't, wouldn't understand that the images I saw as we went through the previous check point really were strange. There is no other reality for so many young Israelis. But the UK in the seventies was not this paranoid. IRA bombs were going off in London, street corners were barricaded off, I waited a few hours before the train could get into Inverness because of a bomb threat; I travelled through Afghanistan, then Pakistan and India just after their war; and on the 29th September 2009 I saw a check point where vehicles were stopped in long queues, rudely told when and where to go, and checked for bombs; soldiers walking around with guns (not so unusual in Israel); somehow it seemed surreal and strange. And cried out to be photographed.

Sorry, but in Pakistan in 1971 when I saw a Post Office with sand bags around it I wondered when the floods had been through. I was young and innocent. I am now 60 years old, still a stupid Australian; but not without a knowledge of the world.
Israel is paranoid. I agree with my friend Avigail.

If you want to live near Shechem, go and get Palestinian citizenship! Daniel Barenboim has it!

There, I have sort of told that story. I wasn't arrested; the rest of the group weren't questioned; being taken outside and questioned while I was busy deleting offending photos didn't hold up the group; (immigration still takes time!) Fortunately there was an older man who had a clearer head. And I still have the camera, just minus some good photos and a record of a boring border crossing. (unlike the one coming into Israel which was so chaotic that taking photos was the last thing on my mind!)