I am not stating the death of this blog but I am taking a step back from it. I think I was a dash overzealous to think I would continue to publish stories from my time in the West Bank that concluded over a month ago while there are such serious events unfolding in the Gaza Strip. Go read about the people who are living there and writing about it!

I have some longer opinion/literary journalistic pieces I am beating away at that will be posted here and my Flickr page will continually have some new photos of the West Bank going up there – so pop in there or subscribe to my RSS.

Stay tuned – but only in a passive way
Thanks for reading up to this point
Over and out

I used to want to work for the United Nations and if pushed to it I would still have to say that I do believe in what the organisation tries to do – despite all its faults. But I just don’t think me sitting in that UN decaled car driving around Jerusalem or the West Bank is something I want to do anymore. I won’t get into the details of the why…or maybe I will, but I think their presence in WB is somewhat useless. The organisation has such high ideals but little muscle to make any of them a reality. When a country such as Sudan commits certain atrocities they have sanctions slapped down on them, at the least. Now, this wasn’t an easy task to do, granted, but Israel has been committing low-level abuses for decades and not a hint of sanctions.

During Ramadan in this year, I was present at the Gilo terminal in Bethlehem and both UNWRA and UNOCHA were there. But what surprised me was that these people stood on the Bethlehem side and stood…and stood. Perhaps there was a moment when they could help explain the rules to some of the people who were turned away from the checkpoint but could they assist in the matter – no. I was chatting to one of the UNWRA women there and she consistently complained that the people did not appreciate her being there. The Palestinian people have watched the wall been built and completed and watched the UN at the same time document it without making a change. I don’t blame them for having a complaint or two. This is all the more frightening when none of the non-local UN staff there had even seen the inside of the terminal and were unsure of how it worked.

UNOCHA is more of an enigma. Why is a humanitarian coordination office here in WB, one of the biggest deployments in the world, when this is not a humanitarian crisis? A humanitarian dignity crisis to be sure, but not an emergency crisis like say, Haiti. Why all the millions pumped into this observation? I am not the only one asking this question.

And furthermore, their staff are not allowed to be in WB after dark, nor are they allowed to be in certain parts of East Jerusalem after 23:00, for reasons of security. It is hardly imaginable that abuses of human rights are going to occur within suitable hours for the UN to be able to witness and document. I realize that these concerns are really for insurance purposes. But are you here to see or are you not?

If your role here is to merely document – make that clear. Do not make out like you are here to make things better and make the Israeli government do things differently. It is clear you have no such power.

Ah, this post could get out of hand. I will stop there. I don’t want to try and get into a analysis of the effectiveness of the UN in Israel. What I do find interesting however is that there are members of the Knesset and firm Israel supporters who moan about the effectiveness of the UN in Israel. Does that make sense to anyone? Of course the sense of that comments depends on which party of the Knesset you are a member of, but non-Knesset, pro-Israel supporters – what exactly do you want the UN to do? Punish you? Stop the workers getting upset at the terminals? Bizarre.

To cut this short, I lost a lot of respect for the UN during my time in the West Bank. I didn’t loose respect for international law but I do have my concerns for whether it matters if it can’t be enforced. Perhaps the UN works like this in all areas of the world in which it is needed. Only further explorations will tell that one.

Grrrrr……

Pat Woods, humanitarian aid worker in the West Bank.

A quote particularly pertinent in light of the recent events in Hebron. See some coverage of these events here and here

The Sderot media centre tells us that some 7000 rockets have exploded in Sderot to this date, 10,000 in total. That’s a lot of rockets. Twelve people have died so far. You wouldn’t know it by looking around the town. Even today on an alert day people still go about their business. But if you look a little closer there are indeed rocket-created potholes in the pavement and cement. What look like splattered bullet holes and other structural damage from bits of shrapnel litter the walls of the surrounding buildings. One man showed us the inside of his home and the holes in his ceiling from flying shrapnel from a Qassam rocket that landed outside his apartment block. Most of the homes that have been hit are repaired quickly by the municipality, or some level of compensation is given and the structure destroyed although this is rarely necessary.

I can imagine the stress of living with this everyday. Residents speak of symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress in their children. The adults are constantly concerned about the ‘what-if’ factor. And the town is certainly not a bustling economic centre so I do wonder why people stay here. But ask anyone who is able to leave, why they stay in the face of attack and they talk of home, purpose and principle.

Contrary to popular belief, Hamas are not the only armed group within Gaza who swear on the destruction of Israel. In fact, there are six and any peace process or cease-fire needs to include these other groups. It is no good to have Hamas sign a cease-fire when others can send there own rockets – Hamas of course, needs to have more control in their territory. And what is even more interesting is that the rockets that do leave Gaza are all group-identifiable based on their wing design. All six groups: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Resistance Committees, Fatah-Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine have their own wing design and rocket names. All are traceable to a particular ideology you might say.

We drive out of Sderot and stand on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip, the Mediterranean glistening on the other side, some 15 kilometres away from us. But in between us and her waters is a world of hurt. So many people, some one and half million caught in a fight most of them have no interest in. You blame the Palestinians for firing rockets, and you blame the Israelis for their policy of collective punishment that allows such a barricade of Gaza Strip. Each side is right and each wrong. People are people and the conflict is bad for everyone. A human story is a human story; the only requirement is that you are human. Residents of the Gaza Strip are as innocent of victims as those of Sderot.

Ok, I have left the West Bank as of two days ago, but I have such a backlog of stories and pics that I need to go through so for the sake of completion I will continue adding them to the blog. Perhaps that is a little weird but however….

The remaining posts will be picture heavy. 

Stay tuned!

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimates that some 19,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the Occupied Territories since 1967, based on information gleaned from the Israeli Ministry of Interior, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Civil Administration, OCHA and other UN sources, Palestinian human rights groups, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other sources.

Interesting read. And considering that I was witness to a house demolition in the Arab neighbourhood of Silwan, near the old city of Jerusalem on Wednesday, these kind of documents bring home the unjust policies of the Israeli government. It is hard to get your head around it sometimes. 

Have a read: http://www.scribd.com/doc/7581116/ICAHD-House-Demolition-Statistics-in-Palestine

Everything is debatable – I have to keep telling myself that.