Magic in Yanoun

I did write that I was involved in a car crash on my way back from a place called Yanoun, and the visit in the refugee camp in Nablus was also during this trip. However I didn’t tell what I actually did in Yanoun.

Yanoun is a small place the inhabitants left a few years ago because they couldn’t stand the harassment from the settlements and outposts in the neighborhood. They agreed to return only with a constant international presence in the village and declared one of the houses to be the “international house”. That is the background for the EAPPI’s role at the place.

When I was there I had the pleasure of watching Ghassan from “The children team” doing magic for the kids. Some of the tricks are in the video below:

We didn’t come early enough to watch the puppet show they had before the magic. We were busy in a meeting with Doctors without borders. They came to draft the need for psychiatric treatment among the people living in Yanoun.

The day before we met a boy called Yosef in the hospital in Nablus. He was burned on the upper part of his body after some phosphorous blow up in front of him while he was out with the sheep. It is not only settlers and outposts surrounding Yanoun. Also a restricted military area occupies the land. No signs show its boarders and anyway: The people need to bring their sheep somewhere and they would most likely do it even with signs. We addressed that a friend of Yosef watched the incident and might suffer from trauma.

Beside that it was a lot of walking during my days in Yanoun. I also developed my donkey riding skills further. All in all I had good days there with good food and enough sleep.

Palestinian photographing

I don’t like to tell it, but the average Palestinian has a serious handicap when it comes to photographing. One example was yesterday when I visited the refugee camp. It was a dinner gathering after the fast this day. My friend takes the camera and starts shooting:

The air flow is crucial for the result.

With the cigarette in the mouth instead of the hand carrying the camera the result turns out be better.

The food was delicious.

Palestinian reality

The team that will replace us here in Tulkarem has arrived. Friday we showed them the check points we are monitoring. Usually it is calm on Fridays during Ramadan in this area (not to be confused with the situation at the terminals surrounding Jerusalem). 

Queue, the new team reckons

But at this Friday they decided to close one of the check points in close to two hours while we were there. Then you have chaos even at a quiet Friday with queue as far as you can see in both directions. The excuse was a “terror alert” and a military mission in the Tulkarem area. Information regarding how long it would last were not given an some rumors was saying it could would be closed rest of the day. The only ones that were let trough were a lady and her child. This was after crying in front of the soldier for couple of minutes.

There were also flying check points*. Neither those are nice to look at. In other words it turned out to be a brutal meeting with part of the nature of the occupation for the new fellows.

Flying check point: First like this…

And then like this… It seems like a big share of the soldiers has a urgent lack of ordinary body language. A little later they were guiding the traffic by sitting in their vehicle and screaming from a load speaker.

*) flying check point is a check point established temporary on the road between the permanent check points on the West Bank.

War 2, Nablus

I mentioned that it appeared to be more than normal military traffic in and out of Nablus last week. The people there are used to military activities more or less daily and especially in the night, but it was more than usual the last week. In our program we don’t approach the refugee camps while the military is there. However, today, a few days after it has calmed down a bit, we found our way to get an impression of what has gone on there. See video:

Someone else was braver and recorded some of it when it actually happened. After 27 of 64 seconds, or the freeze picture before the start, in the video below a glimpse of the demolition in the video above is shown.

Then compare the machine with that one shown under the heading “War” below and I have the pleasure of stating: “I was right” (“You don’t want this one in your garden”. A check of the dates shows that the machine shown under “War” was on its way to someone else)

Car Accident, See the Photos!

On my way back from a place called Yanoun I was once again involved in a traffic accident. Also this time I survived without any injuries, In fact, no one was hurt. As far as I understand it was four reasons for this crash:

1. The old Mercedes I was in had bad breaks.
2. The brand new Volkswagen Multivan in front of us had incredible breaks.
3. The driver of the Mercedes didn’t keep proper distance to the vehicle in front.
4. A group of military vehicles had decided to turn in the middle of the road and covered both lanes a place people normally drive 120 km/h (I know this from other trips I have been in new cars with speedometers that work)  

 The driver of the Multivan inspects the scratches. The soldier to the lefts is wondering what’s going on. The antenna to the right indicates the direction of the military vehicle.

After the while the military is ready to go back were they come from.