Our first night was spent in Al Jiftlik, a village with the surreal scenario of being half area B and half area C, meaning half gets electricity and building rights while the other half lives in the 9th Century. (We ate in area B and slept in area C, at least Palestinians still have permission for this.) This is the village reported by previous delegations as having a tent school due to Israel’s refusal to allow the Palestinians to educate themselves.

Nawal, Head teacher of Al Jiftlik school, explained that, thanks to serious pressure from the manager of UNESCO France on the Israeli authorities, they were finally allowed to build a permanent structure. The small school made by the efforts of the local community has already seen its first graduates go to Najaf University in Nablus. A larger school is in the final stages of being built with Malaysian Government funding. Connecting electricity to the schools was a separate battle finally won. Apparently Israel felt that electric infrastructure would ruin this area. Messing up the environment is a victor’s privilege I guess. I was surprised to find that this school is in area B and therefore by their own rules should have been allowed to be built with no fuss.

Next stop was the United Palestinian Medical Relief Councils (UPMRC) clinic. One of two clinics in Al Jiftlik. This has one Doctor, one dentist and two health workers. There are two clinics but this is the only one with a doctor who lives locally and so opens in the day and the evening and has a doctor able to do night visits. This for more than 5000 people in the area he has to cover. The other Doctor lives in Jenin and cannot always get through the checkpoints to work. The main reason for this is the difficulty of attracting a doctor to an area without electricity. Most would prefer to work in Jericho or Nablus, this doctor however prefers to live in the village he was raised. As well as his official duties he has responsibilities for the UPMRC and is on the management committee of a local NGO with responsibilities for preventative health classes. Frankly I wonder how he gets time to sleep.

Later we moved on to a food security project developed by the Economic and Social Development Centre (ESDC) of Palestine and funded by Oxfam. The project helps poverty stricken farmers to gain food security and independence. Part of the project is a crèche to look after the children of farmers working in the fields, part is a women’s group helping set up a food and handicrafts production centre and marketing the produce through exhibitions(a bit like farmers markets back home), which have already resulted in their work being sold in supermarkets in Ramallah. They also have a solar powered drying machine for herbs and semolina, a greenhouse project and have provided the poorer families with five goats or sheep each, plus training in livestock rearing. We were told families with 5 sheep now have 36. ECDS start the project and will give advice until the members feel confident they can run it themselves.

After a lunch which showed the innate superiority of Palestinian farming methods over ours we moved on to Fassayil to see the school which the Brighton Tubas Group had helped to build. We were impressed to see they had started to build themselves a clinic, despite the likelihood that it will be demolished. (There is an injunction against the building of the school which is going to be fought in the Israeli Courts. There was supposed to be a hearing in March. Ma’an, a Palestinian NGO is paying the legal costs, as well as providing the furnishings for the school.)

A recurring theme in all these projects is the resourcefulness and tenacity of the Palestinians. The only reason they need money donated is the stranglehold Israel has placed on their economic development, everything else they do for themselves and do well. Allowed to build, Have electricity, use their own water as they please and given freedom of movement and trade these people would flourish.