1 Nov 2014

Most days we make our plans the night before. But today it was not clear last night if there would be demonstrations responding to the recent wide spread injustices, if there would be olive picking in the areas close to settlements, or where we might be helpful.

The end of last week a permit had been issued to allow olive picking in orchards higher on the mountains, closer to the illegal settlements over Burin (south of Nablus), than had happened in years.  But when the young boy was hospitalized by a settler hit-and-run the Israeli Occupation Force responded by temporarily revoking the olive picking permit for the Palestinians. (Amazingly they claimed this was to protect the villagers from further settler violence. By this logic they should just put all Palestinians in jail as protective custody; oh, I guess, that is pretty much what they are doing.)  Regardless of the revocation of the permit we have stayed on-call since the villagers might not get notice that the permit has been revoked and would need our support even more than before. But the rains that drenched demonstrations around the West Bank continued making the orchards too muddy to work in.

This gave us time to catch up on writing and to look around the beautiful city of Nablus.  Built by the Romans after they destroyed the existing town, the old city is very beautiful and picturesque.  Shops are in small arched alcoves. Road ways are arched over with buildings.  All forms of produce are exchanged in open air markets often protected by tarps hung across the road. Cars thread narrow road ways.

the street we walk every day

stairs to a friends appartment

vacant lots are a window to wonderful old construction

 just typical views of the old city

many of the streets of the old city are full of market by day