Day 3 - Wednesday

Today is all about interviews. Having spent last night working on questions to ask the farmers we will meet the first job is to get them printed off so we can refer to them while interviewing.

A taxi takes us to Bethlehem because all of the car pool cars are in use. It manages to get the whole way there without passing through a checkpoint. The one checkpoint we do pass through is unmanned. This is not to say that movement is free. There are many cars and people not even allowed to travel the roads we take, and tunnels we go under to get there.

We arrive a quickly head to the mountain where we meet to farmers, cousins, and their families. These families have both helped rebuild their own huts following support from World Vision. As I'm about to spend the night transcribing the conversations we had there, I won't go into them. The land and their work as farmers is simple. But just up the road from their farms life gets very complicated. Most of the farmers have already had land confiscated by Israel for the building of a road and tunnel, their fear is that the rest of it will be taken to build and Israeli settlement.

Aside from this there is the issue of the wall. Currently we can pass freely between Beit Jala and the mountain because there is one checkpoint and the wall is not complete. However the completed wall will completely sever the people from their land.

Most of the farmers live in Beit Jala town centre but rely on the farm land more and more as a source of food to sustain their family and some secondary income.

We spend the afternoon walking between farms, and visiting different castles, in total we meet with three different families one of which is preparing to celebrate a wedding. The Palestinian girl is marrying a man she met whilst working in Germany and once the wedding is over she will move back to Germany with him. It is common for young people to leave the area seeking a better life.

One of the things she tells us is that she is most sorry for her mother, who grew up in occupation, and will die in occupation, and who never in her whole life experienced freedom, as she had in Germany.

These interviews are interesting and we take photos, afterwards, their generosity and hospitality is amazing and we are made to feel completely at home, and completely relaxed.

After taking pages and pages of notes we return to the Mount of Olives where I write this. This evening we will play volleyball and eat and drink in a cafe which is within the grounds of the place we are staying in.

We have many notes to transcribe and I envisage a late night. Tomorrow morning is free- and it looks like we'll need it!