"The villagers can't get to the schools or the medical centers. They are surrounded by settlements, extremly aggressive ones, and are not allowed to travel on the Jewish roads. Yes, the Jewish roads. Palestinians are not allowed to travel on the road that goes right past their own villages and towns. They are also not allowed to use their own roads as they have all been blocked. No passage. No movement. If they are caught driving on the Jewish roads, they are fined, jailed or beaten. Sometimes all of the above. They cannot get to work, they cannot get to hospitals, schools, etc. There were hundreds of men walking along the road as we drove, they were walking because they cannot drive and there is no transportation for them. Coming back from what work they manage to keep. They are walking because their roads are blocked and they cannot use the Jewish roads."

Our friend the activist and filmmaker Ellen Flanders writes today from a tiny, almost totally isolated Palestinian village near Hebron.

Hi folks, well what can I tell you? The situation once again has spun out of control, dead people everywhere, ongoing violence and no-end in sight. Spending time in the West Bank and Gaza as opposed to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is of course night and day. I read all the reports various others send out and few people who are here doing solidarity work seem to move between both, perspective however, is everything.

Even city to city, village to villlage, it is important to draw the distinctions and the realities of daily life. Leaving Jerusalem for the day and heading to Ramallah in the morning, back to Jerusalem, and then to the Hebron area in the evening, gave me a chance for some of this perspective and perhaps wide-angle lens. I met with a gay Palestinian-American man who was kind enough to take me and my cameraman, Chris, on a little tour of the road from Jerusalem to Ramallah. I was wanting to try and find a visual way of describing this journey and landscape. Words are insufficient and I find that comparing it to Apartheid or ghettos, or anything like that not all that useful in the end. This place has its distinct appearance and history, much of it grisly and worthy of its own terms. I can only try and describe it as I have seen it both over the years and presently. It's funny you know, because in some ways while I know this place and spent some years growing-up here, there are many ways that I do not know it or the people at all. I know slogans, ideologies and symbols. I know the landscape from one angle and then another. But people, take a lifetime to know. And people are what *place* is in the end. And while I have forged friendships here, both Israeli and Palestinian, we have not grown-up together, lived together, or shared in each others lives daily over the years. So I will continue to know this place from anew everytime, which can both be a benefit and a loss.

I will try to describe for you some of the things that seemed both new and old in the past days: The roads leading from Jerusalem to Ramallah are often named in the most honest and blatent of terms. At some point we were on the *Okef Ramallah Road.* Okef means to go around, hence it was the road that bypassed Ramallah. As an Israeli, one does not want to be anywhere near Ramallah, one does not want to see what is happening there. Ignorance is serving the Israeli population all to well. It is amazing how many Israelis I talk to that know NOTHING of these towns, nothing (well, except that they are dangerous). The road leads to all the settlements surrounding Ramallah from Jerusalem. The settlements are spreading like a tangled web, getting longer, wider and more populous. They are sometimes quaint, sometimes more like small cities. They surround the nearby Palestinian villages and towns, cutting them off from their fields and taking the surrounding agricultural land as their own. This then impoverishes the Palestinian villages/towns, as they now have no means of income. They take the water, 80% of it, and control whatever flows in and out of the Palestinan towns. And the electricity. Visually, when you stand high above the settlements you can see them virtually strangling these places. It is quite clear. And then we passed the outposts and the new settlements being built. What? You say there has been a halt on settlement activity? No fear! They are growing rapidly, often attaching the new settlement to one right next to it, so hence now it is a *suburb* of the former settlement. Using it's name allows the Israelis to claim that no new *legal* (although all are in fact illegal), settlements are being built. Then there are the ones that we don't even talk about, as they slip under the radar screen of all press and media, not to mention general public interest.

When you look at the network of settlements you think, this is not going anywhere. These *facts on the ground* that have been established long ago, so incredibly strategically, and continue to do so, does not give me much hope. When the mainstream Israeli peace group, Peace Now, says *dismantle the settlements,* most of the individuals (the few that are left there anyhow), have no idea what would really be involved in this and how intricate and intrinsic they have become (hece there has never been a real plan in place to do this removal). How they choke and clog all that they surround and at the same time have families, trees, yards, dogs, schools, shops etc many who have been lead here by a government offering many benefits, easing the economic burdens they would experience elsewhere. I read this over and over, but a walk around brings it home again differently everytime.

Now contrast this with the lovely cafe that Chris and I sat in for lunch in Ramallah, talking to our neighbours about what we are doing there etc. It all can seem like anywhere else in those moments, lunch, drinks, cafe, conversation and a beautiful breeze. Nasser, who is at the next table inquiring what we are doing here, teaches at Beir Zeit University. He starts to give me a lot of pointers about all the politics and surrounding areas etc. When he realizes however that I seem to be quite in the know, he asks me how I know what I do? Am I local? I tell him, no, but I did grow-up in Jerusalem for years in my youth and so I am somewhat familiar. He asked me if my father was a diplomat or something? I said no, they were Jews, Zionists, coming to live in Israel. He was stunned for a moment and then said *Really? so you are a Jew?* *Really,* I said, I am a Jew. *And you are here, talking about Occupation?* Yes, there are many others like me, I am by far unique I told him. But nonetheless Nasser was shocked. And I continue to have this experience. There are only two sides to this conflict heavily endorsed by the media, there is us and them. The people are all but removed.

We leave Ramallah via the Kalandia crossing and it takes us an hour to cross. We sit in the car with the smell of garbage all around, the dust flying and a view of the new fence cordoning off Ramalla. The soldiers are rude by the time we get to the checkpoint and wave us through. We were lucky, some people saw that we had a camera and obviously wanting this documented, told us to go ahead of them. It is bedlam and it causes such frustration that you think you are going to lose it. But here, everyone does this daily. Humiliation does not begin to describe what it is like to be at the mercy of these 18 year olds that decide whether you pass or go back.

We then pick-up Rauda in Jerusalem, one of the women in my film, a Palestinian lesbian and poet, who is joining me and Chris and Ezra, another character in my film, to head down on the road to Hebron. Ezra has been working with this one tiny village that has had their access to the nearest Palestinian town completely cut off. He helps them to remove roadblacks, only to be replaced the next day. The villagers can't get to the schools or the medical centers. They are surrounded by settlements, extremly aggressive ones, and are not allowed to travel on the Jewish roads. Yes, the Jewish roads. Palestinians are not allowed to travel on the road that goes right past their own villages and towns. They are also not allowed to use their own roads as they have all been blocked. No passage. No movement. If they are caught driving on the Jewish roads, they are fined, jailed or beaten. Sometimes all of the above. They cannot get to work, they cannot get to hospitals, schools, etc. There were hundreds of men walking along the road as we drove, they were walking because they cannot drive and there is no transportation for them. Coming back from what work they manage to keep. They are walking because their roads are blocked and they cannot use the Jewish roads.

We got to the village to help open one of the blockades by removing a steel highway barrier and by removing enough of the mound of dirt that had been piled high to cut off access, to get one car through. Ezra says this is the third time in a week he has done this as the army or the settlers come and reblock it daily. We worked at night, in the dark mostly, with the hood up on my car, pretending whenever a settler of army jeep passed that we were having car trouble. If anyone from the village is caught doing this, they are severly punished.

After, when we were invited to sit for tea with the villagers, I was told horror stories. The settlers coming into the village and chasing the women and children in jeeps, beatings of old and young (the head of the village's mother who is 80 was beaten by nine settlers and had to be hospitalized). Ta'ayush, a Palestinian-Israeli peace group, brought a tent to the village where they set-up activites for the kids (as they couldn't get to school). They were chased from the tent and told, the children that is, by settlers and army, that if they have anything to do with peace groups or go near that tent again, they will come in the night and chop their heads off. Needless to say, the children did not return. I was talking to a little girl who was about three and was asking her about her sisters etc. She turned to her mum after our chat and asked her if the army would come and slice her head off that night because she was speaking with me. They sleep on the roofs of their houses in the summer because of the heat and the ants. The settlers come by at night and throw rocks as they sleep. They have torn down some of their few olive trees, destroyed their few vegtable patches, drive their jeeps through the village, terrorizing them, especially as they have now had contact with peace groups. Let's talk about terrorism!

The village has no electricity or water beacause the settlements will not allow them to run a wire or a pipe. The village has about 20 houses.

Again, I read these stories as you must as well, from others who are spending time working here, but truly words are insufficent to describe how horrific it is. When you are sitting there, listening, you are also trying to figure-out what these people have done to deserve this lot? To be treated as less than human, as people without children, without elderly or illness, without any needs. I am sitting by the light of the kerosene lamp under the most incredible desert sky and I am paralyzed. I am helpless and my rage surges. I can see how easy it is to want revenge, to want to take a machine-gun and terrorize these bullies back, to take away their rights and dignity. I climb down the stairs to my car, the dogs of the settlers are barking in the night and their towns glow from above in the most menacing of ways. I try not break-down and leave most reluctantly, both wanting to stay and help and flee at the same time.

That was just one day, and I get to go home.

That's the update for this week,
with love,
Ellen

Ellen Flanders
Graphic Pictures