Please take a minute to thank the Mail on Sunday for an excellent feature in its January 16 edition on life in Palestine by Lauren Booth, Tony Blair's sister in law.
Such articles are not common for the newspaper, and Booth must not be discouraged from expressing such views again, so please make your appreciation known as it will no doubt come under heavy criticism from the usual suspects.
Entitled "Struggling in the shadow of Arafat", the article is at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=334302&in_page_id=1811&in_a_source=&ct=5
We recommend reading it in full, but as it is rather long, following are extracts:
I want to see first-hand what it's like in the West Bank and Gaza. Since the start of the latest Intifada (uprising) against Israeli occupation, news footage has crystallised the image of Palestinians into specific types: urchins throwing stones at tanks; fatigue-wearing, baby-killing extremists; women in traditional dress wailing over dead children; and Arabic men shouting in broken English. It's an image that has never fared well in the West.
But I want to go beyond those cliched images to find the Palestinian life that doesn't make the news.
At Tel Aviv airport I face tough questioning: who am I here to meet? Where am I staying? Before I left London I was told that in the past two years, 85 Palestinian Authority guests have mysteriously 'lost' their luggage here after saying they were visiting the West Bank or Gaza.
Sure enough, my suitcase disappears, along with all the bags belonging to a group of guests of the Palestinian Women's Union. Their luggage materialises that evening. Mine doesn't.
Everyone wants to be helpful to foreigners here.
It takes us 'only' 40 minutes to inch to the front of the checkpoint queue where an Israeli teenager with a gun looks at my passport.
The road from Kalandia into Ramallah is the worst I've ever travelled on. We heave and lurch along the churned-up, crater-ridden concrete. Israeli tanks have done this ever since the 2000 incursion.
Inside the checkpoints, life happens at a sprint. Too much time is spent hopelessly waiting for Israeli permission to move around that when there is a possibility to achieve something, it must be done quickly or not at all.
The one word I hear from every mouth in every street, house and refugee camp is not 'revenge'. It's not even 'peace', it's 'education'. Through education, the Palestinians say, they will arm themselves for a better future.
Almost 90 per cent of Palestinian 15-year-olds are literate, the highest figure in the Arab world, and almost up to the 91 per cent in Britain. And this despite the fact that for many students simply travelling to class risks being shot by Israeli snipers.
After two harrowing days in Gaza, I arrive at the Erez checkpoint. I stand with Palestinians of all ages, UN representatives, doctors and diplomats for seven hours, hungry, and low on water.
It's impossible to see how Abbas can repair Palestine's shattered infrastructure if his ministers cannot travel freely.
When I finally get beyond the checkpoint, I burst into exhausted tears. How people cope with this collective punishment, I have no idea.
But despite such humiliations, I remember my days in Palestine with real fondness. I'm in love with the hopeful, bustling young cities of the West Bank. I would like to bring my family here so they can meet these generous, clever people.
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