Our first stop is the taxi station in Acco where we pick up three arab women friends. One of them comes with her Jordanian boyfriend from Amman ( is this the Peace process in action, or not?).

And then there is Haifa. We spent hours on the roadside together demonstrating with “Women in Black”. After warm greetings, we set off to our next stop. Sabachelchir, is a village near the city of Jenin located in the north of the Westbank -which I’d like to call Palestine from now on.

There we meet the others of our group: “Red Line” - jews, arabs, christians, muslims and druze from the north of Israel. Together we form a bridge to Peace. In the past during the Intifadah - the Palestinian uprising against the occupation - we came every month to the occupied West bank bringing our mental as well as our material support for the Palestinians in villages and refugee camps.

In Sabachelchir we meet again: U. from kibbutz Daphna, Masut a bedouin from Aramsheh ( a village on the Lebanon border), Nabihah from Kfar Yassif (a large arab village in Western Galilee), Chaleb, a druze from Yanuch just to name some of our friends. Two years passed since our last trip. We thought that everything would be OK: that the Peace is there already and we can keep busy with other things. Dreams stay. a dream for now. That is why we are on our way again.

We drive in three vans through a sunny and bubbly Jenin. It looks like everyone is out in the streets.The fields look lush with all kinds of vegetables growing. There is a lot of house building going on.

On the way to Nablus the landscape changes slowly. Its more mountainous and rocky, with terraces and olive trees. The view is clear. Suddenly we see far away to the west the powerstation of Hadera with its three chimneys. The powerstation is located on the coast of Israel. Thats where the hysteria of the anti-Peace camp is based. It does appear very close by.

Then there is Nablus, a white city build in the valley and on the surrounding mountains. Here it is busy in the streets too. Palestinian flags of all sizes are everywhere. We pass Freedom square with a portrait of Arafat. In the meantime, we are picked up by our local hosts. We are expected in the building of the PGFTU, which stands for the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. After a short introduction from our side and a word of welcome from the chairman of the PGFTU, we go to the municipality building. It turns out that the mayor is busy with the ( unexpected) visit from president Arafat to the city. We are received by the deputy mayor and some council members. The reception hall is decorated with a huge portrait of president Yasser Arafat flanked by a big Palestinian flag and a white flag. Again there is the customary welcome followed by explanations from our side about who we are and where we come from. Then we ask about the city: how it is going, if there are relations with Israel, what the place of women is now after the Intifadah? The deputy mayor explains in arabic. He has a soft voice. Chaleb translates to hebrew for us. I dream away a little and think about the green fields. During the Intifadah the farmers hardly had a chance to work the land because of the collective punishments. The harvest was very poor.

One of the council members talks. He sounds bitter. Rightfully so: he was for 22 years in an Israeli prison. Even so, he is in favor of working together with Israelis and continuing a dialogue.

A meal is prepared for us with the Arab hospitality that we know so well from home. After the meal we return to the PGFTU, the Palestinian Laborers Union. The chairman and some members of the executive committee are there. There are no women in sight. They are in suits but no neckties just like the Labour party in Israel. We get an explanation. There is contact with the Histradut, the Israeli Labor Union. Suddenly Udi reminds the chairman of a meeting they had during the Intifadah in the middle of an orchard. That place was picked to avoid the Israeli army because he was wanted. The discussion takes a personal turn with this memory. All of us , from the Palestinian side and also from our side are still busy with the time of the Intifadah.

On the ruins from the Occupation a society is build here again. Its a difficult process. We hear about unemployment and efforts to create as many jobs as possible, the closure and the hard living conditions of the laborers.

We want to meet with Arafat but his program is full. Instead we drive to the village of the Samaritans on the Grizim mountain. They live there in a tight community, are deeply religious and follow the written Torah, the Five Books of Moses, literally. On the way we have a beautiful view over the city of Nablus. In the village, all the men wear a jalabiah (a kind of long dress) with a blocked house coat and a fez on their head. Later it is explained that this is their sabbath clothing. We hardly see any women. We are accompanied to the village synagogue. White walls, persian carpets, sheepskins and low kneeling benches decorate the room. Our tour guide takes the Torah scrolls out of the Holy ark. He seems a litttle fanatic. He says he is willing to answer questions after his explanation ( in fluent hebrew) but no politics. The Samaritans are more strict in their faith than the most orthodox Jews I know of. For example, if a girl marries out of the religion she has to be stoned to death by the other girls. It is not done today because of modern law. She is “only” declared dead. And so on. For me, the refusal to go in to political questions, even before we asked, was interesting. Is this in exchange for the “normal life” the Samaritans live with their neighbours? There is no discussion or dialogue. Our host wants to hear himself and thinks he knows every thing. Outside families stroll around waiting for the sabbath to end. A man shouts at us in hebrew that we have to be ashamed to drive around in a car on the shabbath. I am glad when we leave, it is cold there out on that mountaintop.

Back in Nablus we say goodbye to our host of the Trade Union and we start the long journey homeward. For a day we were tourists in another country. Our Jordanian friend says that he passed the village where he was born, near Nablus. He lives in Amman in Jordan, his parents live in the USA, his girlfriend lives in Israel. Everyone has his or her personal story.

Together we are all on the road to Peace... a twisting road, an endless road it seems, sometimes a highway, sometimes a path, but we are going in the right direction.

Anika & Kenny.

28.12.1996.