the beginning (sunday)

in the morning i went to the office of the palestinian centre for human rights. http://www.pchrgaza.org/ . they have a lot of good information on their website, including a weekly report on the human rights violations in the occupied palestinian territory. here is the link to see the report for the last week. its astonishing - http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2007/30-08-2007.htm. the information about health care in the west bank on the website is quite dated, which they had assured me that it wasnt when i was not taking notes, but anyway, it still gives staggering statistics. as of 2003

17 on-duty medical personnel have been killed by the Israeli army during the intifada. At least 206 have been injured. Palestinian paramedics have
also been arrested, beaten, and used as human shields on numerous occasions.

10 Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances have been destroyed and 80% of its ambulance fleet has been damaged. During Israeli attacks on
Palestinian cities, Israeli forces have shelled and raided hospitals and clinics, including Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, and al-Bireh resulting in
destruction of medical equipment and disruption of health care for patients.

http://www.pchrgaza.org/medical_care_stat.htmli spent the day in jerusalem, having more meetings. today was different because the meetings were more for me than for the project, and i met with two very different but great organizations. http://www.awalls.org/ is the website for the israeli anarchists against the wall. they have been doing direct action regarding the wall since it began construction, and many activists have been jailed for it. currently they have been focusing on Bil'in, where on tuesday there was a huge victory! an ILLEGAL settlement, according to israel (there are legal settlements and ILLEGAL outposts, according to israeli law, but international law says that ALL settlements are illegal) wanted to expand further into the surrounding area, and the wall was built to accomodate. but an israeli high court deemed the construction illegal and ordered the moving of the wall back so that the local farmers can get to their lands again. it seems small, but people here are very excited for at least the smallest victory. later in the day i met with machsomwatch, women for human rights, http://www.machsomwatch.org/. the organization is comprised of only women who travel to the occupied territories to monitor checkpoints and report back to israel (and the world) what they have seen. their goals are to inform the public and hopefully be a peaceful presence at the checkpoint. their monitoring has had some impacts, mostly on the day-to-day level for palestinians. unfortunately their presence at the checkpoints is only temporary and therefore only provides short-term relief to palestinians trying to travel within their lands, and when they are gone, the indignities continue. this is the sad truth. i witnessed this on my way to jenin, which i will talk about later.