“You couldn’t hear that behind a bus ticket!” 1989, Strandtown Primary School, Belfast. It’s assembly and our slightly demotic teacher, Miss Ireland (emphatically not a beauty queen) is urging us on to ever greater efforts in the performance of the anthem Jerusalem . For Miss Ireland volume is all, if they can’t hear us in the next postal district, we’re not singing loudly enough. The soaring melody is magnificent (even the fiftieth time round) but the lyrics are more than a little si...

Oh shit. We should have sorted out our lies beforehand. Meghan and I joined the line at passport control at Ben-Gurion airport together. The vigilant, stern-faced young woman at the counter may well have noted this. But as Meghan passes through, having explained her travel plans, I realise that she must have lied. I will also lie, of course. I just hope it’s the same lie. “Where do you intend visiting?” the dour lady asks. “Oh, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem” I reply as nonchalantly as I can. T...

Checkpoints permitting, it’s a short taxi drive from Jerusalem to Ramallah, from the first world to the third. On the way I half expect some notice, a sign of some sort announcing: “You are now entering the Occupied Territories. Have a nice day.” Of course there is nothing of the sort. Travelling from the capital to Ramallah, the road gradually deteriorates and the surrounding houses become more dilapidated until you realise that you are in the West Bank. We arrive in the centre of Ramall...

After a week and a half of the most stifling heat, Jenin comes as a relief. Or rather, the Arab-American University of Jenin, comes as a relief. This brand new campus is situated, Third World style, well outside the city itself, in the cooler hills above. The drop in temperature is a respite for this northern European but the condition of my feet is of some concern to our hosts. Ironically, my feet are much better than they were in Tel Aviv but, thanks to all the dead skin, they look much...

We arrive back in Bir Zeit with little to do for the last few days of the camp. Violence is raging elsewhere in the West Bank, but Bir Zeit is an oasis of calm. In this mainly Christian town shopkeepers sit outside their shops on those ubiquitous white plastic chairs, trying to manage the tedium of their lives. The sun shines brightly and the town is quiet in a sleepy Mediterranean way, the peace only punctured by the thud of a tank shell a few valleys over. The next day I wake early and ...