Prison visitor

Pinned on the wall in the eye hospital where I'm looking for stories, is a quotation from the American financier and philanthropist, J.P. Morgan: 'Go as far as you can see. When you get there, you'll be able to see further.'

But I realise, watching the three dedicated Palestinian ophthalmologists at work in the paediatric clinic, that the message is futile in a country where each time a Palestinian tries to reach this horizon, they're blocked by a separation wall, stopped at a check point, overshadowed by a settlement or trapped by a carefully designed legal loophole.

Rana is a little older than me. She leaves home each morning at 5am with her teenage sons who she drives from Bir Zeit in the West Bank to Jerusalem for school. The journey takes over two hours each way. 'They ask me why they can't go to the school near our house. But I know that school is bad and if they don't spend enough time in Jerusalem they will lose their I.D. for this city - which they get through me. My husband is a West Banker so I live like this, for them. And education is the only way out of here.'

She works a full day, checking other peoples' children with severe eye problems who come trooping in holding bags of sweets and crisps from 8am. Many of the issues are congenital due to the high incidence of consanguinity here. The cases from Gaza are almost always congenital, as in that tiny tranche of land, the families have interwoven themselves so many times, the bloodlines have merged to become indistinguishable.

Rana's loud laugh, her colourful clothes and her lip gloss cannot conceal the anger and sadness in her eyes. 'This is not a life,' she sighs.

We travel up to one of the hospital's West Bank branches in a town called Tulkaram, a big town near Nablus in the north of the West Bank, which was once an important caravan station and trading point for neighbouring villages. The town is now administered by the Palestinian Authority (areas known as 'Zone A'.) Our driver, Akef, is from Jerusalem's Old City but knows the West Bank well. I sit in the front as he points out red roofed settlement after red roofed settlement on the crests of hills flanking the road. 'They start with a few caravans, or a police camp. Then you see the toilets and water systems being installed and in a period of just a few years, the caravans become houses and the houses become a fully fledged settlement.'

The little white and red blocks from a distance look like icing on a cake. Over the years the icing trickles slowly down each slope until the hill is engulfed with (what under international law is illegal) housing. The Middle East Monitor reported recently that there was an acceleration in settlement building in this area over the summer, while attentions were turned to the war in Gaza.

In the valley below one large settlement, an Arab town nestles - a splurge of different coloured buildings with irregular design, in technicolor contrast to the prototype chalets above. A mouth full of squint teeth grimacing next to a perfect white smile. The Arab housing is all bunched together and punctuated by the vertical towers of green minarets and the metal spikes emerging from unfinished projects.

A shiny, black road snakes up towards a crest of hill. 'Every time you see a road, you know in a year or so there will be a settlement there. But we Arabs are not allowed to build, unless it is in zone A,' Akef explains.

He owns his house in Jerusalem's Old City in which he was born, and in which he also raised his own 5 children. He still shares the house with a couple of these children and now some grandchildren. 'It's hard to hang in there,' he explains. 'The Old City is also being taken over because Palestinians are forced to sell up, or don't have the original deeds to the house so they can be evicted, even if the family has lived there for centuries.'

It strikes me that while the Jewish race has been let down time and time again by the world, they have never let themselves down, and the creation of the State of Israel is emblematic of this. They look after each other. Whereas the Palestinian population has been let down not only by others, but also by itself. They have not looked after themselves or each other. And here the two vast societal oceans are crashing at a point here in this state, with the self sufficient sea so much the stronger.

Perhaps it will only be a few more decades before one ocean engulfs the other?

Spending time with these Palestinian women is not always comfortable. I make an effort, I try not to get in the way. I'm interested in them, their lives and their work. They're friendly in return, and they respond to my questions and my presence. But I could very easily understand if they resented my presence. Though they show no signs of this - I'd understand if they did. Here I am living a happy, temporary existence in their country, with interesting work and a good school for my children. A passport which takes me anywhere I want to go. I have a pomegranate tree in my garden and it's bearing fruit. When I'm tired I can rest, and when we finish here I move on. I'm free.

As the women whisper in Arabic to each other in the back seat, I feel like the prison visitor, as J put it the other day. I get the feeling they half want me here because they like the attention and the variety I provide in a routine of drudgery. But how bitter must that reminder be, of my ultimate freedom as I visit them in their cage?

They live in a room which is so terribly dark, that looking at the sunlight is too painful.

'Go as far as you can see. When you get there you will find a wall.'