Hebron

Deserted City Centre of al Khalil or Hebron

From the wide expanse surrounding the tents of the beleaguered village, we went on to explore the city of Hebron, this time guided by a man from a courageous Israeli group called 'Breaking the Silence'.

Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. "We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life."

Our guide was bearded and chubby dressed in open toed sandals and a loose tracksuit. Hebron is one of the coldest places in the West Bank in winter, and his toes were a shade of purple. He was very together and mentally organised, but didn't look that healthy. I wondered if in breaking the silence these whistleblowers are also breaking themselves. As we discovered, they are loathed by settler communities in the city, and many of these settlers are armed and volatile.

Hebron is the only Palestinian city in the West Bank with a Jewish settlement in its centre. And in the centre of this city, a group of 400 settlers are protected by 1500 Israeli soldiers.

Hebron, or Al Khalil as it is known by Palestinians, was one of the places where Jews and Arabs once intermingled fairly functionally. Following the six day war of 1967, Israel occupied Hebron.

Our guide explained some key dates:

1929 The Hebron massacre which refers to the killing of 67 Jews by Arabs incited to violence by false rumours that Jews were massacring Arabs in Jerusalem and seizing control of holy places.

1968 The first Israeli settlement, Kiryat Arba'a was built outside the Old City

1979 The first group of settlers (5 settlements in total now) moved into the centre of the city

1994 The Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, also known as the Hebron massacre, was a shooting attack carried out by an American born Israeli, Baruch Goldstein, a member of a far right movement, who opened fired on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Ibrahimi Mosque, leaving 29 male worshippers dead and 125 wounded.

And in 1997, Israel withdrew from 80 per cent of Hebron, which was handed over to the Palestinian Authority. This area is now known as H1, and Israel retains control of the remainder which is known as H2.

However, as is often the case with these agreements, it didn't look that clear cut for long, and since then it has been a steady slide into what is now a policy of separation and discrimination between Israeli settlers and the Palestinian majority.

As B'Tselem - the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories - explains in their leaflet: Ghost Town: 'The army severely restricts movement of thousands of Palestinian residents which has led to the destruction of the commercial centre and to mass abandonment of the area by its residents. Hundreds have shops have closed, thousands of people have been left without a livelihood, and many hundreds of families have been forced to leave their homes. The city centre has become a ghost town, where only Jews are allowed to move about freely.'

As we wandered around this ghost town, I wondered how Hebron would ever climb out of this eerie state. Like a virus which first attacks the heart. You wonder how the body will ever manage to defend its once pulsating centre.

We walked down completely deserted streets lined with once handsome Ottoman housing. Painted metal doors locked shut, watch towers manned by bored and cold looking Israeli soldiers littered with Israeli flags.

Barbed wire curled in loose bunches across entrances to streets, and the only house still occupied by a Palestinian family had its windows covered in thick mesh to protect its elderly occupants from the wrath of the Israeli settlers. Huge concrete blocks, painted with graffiti, barred access for Palestinians to the whole southern side of the city, thereby keeping the five settlements protected from any Palestinian retaliation.

512 shops are now shuttered up and inaccessible to their Palestinian owners, and 1152 remain inaccessible from other closures, such as blocked access to roads. Some Palestinian families are forced to enter their house by a ladder to an upper window, because Israeli soldiers have boarded up their ground level doorways. Our guide explained how he often watches an elderly Palestinian lady in her long 'thobe' gown, climbing slowly up and down a ladder each day to do her shopping.

Palestinian Thobe gowns hanging in Hebron market

As we walked you could almost hear the ghosts of markets past - the fruit seller advertising his wares, the butcher hacking at the corpse of a skinned cow.

Where are they all now?

An icy wind sliced through the empty street, where in the distance two Israeli soldiers strolled. Other than the wind, there was nothing in the air but the feeling of simmering hatred.

Towards the end of the tour, eggs rained down on us from a first floor window. We dodged the eggs, and looked up to see a bunch of angry faced Israeli settlers glaring down at us. Our guide brushed it off and said: 'Yup. This happens all the time. And eggs are not the worst we get.'

In order to believe and to understand, you have to visit. It is the eye of the storm, and it's getting fiercer.

And as our purple-toed sandaled guide warned: 'The first thing you need to take away with you is that this isn't just how the IDF behave in Hebron. This is their approach all across the West Bank. So use this as a microcosm of the entire situation. The second thing, is never underestimate how slow these settlers and the Israeli state are willing to play it. They know that even encroaching one millimetre per year is the way they want to go. And they know they will get there in the end.'

And with that he left us at the gate leading to the Palestinian side of town, which he had no permission to enter, despite his skillful and willful representation of their cause.

The sad story of Susiya

If you ask a member of the international community here about Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, the chances are they will roll their eyes and say it's the eye of the storm. If you ask a Palestinian about Hebron they might also tell you the people are famed for their strength of spirit, their penchant for picking a fight, the sweet and delicious grapes that sprout languidly from the vines each summer and the fact that the Hebronite women are beautiful and spoil their men by looking after them so well.

Zoe my friend and I set off first to a little Palestinian tented village called Susiya, in the hills near Hebron. It's a tented village because the Israeli state has made sure the villagers, who once inhabited the nearby caves until about 30 years ago, were evicted in favour of an archaeological site build there, which is now inaccessible to Palestinians. And the villagers have been on the move ever since. Shunted by Israeli settlers, and shunned by the supposedly protective forces of police, civil authority, and the Israeli legal system.

Rabbis for Human Rights were our guides for this part of the tour, and though I was expecting the guide to look more rabbinical, the Israeli woman representing that day was secular and liberal, despite her right wing roots. 'My family haven't disowned me. They let me get on with what I do. But they don't agree with it,' she explained. She's part of a team of four dedicated lawyers to the cause of Palestinians being evicted from their lands in this region. But as we sat and listened to the case of this one tiny village of 450 inhabitants, we soon discovered the enormity of the task, and this is only one of thousands of patches over the West Bank suffering the same continuous, exhausting and tragic struggle.

Mahmoud, the village leader talked us through their situation, as his 9 month-old daughter, Dalia, perched on her grandfather's lap, sat chewing on the handle of his wooden shepherd's crook. Her brothers giggled as they wrestled on the carpet and ran outside to chase their gaggle of geese through a tiny pond outside. This is a rare part of the year where water is visible. Mahmoud explained how most of the year they are dependent on cisterns which they've placed on rocky terrain, but are no longer allowed access to because Israeli settlements have mushroomed around them on these very same rocks.  Mahmoud explained that they're taking advantage of Ottoman law which stated that you could cultivate on private land (in the 'wadis' - valleys) but not on state land (the rocky hillsides). So the settlers are taking over the hillsides, and denying access to water for Palestinian communities, who've always lived there; and also blocking access to the lands they might cultivate, which lie below their rocky look out point. Any Palestinian who ventures into a wadi to try and cultivate risks being shot or at least badly beaten up or reported.

And the anguish of no water is exacerbated by the fact that the Israeli settlers receive cheap, clean water piped from Palestinian owned lands in the West Bank. And the Palestinian villagers are faced with the eternal struggle to collect their own, or find extortionately priced water they have to pay for themselves and collect from the city which involves hiring a tractor for a day.

In the recent storms the Israeli settlers uprooted more than 300 of their olive trees - one of the village's only remaining commodities. The same happened in last year's storms, they told us. And Rabbis for Human Rights explained that the police receive at least one call per week from desperate Palestinians claiming the settlers are attacking them and trying to take their land. The police and civil administration do nothing, and close the cases, because they don't care, and they aren't supported by the legal system in any case.

Though the Palestinian village is inevitably growing, they have no permission to erect even one new tent to house newly married couples in their very termporary looking camp, because the authorities ensure that in return for the settlers not destroying, the Palestinians cannot build. As if 'build' is ever a verb you'd use in relation to a tent.

We left the gaggle of geese and giggling boys and set out for Hebron where we were shown the urban equivalent of what is happening in the village of Susiya.

An optimistic musician

As we drove down the road to the Lozenge's music class with Rachel his French-Israeli teacher, at either side of the road Israeli flags were interspersed with the French ones - flapping agitatedly in the wind. The traffic was in gridlock as the bodies of the four French Jews killed in the horrific Paris attacks were brought to Israel to be buried.

The film director Roger Graef said recently in a radio interview that he liked to think he had an 'optimistic heart and a pessimistic head' and I would agree this is probably a sensible start. To be aware that human beings are capable of all kinds of terrible actions - both deliberate and mistaken, but to keep the knowledge in our hearts that we are also capable of such startling good.

We arrived at Rachel's house and I expressed my sorrow for her country. But instead of acknowleging it, she shrugged, smiled, and said: 'Well, I am an optimist. I like to think that if we manage to destroy the world, we will also come up with a way to build a new one.'

Then she sent me off to go and collect some natural 'treasure' outside as she taught the Lozenge to play his first tune. I returned with a lemon, two tiny tangerines from nearby trees, a rusty pair of pliers and a tropical looking flower and the Lozenge played me twinkle twinkle little star with his index finger. 'I want him to know he can play any tune, even with no technique. So he will start to have fun,' she said.

Since the Toulouse Jewish school shooting in 2012 there has been a wave of French immigration to Israel that has not stopped, with numbers hitting 6,600 people last year. But President Reuven Rivlin calls on French Jews to immigrate to Israel out of love, not fear. He said at the burial ceremony: "We will continue to fight for your right to live as Jews - wherever you may be.... But returning to your ancestral home need not be due to distress, out of desperation, because of destruction, or in the throes of terror and fear."

Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel plans to settle incoming French Jews in the West Bank, requiring more settlements in this already disputed patch of land.

Ex US President Carter has spoken out, as reported in the Times of Israel, saying that the situation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip 'aggravates people' and that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the factors that led to the attacks in France.

If the French Jews coming to Israel are people like Rachel then my heart's optimism will win. But it's unfortunately those who arrive with hate already nailed into their hearts, that will exacerbate this country's dusty road to ruin.

We got back home and while the dwarves were finishing their dinner I escaped to my den to gather my thoughts and listen to the radio. I left the door open. 'We could've been anything that we wanted to be' from Bugsy Malone, rang out through iPad's small speaker.

The Lozenge pulled up a stool in the doorway and sat down on it while he ate a small bowl of pomegranate seeds, and listened with me.

Snow break and two little pebbles

Used to 10 months of eternal blue skies and warmth, the two months of adverse weather can throw this country's populations into a panic. Snow was forecast, and roads and public services began to close. After two days back at school, I went to pick up Rashimi through the pelting slush in the car, and came back with three children - including the Lozenge and a little blonde friend of his from school. The to-do list carefully crafted two days before, was thrown by the wayside as the dwarves and I embarked on a second holiday a few days after the last one had ended.

If only there had actually been some real snow. But in the end it was just the higher towns such as Hebron and Ramallah who got it. We had slush on already mulchy leaves, so we had to come up with some other alternatives to building snow men.

With Laurie's little friend (a girl to add some female zen to the ranks...) we made cupcakes and watched a film. But the dwarf den was a boisterous affair for a female only child used to calm and harmony, and even after I'd wiped my diary and locked the door to my den so I could be around for them, she didn't want to come back the next day. I felt a little bit sad about this. As did the Lozenge, and in his prayers that night he said: 'Please God can she come back tomorrow even if it'th just the morning or the afternoon.' Sadly the prayer was left unanswered.

But we found a male friend to hang with instead and raced around the Science Museum fiddling and tinkering with everything available. And at least small males look overjoyed when they're tackled or grabbed for a playful but no less forceful wrangle.

Day three of the snow break, and the Lozenge announced he'd like to make a model of Jewoothalem. (internal gulp). I suggested building with matchboxes and using the sticks for trees, cars and people. We set out onto the stormy roads in the car to find a bulk buy of the equivalent of Scottish Bluebell. But all matches in the shops had been sold out to locals panic buying for the cold snap. We returned home to discover that the cardboard stock pile stuffed behind the kitchen door for moments like this was more than was required. And though it didn't quite do justice to the Holy City - the Lozenge was delighted with the result. And then he whipped up a cake with entirely his own recipe - and a diminutive naked sous-chef on hand. My one involvement was suggesting baking powder, and I just managed to rescue the cake before it hit the top of the cooker.

Our wonderful friend Zoe arrived, literally in a flash of lightening as her Easyjet plane was hit by one as it tried to land. She had a lengthy journey on the tourist train from Tel Aviv and got to us in the early hours one morning. The dwarves were enraptured by an energetic blonde, in this case unperturbed by their boisterousness and up for doing 'the crab dance' or crafts at any time of day. 'Let'th get crafty', suggested the Lozenge to her. Rashimi, while removing his trousers and sweater shrieked: 'Let'th get naked!'

While she was staying J and I managed to make Rashimi go cold turkey on his dummy which he'd become so attached to he had a permanent mouth rash. It took only one night of complaining for it to be forgotten. Zoe suggested taking it back to London and photographing it in famous locations such as in front of the Houses of Parliament or the London Eye and sending him the pictures. 'London for Dummies'. But we didn't think he'd be amused.

We spent the ten days she was here exploring - trips to Bethlehem, Hebron, the Dead Sea and the Old City and having fun dinners and nights out with different friends. We've met some brilliant people here. After the storm, the blue sky returned and at last, the promised ground covering of snow which one Saturday morning, lightened our house like a giant reflector blanket, sending the brightness back in through our windows. Calmed and contented by a few extra days holiday, the Lozenge and I sat under a blanket on the sofa that morning in the bright room, he watching Donald Duck, and I reading The Goldfinch. Then Rashimi emerged from bed and watched Paw Patrol about puppy super heroes on a separate appliance. Disfunctional maybe. But peace and harmony reigned after a few days of settling back into life together.

Now we're making the most of all those puddles.

And the to do list was waiting for me one week later.

Mohammed Ali once said: 'It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.' Initially it was as if I had two little pebbles in my welly boots, but they felt much nicer when I took them out and held their soft contours in my hand for a while as I walked on a bit of a detour.

Learning to savour the terrier fights

It feels criminal waking a sleeping dwarf at 6.15am on a cold, dark morning. And on Monday we had to peel off two warm duvets. Rashimi snatched his duvet and shot back underneath it like a crotchety snail. Then he poked his head out and asked: 'Can I wear my thpiderman suit to nurthery today?' (Thank you, Gran Gran - it's still as popular as ever). Having been lured to the breakfast table with some hot chocolate, Spiderman was forgotten and by 7.15 we were all in the car cruising through the ultra orthodox district of Mea Sherim with boys the dwarf's age heading to school themselves, their little yarmulka caps perched above the swinging 'peot' - side locks. 'There can't be many school runs like this,' J said. The sun was creeping above the golden Dome of the Rock, bathing the Old City in a watery glow. The dwarfs requested their favourite song 'Me and Julio in the schoolyard' and Rashimi told the Lozenge to stop singing as he was 'wuining the muthic.'

The Lozenge hurtled into the playground peeling off his parka and skipping towards the sweet little familiar faces - Palestinian, Danish, French, Swedish, Scottish, Austrian...Rashimi hovered around our legs, sussing out the scene. We took him into his classroom - a light and colourful space with corners for every activity you could imagine. Rashimi headed straight to the toy microwave and concocted breakfast for us with some plastic fruit. Then we overheard him explaining detailed vignettes from James and the Giant Peach to his Israeli teacher: 'And the aunties were not nithe to Jameth. And the peatth gwew huuuuuuuge and it FLEW over the thea with the ladybird, and there wath a thpider too!' The teacher looked a little bit blank and I wondered if Roald Dahl has yet to be translated into Hebrew.

We had to peel him off us as we tried to leave, but apparently the crying lasted for only a few minutes, and when St Grace and I went to collect him at 11.30am we saw him through the doorway happily playing in the sand with some other little nuggets his size. One Kenyan, one Dutch, one Italian/Argentinian and one Palestinian. 'He's very chatty,' said the teachers. I hadn't warned them that he's louder than the ramadan cannon. 'But it's very useful because he can tell us everything he needs.'

The Lozenge has requested to go and visit Rashimi every break time as they have separate playgrounds to avoid the squashing of the smaller fry.

The Lozenge appeared back home and stepped off the bus in tears, as he'd been expecting Rashimi to travel home with him. There is some fraternal loyalty and pride there, but within 5 minutes they were furiously fighting like a couple of shaggy terriers. Upturned toy boxes, lost glue lids, fluffy balls and pipe cleaners scattered on the kitchen floor, discarded coats and shoes and a ragged looking me. For every hop and a skip you get a thump and a bump. The peace of the morning home alone a shattered memory, by 4pm I was scratching my head wondering which parenting self-help book to reach for. I need a pocket water pistol to break up the fights, and a voice control that turns my yell to a yodel. No one prepares you for this bit, do they?  I always thought I'd never be one of those bedraggled and snappy looking Mums. But after the dwarves had inhaled some hastily prepared mince and mashed potatoes with huge chunks of vegetables that I barely had time to dice in the mayhem, calm was restored to the homestead and the next scene cut to the two of them in a loving clinch in a bubbly bath. They're like a disfunctional married couple at times.

But at least, in the peace of the morning I can shift some work and earn my place on the planet which provides equilibrium to the day and counteracts the dwarf demolition zone between 3 and 5pm.

And yesterday I joined a full to bursting St George's Cathedral for the tragic funeral of a fellow Mum at the school who lost her fight to cancer last Friday. Her husband gave a brave and heart rending eulogy and her children gracefully held their 9 and 7 year old composures as they bid farewell to their beautiful guiding light. A moment to preserve, and one to carry to chaotic kitchens after school, and other trying moments you can easily belittle. This is it. We need to chew it - even the bitter and tasteless bits. It's all there is. But why is it so easy to forget and why does a 43 year old woman have to die to jolt us into realisation?

Snow angels

We soared back into Tel Aviv - with Christmas and a fortnight's holiday behind us. Dark grey clouds loomed to the south over Gaza, and the place that really feels like home now, lay waiting for us 70km away in Jerusalem. The break was miles away from our daily reality - Scottish clear blue skies tinged with pink; sheep and cows grazing in green and brown fields lined with leafless trees. The wonder of it all for a 5 and a 3 year old was tangible. On Christmas Eve the house was a rustle of wrapping paper and squeak of celotape. The Lozenge sang carols under his breath, sometimes even without any breath (Gloooo,ooooo,oooooo,ooooo,oooria! Glowia in eleeeectrics. Glooooooooooooooooo-oooooooo-ooor-iaaaaa). Oh for that lung control. And Rashimi's personal version: 'Awaaaaay in a loveleeeee manger' entirely dischordant with the Lozenge.  Dad sat with a glass of whisky gazing at the piles of presents and asking how we had it so good, when three quarters of the world is in such turmoil. But one responsibility with this luck is to enjoy it while it's there, at least. And be entirely conscious of every mouthful and armful of it. As we lay in bed on Christmas morning, surrounded in the crumpled paper with two effervescent dwarves the questions bubbled in from Rashimi: 'But Father Chrithmath will wuin the fire when he comes down the chimney, and he will burn his self.' And: 'Do weindeerth come indoorth?' Since afterall the carrot with 3 bites taken out of it was lying on the table outside their bedroom.

The Lozenge was fixed on the weather forecast. It's not something we watch on TV in Jerusalem, and so the Lozenge took the forecast of snow as the gospel. And the angels must have been at hand, as on Saturday morning, the sun groaned above the silhouette of a hill a little after 8am, to reveal a ground covering of snow.

Not much, but enough for some excitable sledging and some snow angels on the carpet of untouched icing sugar on the tennis court. The dwarves lay back in their new snowsuits, flapping their little arms vigorously to create the wings. One of the Lozenge's creations from school was a tiny paper angel with his head at the top - the wings a trace of the Lozenge's hands, and the body a trace of his feet. And on it a little ditty.

This little angel is special 
you see
Because she is a 
part of me. 
Her wings are my hands, 
her body my feet 
And on your tree
She'll look so sweet.

This year has been all about angels and nativity scenes for the Lozenge. And I can't bring myself to unhook his angel from her hook in my office just yet.

Then the snow turned to mud, and we were sad to leave the feathered nest of security and peace that homestead provides us with. If anything being far away, makes us appreciate it all the more, the community, the laughter and the streams of people breezing in. Cousins, uncles and aunties, dogs and friends.

Plus the Lozenge got to hang out with a look alike Katie Morag, who is even called Katie and has the exact voice.

At Edinburgh airport with 15 minutes before our flight took off for Heathrow, I realised my wallet had fallen out of my bag somewhere between check in and our gate. Thank the angels (again) for my Nike Airs and some wings they seemed to sprout as I retraced my steps. Blank but sympathetic looks at security, blank but sympathetic looks at check in, then a lady suggested lost property at the other end of the terminal. Another sprint and there were a friendly man who said: 'I recognise your face' and produced the wallet for a £5 charge. Worth every penny. Back through the whole security bit again, and screeched to a halt by J and the dwarves a couple of seconds before they began to offload our bags. It may be trying to get above itself by trying to break free from England, but Scotland still contains some friendly and helpful people and a small enough airport to sprint around in 20 minutes. I would not have been so lucky at Heathrow.

Then an overnight stop at the Hilton T5 where the dwarves bounced naked off the walls for an hour before 'woom servith' arrived on a tray accompanied by an Indian man who looked surprised at the dress code for dinner, but giggled as a nude Rashimi leapt up and down at the sight of a plate of fish and chips.

And then they watched Cbeebies reclining on a large double bed. Definitely not a lifestyle to get used to, but a huge excitement nonetheless. In fact, it was infectious, and I managed to look at the hotel lobby, complete with lifesized ginger bread house, a gargantuan tree and piles of jumbo presents, from a dwarf's eye view. We may have been on a rainy street somewhere round the back of Heathrow, but it allowed our adventure to live on until our arrival back home.

It was as if we got a hug from the house when we came back through the door. It was warm and tidy and we all felt happy to be back. Within 5 minutes the dwarfs had unpacked the contents of almost all the drawers neatly tidied by St Grace before she left. Toys were dragged out of bags, batteries were lost, dice and playing cards were scattered, and the fighting began. Is every home like this after Christmas? In a vain attempt to restore harmony I suggested a lemon harvest as our trees outside were groaning with bright yellow fragrant beauty, dripping with raindrops and wreathed with dark green leaves.

We picked about 20 with the step ladder (more fighting over that) and then the rain began so we retreated indoors and put the big steel squeezer to good work, and preserved a few of them in a jar a la Claudia Roden, one of the Queens of Arab cuisine. Though the jar looks a bit like some pickled human remains I saw in the Vietnam war museum, I'm looking forward to using them in some lamb tagine soon. Not a huge amount of interest from the dwarves about 'thtew' but they liked the juice with a pound of sugar added.

Our house was thickly lemon scented enabling us to tolerate the ground covering of chaos by evening, and we all went to bed early to prepare for Rashimi's big step - the first day at nursery school. Almost every hour he's been repeating like a mantra: 'I am NOT going to thchool!' But when the Lozenge explained: 'But Washimi you don't even have to do writing, you get to jutht play, play and play,' he chirped up a bit.

I find it hard to believe that it was 2 years ago the Lozenge embarked on similar adventure in Jordan, with only one child in the class who spoke English - 'Nabiw'. Big steps shrink over time. So let's hope Rashimi agrees.

As they drifted off to sleep the Lozenge asked: 'Will they be all the same people in my class tomorrow Mummy, or will they all be different?'

With every sweet life adventure comes a pinch of salt.

The year we just put to bed

A new year has begun and with it I include some statistics for the year we just put to bed. When analysed together, in some way they help to clarify the complex rut in which this country finds itself.

50
The number of Palestinian youth killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in 2014. That's almost one per week.

2,310
The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza from Operation Protective Edge. This figure has been newly revised following the discovery of bodies under the rubble, and deaths of wounded.

785
The number of Israelis who renounced their citizenship. This is a 60 per cent increase on the previous year.

4 million
Shekels (nearly £1 million GBP) budget approved by the Foreign Ministry to pay a nonprofit company called 'Faces of Israel' to host overseas visitors 'with influence' and explain the legitimacy of Zionism and the State of Israel as a nation of Jewish people.

It's no surprise, when you consider the first two - that Israelis are both leaving the country, and having to work hard on their global image against such a backdrop.

Is it often they who claim the greatest strength who seek to shield a greater weakness?


In December I made a short film for Save the Children using stills images and an edited audio interview with an 8 year old girl, Nawal, from Qabalan, near Nablus, in the West Bank.

Nawal's house was shelled, shot at and all but demolished by Israeli forces in August, and Save the Children has provided counselling for her and all other members of the family, who survived the attack against many odds. The counsellor asked me not to ask questions about the night itself, since it had taken about 4 months of regular sessions with the eight year old, to reach this point of relative stability.

It may provide some fabric to the framework of statistics.


https://vimeo.com/114777637