West Bank Journal: Last Day in Palestine

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In Sarda, I am beginning to worry about the time. I need to be in Ramallah by five, for a meeting about the summer campaign. At about two thirty, we finally all crowd into a service that takes us bumping and jolting over the rough dirt roads out into the fields. Fatima wants me to see the effluent from the factories in the settlements that is being dumped on the Palestinians' fields, as well as the raw sewage that is polluting the water. The dirt road snakes through a tunnel under a wide, paved road that serves the settlements and that the Palestinians are not allowed on. The light is golden and the fields are wide and wild and beckoning. Arish tells me her sister lives in the next village and they now walk the dirt roads to visit her, three hours hike, because to drive, skirting the settler roads and the roadblocks, takes too long. Secretly, I long to take that three-hour walk even though I know for them it is a hardship, not a pleasure hike. But we don't have time. We can't even go to see the effluent from the factory, but we do track the murky, contaminated stream that winds through the fields, and talk to the shepherds whose goats are grazing the hillside. Sheep have been dying here, mysteriously, and no one knows why but they suspect the contamination. If it wasn't for the pools of putrid water, the scene would be entirely idyllic, and again I find myself feeling happy in spite of everything.

But our trip has made me late. The service takes me to the roadblock on the far side of Biddu. From there, I catch another service with the women from the IWPS house, who get off at Hares while I continue to the checkpoint at Zatara. I don't go through the checkpoint but instead catch a third shared taxi, which goes to the checkpoint at Qalendia. I get off there, and hoist my pack onto my back to walk through. The soldiers watch the path but don't stop people going into Ramallah. One, a young, blond woman, has an open face and I ask her how long the checkpoint will be open, because Israel has switched to summer time while Palestine has not. She looks surprised to be asked, but assures me it is open until ten. She seems like a nice person, like someone who might be one of my stepdaughters' friends, and I find it hard to imagine her shooting live ammunition at unarmed demonstrators. By now the soldiers have departed from Biddu, leaving forty wounded: four from tear gas, four from live ammunition, the others from rubber bullets. The worst cases have been sent to the hospital at Ramallah. The house is still standing.

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