I recently returned from a 5-day trip to the West Bank called an Introduction to Palestine organised by the Jerusalem-based Green Olive Tours. All details of the various day tours and extended trips that they offer can be found on their website at www.toursinenglish.com

The tour is coordinated by Fred Schlomka (a Jewish Israeli) in conjunction with a number of guides of Arab Israeli and Palestinian origin who over the course of your stay give you an incisive and interesting insight into the daily issues which confront those living on both sides of the Separation Barrier. The tour has the added advantage of placing you with a Palestinian family in a suburb of Bethlehem called Beit Sahour and some of the excursions on the itinerary are also offered by the Alternative Tourism Group Study Center which is located there. The Operation Manager is Samer Kokaly, who is himself an excellent tour guide and the tours they offer can be seen at www.atg.ps

The entire tour itself was extremely thought-provoking and very rewarding for a whole number of reasons. By the end of my stay, I had the feeling that I had been in the West Bank for considerably longer than the 4 days I had actually spent there, such was the intensity of what I experienced every day.

I gained a much clearer understanding of how the West Bank is divided up by the Israeli government into different administrative areas labeled A, B and C and how the Separation Barrier has impacted on the daily lives of many Palestinians.

I got to see for myself the vast number of Israeli settlements which are continuing to spring up and grow all over the West Bank on land simply confiscated from the Palestinians, despite the reported freeze supposedly agreed by the Israeli government to placate growing international criticism. As a foreigner, it was a very strange feeling indeed to pass unchallenged in an Israeli car through the checkpoints at such settlements, knowing that Palestinians are forcibly prevented from doing the same, thereby rendering them unable to drive across their own land in their own cars.

The sight of the countless irrigation pipes sprinkling unlimited freshwater supplies onto the numerous flowerbeds adjoining the roads right across the 35,000 strong settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim was poignant when considering the fact that all Palestinian homes in the nearby area of Bethlehem had been without water of any kind for the previous 2 weeks due to a so-called shortage which had led the Israeli authorities to cut off the supply there.

Travelling across the West Bank will enable you to see with your own eyes what is happening there. For me personally, it revealed in detail how the entire infrastructure is being layered to ensure that the Palestinians are treated as vastly inferior in every sense of the word, be it through the fostering of apartheid-style roads, living conditions or erosion of basic rights.

I regret to say that it evoked memories of past visits to West Belfast in darker days, as well as my first trip to East and West Berlin in 1986. However, it is significant that the Separation Barrier in the West Bank is twice as high as the Berlin Wall ever was. Likewise its effects are far more subtle. It does considerably more than just offer a protective barrier against terrorists as the Israeli authorities claim, by effectively enabling the Israeli government to dictate where different categories of people can live, work and travel. It became apparent to me on this trip that the Palestinians are severely disadvantaged in every case.

One house and gift shop that we visited on the tour near Bethlehem belongs to Claire Anastas. The building, which was formerly on the main road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, is now directly enclosed on 3 sides by the 8 metre-high Separation Barrier which has naturally had a hugely detrimental effect on her business, by cutting her off from any potential customers. You can see this for yourself by visiting her website at www.anastas-bethlehem.com

During a walk through the market stalls at Hebron, I was confronted by the site of an overhead wire mesh running the entire length and breadth of the bazaar. This is there to protect the Palestinian retailers and shoppers beneath it from being hit by debris of all kind regularly thrown by the Israeli settlers living in the upper floors of the buildings right above them. Items too big to pass through the mesh such as large rocks, shoes, bottles, chairs, etc. hang eerily on top of the wire in full view of the Israeli soldiers who do nothing to prevent them being thrown. In addition, the soldiers are not averse to openly abusing Palestinians at checkpoints in full view of visiting tourists.

A drive through East Jerusalem makes it evident how this Arabic city officially on the Palestinian side of the 1967 Green Line is now nevertheless effectively divided from the West Bank by the Separation Barrier. It has thus been unofficially ‘annexed’ by Israel.

The tour also incorporates a whole host of additional highlights, including a visit to three different refugee camps and a chance to get an in-depth look at some of the graffiti along the Separation Barrier, including the much-publicized images by Banksy. If the checkpoint allows it, you are also able to visit one of the last remaining communities of Samaritans living on the sacred spot of Mount Gerizim overlooking Nablus, where you are greeted personally by the High Priest Husney Cohen.

During the course of my 5 days, I met countless people who like me were interested in finding out more about the current situation than is possible by taking a traditional Israeli tour of the Holy Land, irrespective of how rewarding that may be. Visiting countless religious sites in Israel during the 8 days prior to this trip was extremely enjoyable, but it was no substitute for learning about the reality of life on the ground for the large number of citizens deemed aliens in their own country by Israeli government policy.

As someone who has researched the Holocaust in depth as part of a wider programme of study incorporating German political history, I feel very strongly indeed about the question of a Jewish homeland with a stable future. I was deeply sickened by what I saw when I visited the concentration camps of Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Ausschwitz, and probably the most moving moment of the time I spent in Israel was my visit to the Holocaust museum just outside Jerusalem at Yad Vashem. Its documentation of this nation’s suffering is unrivalled and incredibly touching.

Indeed, it is because of this wish for the stability of a Jewish homeland, that I found this tour so thought-provoking. Having read countless books about the twisted ideology of the Nazis who inflicted such horrendous cruelty upon the Jews of Europe on the basis of a demented theory of racial superiority, it is clear that history tells us of the catastrophic result of their demand for ‘Lebensraum’ to enable Germany to expand its borders at the expense of people it considered inferior to its own. Whilst I in no way wish to draw comparisons, signing up for this tour will nevertheless enable you to begin to make up your own mind as to whether or not the policies currently being legitimized by the Israeli government will indeed enable the country’s citizens to enjoy the long-term stable and prosperous future they have a right to.

I found it sad that many Israelis I spoke to apparently see the West Bank as either an area to be colonized by the Jewish race, or an area to be avoided at all costs. Despite participating in the trip as a foreigner, I found that the tour at least presents an opportunity to begin to narrow the divide presented by the physical obstacle that has recently appeared in the shape of the Separation Barrier. Without any meaningful form of dialogue, as is now seemingly the case, the prophesy of the final battle of Armageddon being fought at Meggido is quite possibly much closer than some people imagine. As such, I can honestly say it is one of the most informative and productive trips I have ever been on and I would thoroughly recommend it without any hesitation.