It has been a few days since the last post. We have been very busy planting many vine and other fruit trees. To help to restore land that has been scarred by succesive occupations is significant and good to be part of. The land has been really hard to work and all we have is basic hand tools and a horse to carry all the equipment.
We have spent most of the time this week at Tent of Nations where the sun has shone and we have started to get an early tan.
Today we took the day off and went up to Ramallah, the administrative centre of the West Bank. The trip there through the desert was beautiful, but the city itself was dissapointing as it was quite run down. Many of the towns here are run down due to the poverty in the region, but the old areas in the cities are everything you expect from a middle eastern city. We spent this afternoon in Bethlehem where we visited the wall and some art including Banksy's Christmas additions, drank coffee in Manger square before heading down to Shepherds Fields for a couple of beers. My favourite street in Bethlehem is Star Street.
Today it has become more apparent on how difficult and degrading it can be for Palestinians to travel around their own country. There are quite a few roadblocks that we had to go through and random vehicles are stopped and searched by Israeli soldiers.
We have heard that Gaza has lifted it's ceasefire, but so far we havn't seen much result of this concerning increased security as I think much of the problem is down in Gaza and not here in the West Bank.
Tomorrow we are looking forward to more planting.
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