Checkpoints and Chances: Eyewitness Accounts from an Observer in Israel - Palestine [Paperback]

This book is a compilation of letters which the author wrote during a two year period from Bethlehem and Jerusalem. She describes her encounters with ordinary and extraordinary Israelis and Palestinians who are caught up in the conflict.
What does it feel like to be the parent of a suicide bomber? To be a Palestinian suspected of collaboration? To have your home demolished for no sensible reason? To be the mother of small children trapped indoors for days on end in a curfew? Katharine finds out and then tells us in these letters.

Katharine von Schubert went to the West Bank in October 2002 as a volunteer international observer based in Bethlehem for Quaker Peace & Social Witness, and continued working in Jerusalam until September 2004. There are her luminous reports of being with people under military occupation, as they struggle with curfews, checkpoints and sudden losses of home and livelihood.

We left Jerusalem at nine o’clock this morning. Thirty-six kilometres and several checkpoints later, our minibus found the main checkpoint into Hebron city closed off by Israeli soldiers. So our driver sped on. The next turn-off was also blocked – but by three selfappointed guards. Hanging out near their white van in the centre of the side road were a group of Jewish settlers. Two had long dark hair and beards. They all wore dark blue uniforms and had massive
guns hanging round their necks. Again, our driver sprinted on along the main road. Then, changing his mind, he turned round, and drove into the side road. The settlers immediately flagged us down and told everyone to get off the bus. To have ignored them could have meant being shot at. So, ten Palestinians and we five foreigners got out, unloading all the luggage which we’d packed tightly into the bus. The settlers separated men from women and told us to stand up against the fence...