26th September
East Jerusalem.
At some point soon, as we settle down into a routine now that the full-time programme has begun at the conservatory I expect the chaos to reduce, but today showed no signs of change in this direction. Of the schedule that I was given at the start of the day, about 50 per cent of it was wrong, with gaps that shouldn’t have been and with times where two people showed up together. Apparently the cause of the problem is known and is being dealt with.
I’ve just heard on the World Service that the Israeli Defence Force have been in Gaza again today, killing eight Palestinians, at least three of whom are civilians – yet further moves towards an overt conflict, I believe. While I’m on the subject of news, I found a great bookshop in East Jerusalem today that sells lots of current affairs books in English, many of which are on the subject of the Israel/Palestine issue. I got a book that I’ve been looking out for called Drinking the Sea at Gaza by Amira Hass, the Israeli journalist who writes for Haartetz, and is unusual in that she lives in the Occupied Territories, currently in Ramallah I think. It’s a well known book, and inspired a great film by John Pilger called Palestine is Still the Issue, which I first saw on youtube a year or two ago – although I now have my own copy, I hope it’s still on there as it’s really worth watching, if you are interested in the subject.
