More from my journal 15th July 2011

Marwan, who works for the Palestinian Authority takes me out to his workplace, as it is Friday, the day of rest here and my day off from teaching. He has a house in the Jenin camp but works in Farah, a small town about twenty kilometres south, half way between Jenin and Nablus. Farah, as well as well as having a large administrative complex, is the also the home of another refugee camp, a bit smaller than Jenin's, maybe of about 8,000 people.

We drive in silence along a dusty road bare hills on either side. Suddenly he tells me. 'You know two years ago I could not have used this road. Over there (he points to a ruined cluster of buildings on a hill on the other side ofa valley to our right), there was an Israeli military base. If any car or other vehicle went along this road they would automatically shoot at it. It was very dangerous then.

We arrive at Farah. Marwan shows me his office, which is full of medals and certificates, and a picture of him shaking the hand of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. After that, I have a bit of free time to wander about the refugee camp. Some of the walls are covered with fresh pictures of the young man, Shahid (martyr), who has just been shot dead the day before by Israeli soldiers following "procedures". I have already written about this. I wander into a back street, and a woman with a baby allows me to photograph her.

Marwan's office is part of a large administrative complex. There are other offices to do with the Palestinian Authority. The buildings have an interesting history. They were put up by the British in the 1930's when they ruled Palestine. Then the Israelis used them as a detention centre for Palestinians in the seventies and eighties. Now the Palestinian Authority has them. There is a large abandoned football stadium outside, covered with weeds. Marwan says that they hope to return it to its original use.

At the moment, because it is summer and the school year has finished, the complex is housing a series of residential summer camps for teenagers from all over the West Bank. There is one going on today. It is for young men and women who have lost a family member, father brother sister, as a result of the conflict. We meet some of the teenagers and the teachers. They stay there for a week, they have sports events, English classes, painting, even a resident poet. I talk to the poet, and I almost start to cry when he tells me what they are doing. They are making drawings and writing letters to their dead loved ones and posting them on the walls. I talk to a young woman called Miriam, who is spirited, teases me when I momentarily forget her name.

Later we go into a gym where a group of kids are receiving medals for gymnastics and other sports. Marwan wants me to give out the medals. 'What is congratulations in Arabic?', I whisper. 'MaBruk', he says. Like the Hebrew word, Baruch - blessed. So I place the medals which are tied to coloured ribbons around the necks of the athletes. MaBruk, MaBruk.