Pictures from Nablus and Tulkarem taken by Greg Wilkinson

These pictures from Nablus and Tulkarem in were taken by Greg Wilkinson, acting as observer for British Quakers during the summer of 2002. Since then the destruction and suffering has intensified, from Gaza in the south to Jenin in the northern West Bank.

1. This mother and her children are staying with neighbours after the demolition of their house in the old city of Nablus. When the Israeli soldiers came to the door one evening, she thought they were looking for her husband, already in hiding. She was ordered out into the street with her children, and questioned, along with neighbours from the houses around. When the woman - her name is Hibba - asked if she could go indoors and collect some food and things for the children she was told no, the house was to be destroyed. And so it was, blown up along with all her family possessions and adjoining buildings. (The Israeli high court had ruled that, since a suicide bomber was beyond punishment, some other deterrent needed; the army was therefore entitled to demolish a suicide bomber's family home. Hibba's husband, though a resistance fighter, was still alive and therefore not a suicide bomber, but the Israeli army is used to interpreting the law quite freely.)

2. When Hibba's home was blown up, four other families were also made homeless: the stone buildings in the old city are multi-occupied and lean upon each other for support.

3. The party on the rooftop above the slogan are recording the damage. The woman in the red jacket co-ordinates the local committees which handle everything from rations to rubble and resettlement. As the Palestinian Authority is made powerless, so responsibility falls upon local grassroots groupings that cut across the divides between religious and secular, political, social and and military (a devolution of powers that may rebound on both Palestinian and Israeli authorities if elections are ever held!)

4. Corner shock: where a tank cuts a corner, the shopfront goes with it.

5. More wreckage in Nablus, where people complained that Jenin got all the publicity while Nablus suffered worse in repeated assaults under Israel's 'Operation Defensive Shield'

6. On the Tulkarm road, a holding-pen containing Palestinians picked up near the Israeli border. Since autumn 2000, Israel has been closed to thousands of Palestinians who used to work there, But some employers are happy to have them back if they can make it and unemployment of 60 - 70% encourages risk-taking on the Palestinian side. Israel has plans for industrial estates along the new defacto border of the 'separation fence'. Israeli capital will then employ Palestinian labour without the risk of letting in potential 'terrorists'.

7. More collateral damage: a patient lies oblivious to the broken glass by his bed after another punishment demolition across the road. In Tulkarm this time, the explosion took out front windows and fittings of the new al-Zakat hospital. Two young Palestinians were serving sentences as terrorists and their large extended family had been made homeless overnight by the blowing up of a small apartment block. The old man in a chair by the ruins said 'I don't know what those boys in prison did, but they didn't build this property. I did, for everyone.'

8. The man with arms outstretched is protesting, or lamenting, the loss of his tree nursery to Israel's 'separation fence.' The army surveyors have just staked their claim to a strip of fertile irrigated valley north of Tulkarm and he stands to lose his livelihood and life savings. Neighbours were just as distressed: some had houses, others farmland on the wrong side, soon to be effectively annexed to Israel. A grandmother, her house cut off from the village, wondered how her grandchildren would get to school; local councillors who asked about disruption of water and power supplies were told 'That's your problem, ours is security!' Now that the fence is built. electrified, the land on either side laid waste, the problem must already have been resolved. Or not.

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