‘We landed in Tel Aviv airport at about 8pm local time on Monday 27th August. We’d been warned that it can be a bit of an intimidating border and that was certainly true (though not so bad as on the way out). I actually had no trouble- the border guard I spoke to asked me about the purpose of my visit and told me to enjoy my stay. In fact, 17 of the 21 in our group had variations on that experience. Unfortunately, those 4 that had trouble were our 4 colleagues of a Muslim background. They were all taken off to a different room, away from the rest of the group and had a bit of a surreal time for a good two and a half hours.’

‘We went from Bethlehem to Hebron which is one of the biggest cities in the West Bank and a real centre of trade and industry. We were told that Hebron was probably the tensest place we’d go in the whole week, due to presence of several hundred Israeli settlers who have moved into the city centre (accompanied by a significant military presence in order to protect them.) This means there are a few streets (known by the locals as ‘the ghost town’) that local Palestinians aren’t allowed to walk or drive on.’