Ordinary women and men, wearing plastic bags on their feet, pulling pants up to knee level, clutch their children to their chests and roam along a 110-metre dark tunnel of sewage to cross from the Israeli-occupied West Bank to East Jerusalem.

Erected under a barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank in defiance of a World Court ruling,  the tunnel serves as a gateway connecting Palestinians from the West Bank to East Jerusalem, a centre for medical, social, religious and other services for the Palestinians.

The passage goes from the village of Old Beit Hanina in the West Bank to the area also called Beit Hanina in what Israel has annexed as part of its Jerusalem municipality. It was first used in early 2004, locals say, when Israel erected the barrier between the two Beit Haninas. What was originally essentially one village became physically divided  in two.  The tunnel was last used during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in late September by people anxious to visit family or to pray in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque. Israel restricts entry for Palestinians to the city. Since then Israel has blocked off the passage — not for the first time.

Scenes of people’s legs sinking up to the knee in sewage are depicted in  ”Journey 110″ by Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar, who spent six hours capturing the 12-minute-long clip last year.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip can only enter Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as a capital for their future state, with often hard-to-get permits from Israeli authorities. In 1967, Israel captured the territories including Arab East Jerusalem.

Local officials in Old Beit Hanina estimated the number of people who crossed the passage at up to 150 per day while it was open. “People are not doing it for fun and this is may be the only way to get to Jerusalem,” said Saleh Daajneh, an official in the village.

When Israel first found out about it, soldiers blocked the passage with rocks but “tunnel operators” managed to find  a gap for people to squeeze themselves out the other end of the tunnel. Israel says the barrier is needed to  prevent Palestinian militants from attacking  their cities inside Israel.

After Ramadan this year, Israeli bulldozers again blocked the entrance of the tunnel with rocks.

“There must be a compelling reason why these people have to go through this trip,” said film maker Jarrar after a screening in Ramallah. His film will compete in  the film festival “Instants Video” in France’s Marseille next month.

To read full story in Arabic, click here

PHOTO: Film maker Khaled Jarrar posing for a picture, with his film playing in background, after the screening of the film in Ramallah.  December 27, 2009.

The gunfire was not a clash between Palestinian and Israeli forces, nor a violent dispute between rival Palestinian factions. It was a Palestinian celebration of students passing their high school matriculation exam — a tradition celebrated in some Arab countries.

More than 86,000 high school students in the West Bank and Gaza Strip took the exam, an entry card into college.

In lieu of any formal graduation ceremonies, celebrants fire live ammunition into the air, shoot off fireworks and hand out candy. Music echoes in the street during outdoor parties.

On Tuesday, the local mobile telephone network was jammed as parents and students spread the news on who passed and who failed.

PHOTO:Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (2nd R) visits a classroom during matriculation exams in the West Bank city of Ramallah June 11, 2007, in this picture released by the Palestinian Press Office (PPO).

Our TV cameramen and stills photographers prefer to shoot anywhere except in the West Bank village of Bilin. That’s where Palestinians, foreign supporters and Israeli left-wing activists hold weekly protests against the barrier Israel is building in the occupied West Bank.

Seeking to quell protests in Bilin,  Israeli security forces spray a foul-smelling substance that sticks — for a long time — to skin, clothes and cameras.  Staying their ground, protesters have been trying a counter-measure: yellow plastic suits and masks.

Our cameramen don’t have those “protection suits”. So they use another technique when the spray starts to fly — they take wing, leaving the camera running as they seek cover.

Click hear to watch the full picture.

PHOTO: Friday protest in Bil’in. July 10, 2009. REUTERS/Fadi Arouri

It’s hard to imagine that a quarrel over a municipal parking lot could not only lead to blows, but could possibly drag the Prime Minister into getting involved. At least, that’s what a member of the Labor party called for on Sunday, says the Jerusalem Post. Now, police are investigating threats to the Jerusalem mayor’s life.

This is the aftermath of the latest battle in the ongoing “Shabbat Wars” between ultra-Orthodox Jews and Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat over opening a municipal parking lot on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath (See Reuters coverage of the big protests/rioting that happened Saturday here). Hundreds of ultra-orthodox Jews rioted against the opening, while around a thousand secular Israelis rallied on Saturday in support of the parking lot opening. Now a Jerusalem City Council representative is resigning over the issue, and the former police commander has condemned Barkat for “insisting on making the wrong decisions” (Read more here).

In spite of these ruffled feathers on the political scene, most of the coverage in the mainstream Israeli media has leaned towards supporting Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat’s decision to open a Saturday lot. See this op-ed from Hanuch Daom with Yedioth Ahronoth, which criticizes “the sane elements within the Orthodox community who do not dare to face up [their ultra-religious counterparts] and say: Enough.”

This Jerusalem Post blog entry by McGill History Professor, Gil Troy, takes up a similar vein, calling on religious Jews to take up the parking lot cause along with secular Jerusalemites: “Leaving the fight to so-called “secular” Israelis exacerbates tensions. Alternatively, if religious and non-religious Jews stood together in this struggle, even while agreeing to disagree on other issues, it would reduce Israel’s growing polarization, wherein a Right-Left divide on security increasingly parallels a religious-secular divide regarding lifestyle, philosophy, pluralism and tolerance.” Troy calls on Orthodox Jews in communities outside of Israel (such as New York, London, and Paris) to threaten to withhold financial support for their brethren in Jerusalem if they continue to participate in the parking lot rioting.

What will next Shabbat bring? A Jerusalem city council member quoted says that most citizens of Jeruselm, ultra-orthodox or not, understand the need for the parking lot: “We will not let extremists dictate the future of Jerusalem”. And the deputy mayor says he expects the protests to cool down. We’ll know next week for sure…

PHOTOS: Baz Ratner, Darren Whiteside. Reuters, Jerusalem, June 27, 2009.

-- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. --

"The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending ... Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians, it strives to pacify them ... American identification with Israel has become total."

These are excerpts from a 2007 speech by Charles (Chas) Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, whose appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council was announced on February 26 and is turning into a test case for the strength of Washington's right-wing pro-Israel lobby.

Signs are that its influence might be waning under the administration of President Barack Obama. Does that mean the days of unquestioning American support for Israel are coming to en end? Probably not.

But the furious reaction to Freeman's appointment from some of the most fervent neo-conservative champions of Israel points to considerable concern over the possible loss of clout.

In his new job, Freeman will be responsible for compiling intelligence from the the United States' 16 intelligence agencies into National Intelligence Estimates, detailed and lengthy analyses that play a key role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.

The initial drumbeat of criticism came from conservative pro-Israel bloggers, including Steve Rosen, former policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosen has been indicted for giving "national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it," legalese for spying.

"Freeman is a strident critic of Israel and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time Israel was born," Rosen wrote.

While remarks critical of Israel are common coin among human rights groups and independent scholars, they are virtually taboo in official Washington, whose elected leaders - or those running for office - tend to stress unflagging support for the Jewish state.

Even small departures from the standard line can prompt the ire of the Israel-right-or-wrong camp. During his election campaign, Obama learned how tricky seemingly innocent remarks can be when he said "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." There was so much criticism, he later "clarified" the remark.

The initial blogger assault on Freeman, whose lengthy and impressive resume of public service includes Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, then moved to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the conservative Washington Times. The attacks widened to suggest that he is beholden to the Saudi government.

That allegation stems from the time he ran a Washington-based think tank, the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), whose donors include Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family and billionaire entrepreneur, who gave the council $1 million.

CRITICISM THREATENS PEACE?

The appointment has been made but the quest to dislodge or discredit him is not over. Nine Republican members of Congress wrote to the inspector general in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, demanding "a comprehensive review of Ambassador Freeman's past and current commercial, financial and contractual ties to the Kingdom to ensure no conflict of interest exists in his new position."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor has urged Obama to reconsider the appointment, saying that Freeman's comments about the U.S.-Israel relationship "raise serious concerns about his ability to support the administration's attempts to bring security, stability and peace to the Middle East."

Criticism of Israel threatens peace? Israeli settlements on the West Bank, in violation of international law, have nothing to do with the flagging peace process? Making peace is made easier by the U.S. refusal to talk to Hamas, the group that won elections in Gaza and runs the war-shattered territory?

One of the critics of the appointment, Gabriel Schoenfeld, noted, with a tone of disapproval, that Freeman's MEPC had published "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," a controversial assessment of U.S.-Israeli relations by two prominent American academics, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard.

They argued that the United States, through its unquestioning support of Israel, was neglecting its own security interests to advance the interests of another state. The influence of hawkish pro-Israel lobbies, chief among them AIPAC, had established a stranglehold on Congress to ram through decisions favoring Israel.

In the 60 years since its establishment on May 14, 1948, Israel has been by far the largest recipient of U.S. assistance, military and economic, in the world, according to the Congressional Research Service. Aid has been running at around $3 billion a year since 1985, a sizable sum for a country with a population smaller than that of New York City.

Walt, who blogs at Foreign Policy magazine, weighed into the Freeman debate as it gathered steam even before the actual appointment. Apart from trying to get it revoked by Dennis Blair or get Freeman to withdraw, Walt said, the anti-Freeman campaign had a third aim.

"Attacking Freeman is intended to deter other people in the foreign policy community from speaking out on these matters. Freeman might be too smart, too senior and too well-qualified to stop, but there are plenty of younger people eager to rise in the foreign policy establishment and they need to be reminded that their careers could be jeopardized ... if they said what they thought."

But the Obama administration appears to have no problem with people who say what they think about U.S.-Israel ties. Take Samantha Power, the former Harvard professor whose outspoken views echo those of Walt and Mearsheimer. Obama gave her an important job on the National Security Council.

-- You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com. --