Arrived in East Jerusalem

Was at Heathrow on Friday 17 meeting Stephen Sizer who's written a pro-Palestinian evangelical perspective on Christian Zionism. He had a full set of the DVDs and pamphlets he's produced on the topic and his latest book. I crammed them into my bags, wondering what Israeli Defence Force border control would think .

The flight to Amman was significant for two reasons. First and less importantly, I'd never been to Lebanon before: it was only for 40 minutes, it was a dark cloudy night and I didn't leave the plane, so I have a vague and flawed impression of the sky-line courtesy of the street lights, and I can visualize the sea from what was entirely void! What made the flight exceptional though was that I sat next to two people returning from one month in Leeds back to Baghdad. They were best friends to each other. When they said where they were going to we all wept together. We spoke about the Blair / Bush war crimes and the BBC lies for a while.

They spoke with so much hope and little desperation. I felt proud to have spent a little time with two intellectual philoshophers who survived, smiled and continued to overcome. We spoke about religious freedom in Iraq. The Christian hoped to be allowed to go to Church this Christmas, unlike last year, and the Muslim talked about one of her friends who was executed for wearing an Hijab when Saddaam ruled there.

I arrived at Amman 10 minutes before sunrise, and took a cab straight to the King Hussein border to make the crossing over from the east bank of the Jordan, in Jordan, to its west bank in Palestine. Once across the river I arrived at the Israeli border control heavily loaded with professional video tapes and the DV Camera, Stephen's literature and a large furry animal microphone. I took all the advice though and remained cheerful and unthreatened -- all went well, quickly and smoothly -- phew -- I was so worried about long sets of questions which get me anxious -- no it was the 90 minutes queue to check-in at Heathrow which was more stressful this time! A friendly German / Dubai family who I met going through gave me a free ride in the mini-van-cab they'd booked for the 50 minute drive and 3000ft climb up to Jerusalem.

My friend Hatem was at St George's Cathedral when I arrived -- we went to midday prayer, had lunch, did some further planning for my weeks here and met up with some others too. And with his help, within 24 hours I've now briefed Bishop Riah on the project, arranged a visit to Ramallah to sort out a film crew, and had a light supper at the American Colony hotel. Today I've settled into my room at the College, which is lovely, simple, and has a balcony with a view of the St George's compound -- more trees than I'd remembered. Church this morning was a joint Arabic / English service -- singing hymns in two languages got me confused and I ended up singing the tune of Hark the Herald whilst fitting the words of Once in Royal, without noticing.

Now it's Sunday afternoon and I have been browsing the local shops here in north east Jerusalem, just a few hundred metres from the Damascus gate into the old city. I love wandering around munching falafel buying roasted pistachios, still warm, and drinking arabic coffee. I meet a media photographer at the Grand Hotel in Ramallah tonight at 6pm -- getting through the Kalandyia check point on the way ought to be no problem. I do hope I'll be able to get back through later on -- my contingency plan is to stay the night over there otherwise.