The wall at the entrance to Bethlehem 

looking upwards from the empty tomb in the Holy Sepulchre Church in Jerusalem 

one of the old streets in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem 

internet coffee shop at Easter, East Jerusalem 

bullet holes in road sign close by St George's 

tat and trinkets 

two activists prepare to leave Ben Gurion airport 

Dome of the Rock viewed from the east 

palm branches in St George's Cathedral compound 

New approach for Palestine blogging

I've come with a digital camera, so I'll be less text dependant for telling some of the tales. The Dead Sea image was take at 6.20am on Friday 18 March, as the sun rise hitting about 4,000 feet of hill sat 15 miles away.

The border crossing took me 4 hours, or 6 hours door to door from the Dead Sea to St George's. Those on the Palestinian bus, typically took 8-10 hours to make their door to door journeys, including four hours of waiting and waiting to be searched and searched again, and then the wait for transport three times over at least, and for some another night of waiting for a checkpoint to open again.

There's no reasons for it to be so slow, just excuses.

This border crossing bus is carrying Palestinians on a 4 kilometre journey which takes 4 hours. 

Dead Sea view of Palestine

Yes I'm in the Middle East again. I didn't land at Amman in time to cross into the West Bank today, so I took a cab down to the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea, and floated in the water looking across to Palestine. Wondering what the next bit holds in store. I'll find out in the morning.

View from the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea looking across to the hills of Palestine on which Jerusalem and Bethlehem sit, 4000ft above the sea. 

Caught in the Between --

We now have a working title for the film project, and have just finished all the logging of tapes (21 tapes in total, 1200 different shots). Today we met with a YTV executive producer who was offering us some consultancy on the material we've got -- outcome from it is positive -- we're doing the right things. And I was able to immediately book Labib, the Palestinian cameraman, to work with me for two days during Holy Week -- it was strange calling the Ramallah studio up out of the blue like that, and getting straight through to him. I'm glad that I'm starting to know what I'm going out there for -- I leave in exactly two weeks.