PALESTINE - ISRAEL - JORDAN - SINAI

Off the beaten track tours • Visit sites • Meet locals • Discuss Human Rights & Politics

South Hebron Hills

The tiny villages of the Masafer Yatta region in the South Hebron Hills are only an hour’s drive from Jerusalem or an hour and a half from Tel Aviv, but traveling here one seems to be going back in time. Here, at the edge of the desert, farmers eek out a meager living growing barley […]

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Five Broken Cameras

– by Alex Jones –  Welcome to the first in a series of film reviews which will highlight some of the most interesting issues facing our region. Watching movies and reading books about somewhere you visited is a great way to reminisce and avoid forgetting the places you went, the things you saw and the […]

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From Village Protest to Transnational Solidarity

by Brian Callan –  Over the last four years or more I’ve had the privilege to live in Jerusalem, where I studied the world of Palestinian Solidarity Activism. It is, like all the social worlds that people create, rich and complex. But what struck me most is the impressive breadth of nationalities, creeds, genders, generations […]

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Volunteering to Make a Difference

by Angela Hersch – One of the greatest things about volunteering is that you get to walk in someone else’s shoes.  That is exactly what happens with Green Olive Tours Volunteer Program – a time to walk in the shoes of someone else, to help them shoulder their burden and understand more of their world. […]

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A Brief History of the Ascent of the National-Religious Movements in Israel

By Miri –  During the last Israeli elections in 2013, for the first time in many years, the ultra-orthodox parties, for a long time celebrated as the kingmakers of Israeli politics, did not succeed in forming part of the new government. While many devoted secularists in Israel celebrated the end of the orthodox influence on national […]

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Politicising International Aid to Palestine

By Miri –  The concept of “aid” usually invokes a whole lot of positive, altruistic and humanitarian associations, yet after decades of money flowing from the global North to the South, international aid to so called “underdeveloped” countries has come under increasing criticism. Many claim that rather than serving its alleged beneficiaries, international aid primarily serves […]

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Scrutinizing Normalization

By Miri –  According to Aziz Abu Sarah “there are as many definitions [of normalization] as there are Palestinians themselves”. Normalization, according to him, developed into a catch-all argument against any cooperative effort with Israel, ranging from the relations between Arab states and Israel, to having any contact whatsoever with Israelis, or even Jews on […]

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“I Vote Therefore I Am?” – Palestinian Participation in Israeli Elections

By Miri – The past few years have seen the ascent of the most right wing governments in Israel’s history. While there seems to be a widespread sense of political apathy and electoral participation in Israel is declining in general, critics often suggest that the relative powerlessness of the Palestinian community in Israel stems from […]

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“Be Careful of Arab Women, Who Have Lately Proved as Dangerous as Men”

By Miri – Highlighting the participation of Palestinian women in the struggle for national self-determination is important, but also often misleading. Overemphasising and celebrating their role can obscure the challenges that they face within their own society. Applying gendered theories which solely focus on their position within Palestinian society on the other hand too often […]

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The Manifold Burdens of Palestinian Female Prisoners

By Miri –  During Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2008 and 2009 a large group of Israeli activists was arrested for blocking the entrance to a military airport north of Tel Aviv. I was one of them. At the end of our first court hearing the judge decided to send us to jail for a […]

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Land First – Earth Second? Environmentalism in Israel and Palestine

By Miri – Growing up in a middle class home in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, I was privileged enough to learn quite a bit and grow aware of environmental problems. I remember having to drink UHT milk and my father trying to explain me what had happened in Chernobyl, which immediately turned me […]

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Returning to Jaffa

By Miri –  When I’m guiding tours in Jaffa and Tel Aviv I usually tell the participants that the best thing I can do to further their understanding of what is going on in this region, is by complicating issues. Rather than providing them with a logical or linear version of history, my aim is […]

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