War, tension and houmous....

The Middle East is not one of the calmest and peaceful places at the moment... For the past few weeks things have actually escalated. First in Lebanon with the fiery speech of Nasrallah, indirectly declaring open war with Israel.... As an example of this war actually being a strong probability of occurring, a friend's tennis coach in Beirut told him he was setting up a tennis club in the mountains where most Beirutis tend to flee in case of war. Another example is that I am actually currently writing the proposal for the next phase of UNRWA's emergency job creation programme and I have included in the section on "risks and assumptions" the fact that a war between Hezbollah and Israel would have a heavy toll on the implementation of the programme in the Palestinian Territories especially in the North West Bank.

















Then in Gaza, where the incursions and bombings from Israel in response to rocket fire from inside Gaza to neighbouring Israeli towns has devastated Gaza and has caused the death of over 100 Palestinians including children. As a response, Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem have protested and youths have thrown stones as the only weapons at their disposal to let out their anger towards this dreadful occupation. The head of the Palestinian representation to the UN in New York called for an emergency meeting at the Security Council last week denouncing the apathy of the international community in its lack of action in light of Israel's disproportionate use of force.

The situation in the West Bank is even currently affecting the work of aid agencies such as UNRWA. Last week, my monitors who are responsible for monitoring and evaluation of the emergency job creation programme were blocked on numerous occasions as many areas were closed for incursions and checkpoints were put up banning all men under 35 years old to enter. Some of the IDF soldiers interrogated and held one of our monitors for 3 hours, despite him having his UN identity card. This is of course in clear violation of the agreement which UNRWA (and the UN in general) has with local authorities and therefore I sent a report of this incident to the Operations Support Office at UNRWA responsible for such negotiations with IDF and Israeli police.

Nothing really seems to be improving here and scepticism is often the prevailing sentiment especially in light of the broken peace talks between Olmert and Abu Mazen. Today, the visit of Condoleeza Rice has been described by the media as a rescue mission.

So during all this tension, the Palestinians who have been through this their entire lives and their entire parents' lives find ways to enjoy life anyway... One of which is ordering houmous from a guy named Abu Hassan from Salahaddin Street in East Jerusalem and getting it delivered to the office at lunch time!
















The houmous from Abu Hassan is like no other! It is incredible and I can say with confidence that Palestinian houmous is better than its Lebanese equivilant. Breaking a piece of soft warm Palestinian white bread, dipping it generously in the houmous making sure to take a few chickpeas and olive oil and then devouring it, is probably one of the best moments one can have in life!...Highly recommended therefore...