Land of the Prickly Pears

Land of the Prickly Pears is an ongoing journey through the lands of Israel and the Palestinian Territories. This first section covers the West Bank where my journey started in 2004. This is a journal on daily life beyond the realms of the 8 o'clock news. It's about resilience, the scars left by a troubled past and about history repeating itself. Appropriation and Re-Appropriation: the Prickly Pears of the title are a 'national' fruit that stand as metaphor for a divided land, interrupted lives, hurt pride and identity of two peoples. Travel guides now often compare Israelis to this cacti fruit: spiky on the outside but sweet on the inside. Prickly pears, though, were also popular with Palestinians for a long time. In the Israeli/Arab film "Route 181", an elderly refugee recalls her most vivid memory of the village she had to evacuate in 1948: " the shadow of a low wall and the taste of a prickly pear." A fruit that features in both histories and collective memories. Longed for, disputed and loved on both sides.

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