Some of these women came from Biddu, a 7,000-strong village west of Ramallah near the Green Line (the 1967 border). Biddu is next to the planned route of the wall and slated to loose 2,500 dunam (625 acres) of farmland – most of their livelihood. In early May, Dima arrived on one of her weekly visits to the village and met a group of 25 members of a women’s club set up by Parc in their concrete club building. A man stirred a large vat demonstrating candle making, but the focus was a discussion about women’s actions against the wall.

Two Israeli women from Israeli women’s peace organisation Bath Shalom had come to lend support. One after another the Palestinian women voiced their frustration: “Everything is forbidden, it’s like a prison.” “What help are we getting from the outside world or from Arab countries?” “The Wall is killing Palestinian life.” “All of our family’s 25 dunam where we grow grapes and olives is gone.”

The club decided against a “women-only” protest, but continued talking with the Israeli women, despite the fact that three weeks earlier Israeli soldiers on horseback had beaten them with batons when they demonstrated. And at another non-violent village demonstration in February, two men were shot and many villagers suffered after inhaling tear gas.

On 30th June, Biddu villagers heard that they were one of the villages through which the Israeli Supreme Court had ordered the wall to be rerouted.

Since the late 1980s Parc has included a focus on women, after research revealed that 65 per cent of agriculture was done by women, unpaid as part of their household duties and with no control over agricultural revenue. Parc has tried many approaches to raise rural women’s awareness of their rights, give women training and find ways for women to earn an income. It has built up a network of over 150 women’s groups and clubs in villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza (with nearly 13,000 registered members), and opened 115 women’s savings and credit clubs. In 2002 it set up the Rural Women’s Development Society (RWDS) to coordinate the work of the network. In the West Bank, clubs and groups are regularly supported by 14 fieldworkers like Dima. Typically each club has 150-200 members who elect a committee. The women plan their own programmes, which have so far included sessions on women and children’s health, food production, human rights or handicrafts.

Getting education is problematic for village girls especially in remote rural communities where many families still give preference to boys. In some villages Parc runs classes to help women complete their Tawjihi (matriculation) and a number have gone on to university. In other villages women choose to run more basic literacy courses. In a small Bedouin encampment outside a village near Jerusalem a group of 11 women were learning the alphabet in a small, bright transport container. This was the single new “building” (donated by volunteers) among the rag- and plastic-covered tin and wooden shacks and piles of garbage crowded together on an exposed hill top.

Community development and outreach work is always long term and depends on building up and sustaining personal relationships through regular contact. Dima cannot travel freely or easily between villages because of the restrictions on her movement through permits, checkpoints and closure. Cultural factors are a major obstacle. RWDS director Ghada Zughayar explains: “Tribal attitudes and the powerful influence of families make it difficult to involve women, especially those in rural areas, and their activities are often undermined by local political parties as well as deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes.”

Discussion and decision-making help develop women’s confidence and leadership skills so that the groups and clubs can be self-sustaining in the longer term. Ghada lists as major achievements in the past two years the fact that 43 of their clubs has held elections and that the clubs increasingly influence decisions in their communities. “Nine women from these clubs have been elected to village councils in the Tulkarm area [in the northwest of the West Bank] and around 40 more women leaders will run for election to their village councils.”

My introduction two years ago to the Jerusalem choir was in a large school hall. At one end, about 15 Palestinians and “internationals” of all ages sat facing a tiny woman next to a zimmer frame. After noisy welcomes, and enquiries about what “voice” I sang, the pianist Nadia clapped her hands and everyone launched into “la la la” up the scales. Scores of Mozart’s Coronation Mass were handed round and the conductor Salwa coaxed us through it. When the sopranos faltered, she chided: “You sound like strangled chickens” to peals of laughter. It was an immensely warm, unruly affair, conducted in Arabic and English and punctuated with jokes.

Since 1955, the choir’s chequered life has been inextricably bound up with political events here. For its Palestinian members mainly from the Christian Arab community, keeping it alive is a way of surviving and resisting the occupation.

Gabby Baramki started the choir in 1955 while teaching at Birzeit Junior College (now Birzeit University near Ramallah). He and his friends wanted to widen the appreciation and performance of classical music, since in Palestine there was virtually no such musical tradition, apart from lessons at the Quaker boys” and girls” schools in Ramallah (founded over 100 years ago).

Until 1967, it was easy to travel the short distances between Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, so in 1956 the choir started rehearsing in St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. In the early 1960s it began performing at Easter and Christmas in the cathedral. Gabby recalls: “The choir was performing for a community which had never experienced such musical performances. We had our own following, including many from foreign consulates.”

Following the Israeli occupation in 1967 the choir stopped for three years. The first year of occupation was a tremendous shock for the whole of Palestinian society, physically, practically and psychologically; people were just surviving what was happening. In 1970 it restarted, with support from the Jerusalem YMCA and in 1972 Salwa Tabri joined as conductor and Nadia Abboushi as pianist. Nadia had known about the choir since childhood. “Classical music was not part of popular Palestinian culture, but at that time there was a larger middle class in Ramallah that enjoyed classical music and we were hungry for it.”

Although of different generations Nadia and Salwa have similar backgrounds. Both were raised in Ramallah, attended the Quaker Friends Girls” School and studied music abroad before returning to Ramallah to teach music. In 1993 they helped establish the National Conservatory of Music in Ramallah.

In 1987 political events again intervened. The choir stopped meeting for five years during the first Intifada, a time of great political activity and disruption. In the first year schools were closed for six months, Israeli soldiers were on the streets and there were constant curfews. By 1991 Israel initiated its policy of “closure”: the “pass” system of permits to control Palestinian movement in and out of Israel and within the occupied Palestinian territories.

But members were determined to revive the choir and in 1992 it regrouped, first in Ramallah but then in 1993 in Jerusalem after the signing of the first Oslo Accords (the negotiations that led to the formation of the Palestinian Authority and divided the occupied territories into different zones). The next years were, as Nadia puts it, “a time of benevolent occupation”. The choir travelled each week to Jerusalem in a hired van, more internationals joined and members returned from Bethlehem and Hebron. But the closure policies intensified during this period of “peace”. Population centres were separated by growing numbers of army checkpoints, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and a vast network of Israeli highways. The choir’s performances in other West Bank towns aimed to break the isolation and separation between communities

Eventually frustrations with the Oslo process, deteriorating economic conditions and the tightening occupation control led to the current Intifada in September 2000. Again the shrunken choir retreated to Ramallah. Since then it has only performed once outside Ramallah, in December 2001 in Beit Jala refugee camp (outside Bethlehem) in a church that was hit by Israeli gunfire as they sang. Members recall the risky journey with “internationals” packed at the front of the bus, which erupted into “Hallelujah” as it passed the checkpoint. When it could not travel to Bethlehem in December 2002, the choir performed secular songs of protest in the mud at the Qalandia checkpoint south of Ramallah.

The choir is more than an enjoyable musical activity.. It expresses different identities and political realities. Concerts always include one or two national songs sung in Arabic. The classical music performed often has a particular resonance. Salwa recalls: “My first concert was Haydn’s ‘In Time of War’, so appropriate as we sang it during the October 1973 Israeli-Egyptian war.”

It is a way of carrying on life as normally as possible. People attend rehearsals even under curfew, or as last week during violent incursions elsewhere. Christo Bursheh, a dentist who joined in his 20s, and active in the movement for normal communal activities here, is totally committed. “Even if I come late because of other meetings, I never miss a rehearsal – it is part of keeping things going and staying here.”

Its name is no misnomer. The choir is determined to rehearse and perform in Jerusalem again.

The 65-kilometre journey by road to the new Arab American University just south of Jenin (in the north of the West Bank) and through the Jordan valley on the eastern “border’ of the West Bank takes more than three and half hours. The intensively farmed, fertile Jordan valley is dotted with Israeli settlements and agricultural businesses, established on land expropriated from the Palestinians by Israel after 1967. There are over 150 illegal Israeli settlements with more than 400,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and their expansion is accelerating. In 2003 the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics recorded a 35 per cent increase in new settlement building. Water rights are a major issue. In 2002 the 5,000 Israelis in settlements in the Jordan valley consumed as much water as 75 per cent of the entire Palestinian West Bank population of 2 million.

The Arab American University, the first non-government funded university in Palestine, stands on a hill overlooking a panoramic landscape. Waleed Deeb, the president of the university has been developing this project for over seven years. He has a clear vision: “My priority is education, to encourage critical thinking, research and self-learning. I want my students to be able to compete not only locally but internationally.’ His staff praise his participative management style and his students admire his open-door policy.

Now in its third year and with 2,500 of an eventual 4,500 students, the university offers a number of unique degrees in Palestine including dentistry, information technology, biotechnology and physical and occupational therapy. The continuing education department is an important local resource. Its programme for adults targets both general public education needs as well as future employability with courses in nutrition, immunisation, water, agriculture, the environment, computer and secretarial skills and stress management. Given the ongoing deficit in services, the university plays an important role by providing surrounding communities with free dental and health check ups and treatment by students under supervision.

The quality of the university’s buildings, landscaping and student facilities is impressive. Although the students chatting in groups between classes could have been from anywhere, the occupation is always a factor.

Lena from a village near Jerusalem is one of the first group of graduating students. Inspired by Waleed, whom she met at a young scientists club he established in Palestine in 1996, she abandoned her ambition to be a pilot. Now completing her first degree in biotechnology she plans to go on to a postgraduate degree abroad. She says: “I have visited other Palestinian universities but the AAU is special. The teachers know us all and encourage us to question, not only listen. When I wake up I see trees, not settlements. The teachers really want us to do our best.’

Rami, another “top’ graduating student, is finishing a degree in information technology. As the only student from Gaza, from a refugee camp, he cannot travel and is largely confined to the campus. His experience was more difficult:

“The hardest thing was learning to depend on myself. These past two years were devastating, especially being away from my family and knowing that they face daily incursions by the Israeli army. During the invasion of Jenin when there were no phone lines, we lost contact for six weeks. They thought I had been killed.’

After the second Intifada, both Rami’s parents lost their jobs and had to use the money they were saving to buy some land and move out of the camp. “I can’t think of postgraduate study now. I need to give them [my parents] something back. I feel very burdened. You can see my vitiligo (loss of skin pigmentation). The doctor says it is from stress.’

The logistics of creating any new university are complex but especially so here where there is an increasing gap between aspirations and what is achievable.

Waleed wanted to attract Palestinian students from outside Palestine and to recruit foreign faculty who would bring different perspectives. This is increasingly difficult to achieve. Study is often disrupted. Students and staff alike face the daily delays and humiliation at checkpoints or sudden city closures.

The economic impact of the occupation on family incomes is reflected in the 15 per cent dropout rate. Although over 60 per cent of students get grants or loans, many like Rami have to chose between studying or dropping out in order to help support their families.

But the most difficult issue for Waleed is morale: “The students feel hopeless so often. It is hard to keep hope alive when everything around you indicates otherwise.’