B. reveals his true colours, or, while the World Cup is happening...

I was watching the Italy-Czech Rep. game at my translator, B.'s house yesterday, and at some point his brother arrived home from work in Ramallah and mentioned there had been demonstrations by public sector workers all over Palestine yesterday.

What followed were some shocking stories about a man threatening a pharmacist at knife point just so he could get medicine for his sick son, and a woman in Jenin who offered to sell her son, so she could feed his brothers and sisters.

"F#$% Hamas, man. Really F#$% Hamas," says B. suddenly.

"It's been four months now, and what have they done. Nothing! All they say is 'we will live as one and die as one', but they've done nothing. Four months is too much you know."

B.'s mum is a government worker, and hence hasn't been paid since January. B. later says that is why he and his brother have been working, (and have consequently given up studying).

While there might be plenty to be said about who's responsible for the current crisis, (and there are certainly many different opinions about that here), what struck me at that moment was that I, someone who has had to do a fair bit of scraping by myself at certain points in my recent history, had now become one of the primary sources of income for a family of four.

B. sudden enthusiasm for arranging interviews has and will certainly benefit my project, but it also strengthens the feeling inside that doing research in Palestine is a form of rape. While I stand to gain a great deal because of the time I've spent here, I can't see how the people I live amongst will receive any benefit at from my work, except in the most obtuse and obscure sense. Would I be better off working for a NGO, or would that be another way of ensuring that Band Aid solutions endure while emergency surgery is desperately needed?

I don't really know how to feel sometimes. On the one hand, being here, spending money and employing some people is a way of 'helping' Palestinians. On the other hand, they wouldn't need help if the governments of the various countries I've lived in (and plenty others beside) hadn't suddenly cut of what was essentially the only source of income on a national scale.

Sometimes when you stay here you feel really lost and hopeless like this. I think this is why the football is so popular. You can just turn it on and forget about everything else, which unfortunately is the easiest 'solution'. Sometimes it even seems like the only solution.