BEING BRITISH MEANS TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER, BEING PALESTINIAN MEANS TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER MEANS TALKING ABOUT THE OCCUPATION

The thing that strikes you about the occupation is exactly its manifestation in the otherwise least striking facets of everyday life. The juxtaposition of that which is extraordinary – shelling, settler attacks, the wall – alongside the most ordinary – olive harvesting, homework assignments, the walk to work – is simultaneously unsettling, while making the occupation, a surreal phenomenon to the outsider, into something all too palpably real.

My first day in Beit Sahour, I sat drinking tea with my neighbour as he helped colour in his eight-year-old daughter’s art homework. The crayons filled in the grey outline of a scene of awaiting Gazan carnage: rockets in the right-hand corner stalled on paper before their descent onto an UNRWA school.

A few days ago I sat in on a poetry workshop at the women’s centre in the village of Nahalin. The topic was, innocuously enough, ‘Where I’m from’. The women described their beloved balad in stanzas of warm, sensory nostalgia, punctuated with poignant interruptions. Couplets coupled the singing of children with the shouting of soldiers, the mud of the land with the blood of its martyrs.

Something as mundane as turning the tap is entirely prey to the dictates of occupation, since Israel controls the West Bank water, curbing supply to Palestinians, who get less than the WHO’s minimum daily standard while the settlers consume at least five times as much. So, unsurprisingly talk turns to the weather and the sunnier it is, the gloomier the conversation. I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom from Bustan Qaraaqa (it translates as Tortoise Garden, a deceptively unrevolutionary reptilian mascot for a quietly subversive project) who explained the climatic predicament:

“Last year there was a terrible drought; 25% of the predicted rainfall fell. This year there’s a terrible drought. Put the two together and it’s the worse drought on record ever and certainly the worst in living memory. If that wasn’t bad enough, the whole region is short of water even when they’re getting the predicted rainfall. But when the rain doesn’t fall then Israel is thinking, ‘We’ve got a big agricultural sector and our people will not be at all happy if their water supply is interrupted.’ So who loses out? The Palestinians. They live well under the water poverty line and for some people it might mean choosing between feeding their children and washing them, with the inevitable health consequences.”

I’m trying very hard but I must embarrassedly admit that when it does rain, it’s hard to kick the British habit of complaining.