A meeting with Omar Barghouti, an independent political analyst, was arranged for breakfast. He answered everyone’s questions and had an easy and impressive command of facts and figures.

We checked out and headed for Hebron. There are roads you can take, as a tourist, that mean you don’t have to get out of your bus – but we chose to drive the route a Palestinian would have to drive, and so got out to walk through the Qalandia checkpoint that separates Ramallah from the south of Palestine. Everyone has to queue and go through metal barriers and detectors and hold their passports up against bulletproof glass for an 18-year old soldier to inspect. It’s pretty harrowing. It took around an hour but we all got through. Once on the other side, though, the soldiers decided they needed to check our luggage too (we had left it on the coach). Our only option is to go through again – carrying our luggage. So, everyone now laden with one bag or more, we squeeze through the revolving iron cages a second time. It’s deeply unpleasant.

We drive to al-Khalil (Hebron), where we head to the Hebron Rehabilitation Centre where we’re given a very informed, facts and figures-based presentation of the Israeli occupation of the centre of the old town. After the talk we head out to see it, Reuters now with us. Hebron really is the heart of it all. We walked through nightmare wires, tunnels and metal detectors, saw groups of settlers out jogging with AK-47s round their necks. To get in to Abraham’s mosque, you’re made to pass through another metal detector. Once inside some people had to take themselves away to cry. All very very rough.

We got out of al-Khalil and headed for Bethlehem. At Dar an-Naddwa, a wonderful new cultural centre here (where I’m now writing from the garden) Suheir Hammad got up to perform to another full house (300/350 people?) Having only been given ten minutes to get off the bus and get ready, she really pulled it out the bag. Her four poems – being performed here for the people she’s been writing for all her life – really were brilliant. She is so original and witty and fresh and she really gets people listening. And coming after our nightmare day she was more powerful than ever before. I went up to give her a hug afterwards and she just said “that was intense.”

Thank god for Eleanor’s programming, though, because next on was el-Funoun dance troupe – who mix traditional Palestinian dance forms with other styles and they were loud, and colourful and cheerful and had everyone up and clapping them and were a great counterpoint to the rest of the day. It reminded everyone that people still get up and dance. The troupe of 40 really lifted everybody’s spirits.