Training as a human shield

Alexander Fitch is a student from Aberystwyth University spending two weeks with the controversial International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Palestine.

The ISM train volunteers to act as human shields in protest against Israeli occupation.

But the Israeli Government says the restrictions on Palestinians' lives, opposed by the ISM, are there to keep out the suicide bombers.

This is the second of Alexander's personal accounts, written before Friday's unrest in Jerusalem.

Aberystwyth student Alex Fitch is training as a peace protester

We have just returned to our hostel in East Jerusalem from our two day intensive training session.

We caught an old, worn Palestinian bus bound for the West Bank.

Most of the passengers were Palestinian except for our small group of internationals.

We had only been travelling for a minute or so when the bus was stopped by border police.

'Not a holiday'

A tall Israeli male border policeman with a rifle boarded the bus collecting Palestinian identity cards and giving our European and North American passports a cursory glance.

After an hour we were on the move again following one of the many settler roads constructed by Israel in the West Bank

The training period for all International Solidarity Movement volunteers is compulsory, and coming to Palestine as a volunteer is not a holiday or adventure tourism.

Training covered emergency procedures; team building; methods of non-violent intervention; cultural considerations and trauma.

After our first day of training we were glad to relax in a cafe situated in a large traditional Bedouin tent.

From the tent we could see a near by hilltop fortress-like settler town.

There are some 150 settlements in the Palestinian territories

Locals told us that the cafe had been twice shelled by the Israeli military from close to the settlement.

Running down the side of the settlement hill are half a dozen empty Palestinian apartment blocks of five or six floors awaiting demolition.

On our way back to Jerusalem we passed through small towns on a steep hillside, peaceful now but shelled intermittently over past years.

This time we had to abandon our taxi to walk through an Israeli checkpoint leaving an area under the technical control of the Palestinian Authority and re-entering an Israeli controlled area.

Travelling back as a lone group of Europeans and Americans we had as swift a journey as any other group of visiting tourists might expect.