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If you've enjoyed my blog posts from the holy land, please 'stay tuned', because there's plenty more where they came from. Although I won't be coming back to the region until later in 2008, there are many tangentally related things to explore, starting immediately after the New Year. So please, add me to your RSS reader, or drop in from time to time. Next installment coming right up…

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In London, they've banned bottles of water at airport security for ages now – for sensible reasons perhaps, but reasons that logically and logistically are completely disproportionate to the level of the threat posed. To my knowledge, no other country does this. Even in Tel Aviv, they weren't very bothered about my bottle of water.

Tel Aviv Airport

But they were bothered about everything else. You see, the moment you mention you've been in the West Bank to the pre-check-in security people, things start to happen. It starts with a bristling movement in the face of the security guard you're talking to. This is usually followed by a subtle raised eyebrow towards a group of back-up staff a few metres away. This in turn begins a chain of small spontaneous gestures and looks of mutual understanding that flit between the security team and the security supervisor, and lead to an 'informal' and fairly 'relaxed' interrogation as you wait to have your luggage pre-screened.

Once the words 'West Bank' have been mentioned though, it's not really a question of whether you will be searched to within an inch of your existence, but of for how long they will draw out the process, and how uncomfortable and guilty they can make you feel at the same time.

The answer of course is not very – they're mostly young and well-meaning people, similar to their army colleagues, and they're all just doing a job. They do not embody the policies they carry out. Some are more or less incompetent than others. But the orders are strict, and however politely they're carried out, a full search means a full search. As my British and American colleagues and I are separated from each other, we're siphoned off into mysterious side-rooms marked 'WARNING: DO NOT ENTER', and given the Full Monty. Well, not quite — I don't get the full strip search, thankfully, but everything bar my shirt and trousers is given a complete and thorough analysis. I note to the enthusiastic young guy who returns my personal belongings that my iPhone has been well and truly played with. "We have to give everything a thorough inspection, Sir", he says, smiling. As he escorts me back to the luggage checkpoints, he is full of questions about it, for it has not yet been released in Israel, and he appears to be something of a technology nut. Evidently, he has thoroughly enjoyed the last 10 minutes

If you've been to the West Bank, expect to be incarcerated in isolation for at least 10 minutes whilst security people pick apart every one of your belongings!

My violin has its own difficulties with the security staff. After making a big scene about it, they insist – utterly pointlessly, and they know it, for they must see hundreds of violins a week pass through the airport – that they need to put the instrument through the x-ray machine… without the case. Which they can't do. Because obviously I won't let them. After much melodramatic silliness and yet more explosive-tracer wipes on the violin's varnish, someone mildly more senior agrees that the violin is not too great a risk, but gives me an ultimatum: either I let them x-ray the violin without protection, or I play them a tune to prove the violin works.

I don't need any further encouragement. I'm through the Violin Player and well into Paganini's 24th Caprice by the time they insist that I shut up before their supervisor comes and tells them off. If that weren't absurd enough, they then ask me to drink one of the Palestinian beers in my suitcase, to prove it's not dangerous. Violin, beer, a free massage from the security lady… I'm having a great time! Perhaps, as Bethlehem resident Alastair Mitchell quips, I should come here more often…

Taking covert photos of security people doing silly things is one of my favourite pastimes

You have to give it to them… you can't argue with the effectiveness of security this thorough. I couldn't have smuggled explosives onto this plane without having swallowed them. This depth of security works. And so does the fear and potential for discrimination inherent in it.

Finally, the party was over. The security hawks moved on to other targets, and I was free to go. Free in the broadest sense of the word of course; any visitor who has had the whole 'You were in the West Bank?' treatment also gets a personal escort all the way through to the departures area. And then, Sir, you can please Enjoy Your Flight.

Ben Gurion airport has a very beautiful and imposing departure lounge – a masterpiece of design. Water falls from the centre of the ceiling to the pool on the ground creating a placidity and calmness rare in such a place as this.

So that left me with an hour to stock up in the duty free. Equipped with several large glass bottles, I waited until the plane had taken off, then smashed the bottles, rampaged murderously around the aircraft, fought my way into the flightdeck, and hijacked the aircraft.

I didn't really. But you get my point. All walls are permeable. It just depends on how much effort is needed to break them.

Or dissolve them.

We joined Nabeel Abboud Ashkar and his students in Nazareth for our final concert. These young Arab-Israeli / Palestinian students are fantastic musicians and, without flattering them too much (for they read this blog!), I've no doubt that the future of music here is in safe hands if there are student musicians of this quality.

Mira, Yamen, Ferras and Mahmood with teacher Nabeel Abboud Ashkar

For now, I'm not going to write too much about what's going on in Nazareth, other than to say the educational strategies being created by people such as Nabeel (a true enabler – one of those brilliant people who can encourage a child never to lose the art of asking 'Why?') are second to none. If such effective and thoughtful teaching can be built up throughout the communities of the West Bank too, then the musical future of this part of the world is bright. And by comparison, if little schemes such as these can be generated across all artforms, and all education sectors, like little cogs in a very large machine, then eventually the machine will equal the sum of its parts. The transferable skills children will be learning will benefit every aspect of their lives, and thence, through many thousands of individuals, their whole generation's future.

There's a bright future here for those who want it and who are allowed the freedom to pursue it. Even if war returns, and especially if it doesn't, the roots of an exciting future have been sown for many. Whether they will receive it depends on the people in power having enough courage to effect the right kind of change.

Visiting the Taybeh brewery brought home how political most things are, and that especially in a place like Palestine, a simple business (like theirs) or cultural program (like ours) can take on many subtle meanings. However, the most basic point is that by simply doing something, there's a kind of inherent solidarity.

The Taybeh delivery drivers leave up to two days before their bottles are due at hotels, shops and other stockists in Israel (and in some of the further parts of the West Bank too), because they know their wait time at checkpoints can be indeterminable. Soldiers often make things very difficult for traders bringing goods into Israel, and even when deliveries succeed, they can be massively time-consuming. Therefore, just the act of trying to deliver the beer becomes a gesture of defiance.

I am always uncomfortable to hear programs I am involved with described as political, and would be nervous to accept a description of a concert series such as ours as 'pro-Palestinian', for fear someone might interpret that – wrongly – as 'anti-Israeli'. So you try to minimize any overtly political gestures. But at the same time, it cannot be denied that a strong culture and a strong economy are part of a successful state, therefore any attempt to contribute towards such basic parts of society – whether it is a cultural or economic contribution such as performing a concert or making beer, or whatever else – is an attempt to provide more positive steps in the direction of a stable and developing society, be it deliberate or not.

I was pleased to go to Jericho, and although we had little time to see the town, the uninhabited desertscape between Ramallah and Jericho is a sight to behold. The difference between the desert and the town (an oasis of underground springs, evidenced by the Palm trees and greenery all around) is all the more contrasting when you see the Jericho Intercontinental hotel – a massive resort on the edge of the town, that used to be a favourite hideaway for Israelis seeking semi-legal gambling opportunities until Israel blocked access for Israeli nationals a few years ago.

There are only two (rather informal) checkpoints between Ramallah and Jericho – one Israeli and one Palestinian. The Israeli one is best approached with serious businesslike faces, so that the young teenagers manning the guns don't spot that one of the minibus passengers has left his passport at home (they did seem to count the passengers in the van, but they apparently didn't notice that the passports they were checking numbered one fewer). The Palestinian one is best approached with a big smile and a few jokes about whether they'd like a quick concert.

Desertscape outside of Jericho

Jericho is an Oasis in the desert

Violist Drew Balch entertains the audience after the Jericho concert

The call to prayer started before five and we were gone by six. As our diplomatic-plated vans wound slowly out of Ramallah, the city was beginning to turn, peaceful slumber giving way to a gentle buzz of activity. We passed the early morning traders setting up their stalls at the roadside, and in a few brief minutes were past the checkpoints and on the highway. The lush green trees and hills of Israel replaced the dusty, litter-strewn roads of the West Bank.

Ramzi and musicians prepare to depart

We expected that delays and harrassment would be part of standard procedure on the way to our lunchtime concert in Gaza City, but we couldn't have known at that point that we – or more precisely Ramzi, the music center's director – would be in for an authentically Palestinian travel experience…

We arrive at the Erez checkpoint soon after 9am, where the waiting game begins. Passports are scrutinized, we chat to some actors on their way in who, extraordinarily, have run theatre productions in Gaza for the last decade, and wait some more.

Inside the Erez Checkpoint

Waiting is something we will become quite experienced at by the end of the day.

After about an hour of lounging in the sun, the first barrier is lifted, and we head towards the main terminal, a vast glass structure that could easily be mistaken for an airport. Ushered into a sideroom, we hand in our passports and identity cards again for processing at a small glass desk, and I can't help noticing an ominously small room with no windows containing nothing but a chair.

"Who is Ramzi?"

Ramzi Aburedwan, the Palestinian director of Al Kamandjati, would normally be forbidden from leaving the West Bank and travelling across Israel to reach Gaza, but today, for the first time in his life, he has a permit. Or so the people from the French embassy have told him.

"Where is your visa?", barks the Israeli soldier.

Ramzi and the French diplomats explain that a paper permit has not been issued but that they were instructed by the embassy to go direct to the checkpoint and pick up the relevant documentation there.

We wanted coffee, but couldn't read hebrew…

"There is a problem." The soldiers seem to think that all is not as it should be, and they confiscate Ramzi's ID and go off to sort it out. We amuse ourselves with random purchases from the drinks machine, which distributes a wide variety of beverages, all equally indiscernable to us, for not one of the party (4 British, 3 America, 2 French – including 1 diplomat, and 1 Palestinian) can read the instructions, which are in Hebrew.

Before long, the soldiers return. "There is no permit. The Palestinian is here illegally."

A couple of phone calls confirms what we have started to fear. The French embassy has cocked up. There was no permit.

We start to mull the options. Should we go into Gaza without Ramzi? Could the diplomat take him back to Ramallah in one of the cars whilst we go and play the concert? But Ramzi becomes more and more nervous, because things aren't that simple in this country.

Trapped in the Terminal : Ramzi Aburedwan (left) with director Peter Sulski (right)

"He is illegal" says the soldier. "He cannot go back to Ramallah, because he is here illegally." The ridiculousness of the situation begins to dawn on us. Because of a misunderstanding, Ramzi is breaking the law by being in the country. Yet just as he cannot go to Gaza, he is also unable to return to Ramallah, for he will be arrested and jailed the moment he leaves the building. We cannot even drive him home in the diplomatic vans, as the Israelis have confiscated his ID, so despite having immunity for the return journey, he would lose his official identity if we went home. Our violist has become Persona non grata.

The similarity is not lost on us between Ramzi's dilemma and The Terminal, a film starring Tom Hanks, in which a traveller is denied entry to America but isn't able to return to his home country. He becomes marooned in nowhere-land, trapped at an airport with no valid identity, and no way to leave.

Trapped in a terminal, just like the movies…

Unfortunately for Ramzi, this terminal closes at 4pm, so somehow he will have to move to a new location. But with no safe passage granted back to Ramallah, jail could well be his next destination.

As the hours start to tick, thoughts of making the concert in Gaza begin to fade, and our concern about what might happen to Ramzi grows. Phone calls from the French embassy and a consul in Berlin have no effect. The ensemble decides, en masse, that we will stick with Ramzi until the situation is resolved. "We are a music ensemble, we must keep together" says our director. Beside us, policeman and a soldier with a massive machinegun slung casually from his shoulder, argue about whose problem Ramzi actually is. The Israeli soldier assigned to liase with us is very civil, unlike his immediate superiors, who shout at us aggressively from time to time for no apparent reason (my misdemeanor was sitting on the floor, reading a book).

Waiting, waiting, waiting… Ramzi (left) and fellow musicians

The waiting game continues. As busloads of Haj Pilgrims on their way back from Jordan come through the processing units and board buses back to Gaza, we keep ourselves awake with mundane tasks, calling friends in home countries to talk about new carpets and banking tasks, and reading the rather optimistic section on Gaza in the Lonely Planet travel guide. That we have this freedom, when Ramzi could be minutes away from losing his, just adds to the feeling of absurdity.

At 2pm, a full five hours after we first arrived, a new police team come, and we are told that Ramzi will be taken away to a police station for questioning. He is put into a police van, and we are told to follow behind. But at the exit barriers, we're held by another passport check, and the police van speeds off into the distance. We've lost Ramzi.

Ramzi is taken away in a Police van

Without maps, and knowing only that we have to find Sederot police station, we drive ferociously in random directions, following main roads and eventually seeing a sign for Sederot. Luck is on our side, and with the help of several fractured conversations with passers-by, we work our way to the police station.

Knowing that a group of ten foreigners clogging up the police station's foyer will help Ramzi's cause, we make ourselves at home there, and within five minutes we're instructed – in no uncertain terms – to get the hell out of the station, and to wait outside. Less than five minutes later, the same policeman comes out and shouts at us even more forcefully to come straight back in again, our utter confusion allayed only by shouts of "Missiles! Missiles!" – rockets are falling on the town, courtesy of the Hamas forces on the other side of the Gazan border, 20km away.

A policewoman on her break tells us that missiles fall in Sederot several times a day sometimes, often for long periods at a time. 12 people have been killed in the last few years, and many more injured. Every conflict has two sides.

Police work goes on through a missile alert

Finally, after another tense half an hour of waiting, there's a murmur… is Ramzi about to be released? Sure enough, a few minutes later, he is led down the stairs and out of the front door. The French diplomat has struck a bargain – Ramzi will get into the diplomatic van, and the police will take it on trust that we'll drive straight back to Ramallah, non-stop.

What would have happened to Ramzi if he had not been surrounded by foreign nationals? Why was he treated like a criminal because of someone else's simple mistake? And why was he denied permission to go and play music – one of the things that really can contribute to positive cultural change and a peaceful society – in the first place?

Ramzi is finally free!

You may freely republish any part of this post. Please credit photographs to SimonHewittJones.com

Today's concert was probably one of the first ever to happen in Birzeit, so it's no wonder that the audience doesn't necessarily know how to react. They're confused about where to clap (if at all), mobile phones regularly accompany the music throughout the concert, and concentration on the music isn't always strong.
On the other hand, there is sincere enthusiasm and interest in everything we're doing, and there's no doubt that the people here really appreciate the entertainment. It's more than just a fun experience – music can help transform quality of life for those present. I will never forget what an audience member said to me after the Choir of London's Mozart Requiem in Ramallah at Eastertime: "That was the first time in several weeks where I haven't thought about religion or politics for more than two hours!" – spoken with tears in her eyes.