There aren't many airports in the world that require you to clear your handguns and assault rifles before entering the airport security perimeter.

No prizes for guessing where I took this picture.

Posted by Hala Gorani

The olive harvest, which began after the first rains of autumn, has come to an end.

In the West Bank, the harvest is a time when families head out to the rocky, rugged hills, and spend days in the olive groves. It’s difficult, time-consuming work, but a task many here cherish as an important tradition reconnecting the entire family with the land.

A member of the Shaabana family harvesting olives south of Nablus. October 2006.

It sounds idyllic, but it isn’t always; because nothing here is without a political dimension.

Almost every year the olive harvest is a time of friction between Palestinian olive farmers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. I’ve covered the olive harvest before, and have seen entire hillsides of olive trees set on fire by settlers. It is well documented that the settlers have burned, uprooted and generally vandalized olive trees, trees that take years before they produce olives.

The settlers themselves claim the farmers are shielding militants who attack the settlements. The farmers say the settlers are simply trying to drive them away and take over the land they’ve cultivated for centuries.

Palestinian olive harvester Basil Saleh treated by medics after being assaulted by Jewish settlers south of Nablus. October 2006


Every autumn the Israeli army deploys extra troops in the occupied West Bank to prevent friction between farmers and settlers. But often the army closes off vast areas where olives are grown for usually unspecified “security reasons,” or imposes restrictions on when and who can enter olive growing areas, making it difficult if not impossible to harvest. Furthermore, according to the United Nations, Israel’s so-called security barrier—known among Palestinians as the Apartheid wall—built ostensibly to keep Palestinian attackers away from Israel—will make one million of the West Bank’s approximately nine million olive trees inaccessible to Palestinian farmers. Thousands of olive trees have been uprooted in the process of building the more than 700 kilometer long barrier.

This year there was less friction between settlers and farmers, probably because it was an “off” year for olives.

Olive trees have a two year cycle. One year they’re heavy with olives, the next the branches are much lighter. This year the harvest was modest, and as a result, the price of olive oil has doubled.

Olive oil here is sold by the “tenekeh,” an Arabisation of tank (like tank of water—not the other kind of tank which we see so much of here), about 16-17 litres, depending on whom you speak with. Last year a “tenekeh” was around 250 shekels, which, before the collapse of the dollar, was about $60. This year, a “tenekeh” is around 450 shekels. At the new and degraded exchange rate is almost $120. So, come to think of it, it’s a function of reduced supply PLUS the ever declining value of the dollar.

As a way to fight inflation, my family and I had our own olive harvest. We have two very old olive trees in the garden of our house in the Palestinian Jerusalem suburb of Shu’faat. (These old trees are known in Arabic as “rouman”—meaning they are so old they date back to when the Romans ruled Palestine nearly 2000 years ago. I doubt our trees, however, are anywhere near that old, but it does give you an idea of the historical horizons of farmers here.)

My 14-year old son Christopher picking olives in our front yard. October 2007

Over the course of two days, working with Khalid, who helps tend the garden, we collected 58 kilos (127.6 pounds) of olives.

When we were done I sat on the floor with my wife, Yasmine, and painstakingly removed all the leaves, stems, stones and other bits and pieces. We were able to fill about seven old pillowcases, which we took to an old olive press in the Palestinian village of Bait Jala, south of Jerusalem and adjacent to Bethlehem.


Workers at an olive press south of Nablus.


There, we waited our turn with all the other farmers. Our harvest was modest compared to the others there, in fact so modest, I was told, they wouldn’t normally press such a small quantity, but out of courtesy, or perhaps pity, the owner of the press, a young man with a pony tail, agreed.

To make oil, the olives are crushed by two giant stone wheels. The mash that results is then pressed in layers into a thick dark liquid that is then put through a machine that separates the oil from everything else. The whole process takes quite a long time—we were at the press for about four hours between the wait and the pressing—but it’s an excellent opportunity to gather olive lore.

I discovered that the inhabitants of Bait Jala have a superiority complex when it comes to their olives. In this predominantly Christian village adjacent to Bethlehem, they believe that Jesus sat under their olive trees, and therefore their olives are better than any other in Palestine. And since Muslims consider Jesus to be a prophet, they also hold to the superiority of Bait Jala olives.

When I told my fellow olive farmers that ours were from Shufaat, they smirked. The young man who ran the press told Yasmine that after we picked the olives we should have left them out to dry for about a week—in the shade at the northern end of our house—to ensure the best quality oil. I guess we’ll have to try that next year.

Despite our ignorance, the modest provenance of our olives and the small size of our harvest, the result is brilliant. Our 58 kilos of olives made about 13 litres (more than four gallons) of excellent oil. Unlike commercial oil, it’s a bit murky, and the taste is slightly spicy, but over time the oil becomes clearer and the taste smoother.

The cost of pressing our olives came to 100 shekels (about $26).

The following weekend, and the one after that, I continued the harvest, picking olives to eat. With the sometimes reluctant help of my daughter, 17-year old Amira, and two sons, 14-year old Christopher and 10-year old Alessandro, we picked another five kilos (11 pounds) of olives.

My 10-year old son Alessandro showing off an olive he picked.



All photos courtesy Yasmine Perni

With all the violence in Baghdad and across Iraq, and the threat against Christians by religious extremists, it's hard to believe the Patriarch of the Chaldeans and primate of the Chaldean Catholic Church maintains a base in Iraq. But he does - and CNN spoke to him recently.

Now producer Saad Abedine is sending us behind-the-scenes pictures of the interview with his Eminence Cardinal Mar Emmanuel III Delly; and of an interesting wall carpet depicting Jesus Christ on the cross. The wall hanging - believe it or not - was a present from Iran and the Cardinal's assistant joked that the Apostles looked rather like Muslim religious figures.





Saad Abedine tells me Cardinal Delly ended the interview by saying that his message in life is to urge people to love one another and that “this is the message of Jesus Christ, the message of the church, the message of each one of us, the message of my brethrens the Muslims. Whenever there is love, wherever there is love, everything else vanishes."

Posted by Hala Gorani

This picture shot in central Baghdad's Tahrir square comes to us from Baghdad Producer Mohammed Tawfeeq. An Iraqi woman walks from car to car in heavy traffic begging for money. The banner behind her reads "Forgiveness for the Sake of a United Iraq." Al-Tahrir square has been the scene of several car bombs this year.

"This is him," the taxi driver proclaimed triumphantly, quickly flashing a photograph of a bespectacled European man who looked to be in his mid-forties. "I worked with him when he was here."

The donkey theme is offensive to some.

"That's Banksy?" I asked incredulously. We had come to Bethlehem to do a story on the latest outbreak of wall art, including work by the British urban guerrilla artist who goes by the name of Banksy.

The eight-meter-high concrete wall Israel built around Bethlehem -- officially intended to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of Israel -- has become the world's largest canvas. Palestinian and international artists have covered it with grafitti, art and slogans against Israel's forty-year occupation of the West Bank.

Courtest: Yasmine Perni.

Among Banksy's contributions are a painting of a dove of peace, olive branch in its beak, wearing a bullet-proof vest. Another shows a little girl in a dress frisking a soldier.

On a house wall inside Bethlehem, Banksy painted a silhouette of a soldier checking a donkey's ID. An Irish resident of Bethlehem, whose home overlooks the soldier and the donkey, told me he thought it depicted a soldier reading to a donkey.

The donkey theme is offensive to some, however. One man looked disdainfully at the silhouette and told me, "Look, Israeli soldiers check our IDs all the time. So does that mean we are donkeys?" No, someone else replied. "Don't you see, it's not the donkey who's the real donkey in that painting."

Courtesy: Yasmine Perni.

We won't be able to know what Banksy himself intended. He has given only one interview in his career, and I couldn't find a photograph of him during his latest visit here a few weeks ago, or when he first came here in 2005. No Bethlehem resident I spoke to had seen Banksy -- working or relaxing -- when he was here -- with the exception of course of the taxi driver. Banksy, it was dawning on me, is an anomaly in this age in which fame, celebrity and media-hyped cult of personality are a package deal.

A British arts company has set up a temporary gallery in Bethlehem's Manger Square which goes by the name "Santa's Ghetto." There I met a variety of people who said they knew Banksy, but each had a different description. One, a beer-sipping British board game designer with white hair, said he knew Banksy, who he said is in his thirties.

Courtesy: Yasmine Perni.

"Trash," a Palestinian artist from Bethlehem, told me he knew Banksy, who is in his fifties. A third guy, also from the UK, insisted he had met Banksy, who is in his twenties.

Someone else told me Banksy is an anti-capitalist idealist who doesn't care about money, and just wants a bit of change in his pocket to allow him to pursue his career as phantom artist.

"Don't believe a word of it," someone who overheard this claim interjected. "The man is loaded."

Courtesy: Yasmine Perni.

And while a lot of these artist types seem a tad scruffy, look like they've been down and out for a while, appearances may be deceiving. Maybe it's because I spend my time in all the wrong places, but at Santa's Ghetto I discovered that art does not come cheap.

"I want this piece for $30,000," I overheard the beer-sipping British board game designer say nonchalantly, pointing to a dark, chaotic painting of a half-human, half-beast with dollar signs all over it.

Courtesy: Yasmine Perni.

Thirty-thousand dollars, I was told, is nothing. Some of the artwork was worth more than a hundred thousand dollars, and more.

The money from the sale of art at Santa's Ghetto does go to a good cause. All of it, I was told, will be given to children's projects in Bethlehem.

I thought of buying something, so I asked the man running the show, who would only give his name as Tristan, if prints were on sale. He said they were available on their Web site, which he showed me. They started at $400 a piece. Never mind, I told myself. Art collecting is not in my future. I'll wait until they come out as $10 posters.

You can watch my report here.

-- From CNN Senior Correspondent Ben Wedeman

Khadijeh's three-year-old son, Ali.

When we went to Khadijeh's house we literally climbed up a steep hill, that was damp with the falling snow, muddy and not an easy walk. She does it everyday carrying Ali which in whatever weather there is. When we walked into her home, it struck me that she still has her wedding picture up. Her husband sometimes comes by -- she doesn't let him inside anymore -- but lets the kids go outside to see him. "he's still their father," she says. As we were talking with Khadijeh, three-year-old Ali was having the time of his life with new guests and with my camera. Couldn't help but wonder how he'll grow up, with no real father presence, with a mother whose barely making ends meet, and with two brothers and a sister themselves trying to keep it together.

With almost 2 million drug addicts in Iran, a number rising alongside unemployment, there's been a new trend here. Overnight men are leaving their families out of addiction, and overnight the wives are left to pick up the pieces. In a culture where men are the ones who tend to work, it's causing an odd role reversal and in a strange way become part of the gender fight for equality. To see it all first hand we drove an hour outside Tehran to a center that is run by the Zenab Cobra Foundation. It helps women in this exact situation -- who have no prior training, some no education -- but now must provide for two, three, sometimes four kids on their own. They have classes in carpet weaving, computer technology, catering all meant to get the women ready to work.

It was in a weaving class we met 33-year-old Khadijeh. She has four kids, the youngest Ali is three years old and attends a daycare set up at the center while Khadijeh is training. Six years ago her husband married another woman, while still married to her, and then after losing his savings became addicted to crack cocaine. He sold everything she had -- down to the very last pots and pans -- before taking off and leaving her to care for the children. She does now, in a run down two room apartment, that is a 15-minute walk from the center. We traveled there with her, and it was heart-breaking to hear her story but inspiring to see her carry on. As the center says, from these unfortunate circumstances, a truth is being enforced in Iranian society. That when the men leave, the women can easily take over. And that equality in all rights must come quickly.


-- From CNN's Aneesh Rahman

Speaking of Saudi Arabia, here is a picture of the Inside the Middle East team filming in the coastal city of Jeddah. CNN has been trying to reach the Girl of Qatif's lawyer for the last 24 hours, but has been unable to get in touch with Abdul Rahman al-Lahem.

Posted by IME Producer: 3:18 PM

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