Irish in the West Bank: An existence of harassment, forced body searches, and arbitrary rules

Soon after, Kavanagh applied to be a human rights monitor with the organisation she heard about on the radio, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. The Irish strand of the programme is funded and organised by the British Quakers on behalf of the World Council of Churches.

After interviewing for the role, she was required to undertake two weeks of “rigorous” training.

“Some people might decide after that training that they’re not able to face it because one of the tenets of the programme is we’re an impartial presence.

“The last thing they need is somebody standing there having a row with an Israeli soldier about something they’ve seen because you’re only going to do that once and you’ll be gone home.”

In 2017, Kavanagh was sent to the West Bank for three months where she worked alongside Palestinian shepherding communities in the Hebron hills, who face daily issues with grazing their flocks in Area C of the West Bank, where Israel has full control of civilian and military affairs. Usually, human rights monitors serve one stint in the West Bank but Kavanagh was asked to return in January for a second time.

After October 7, when Hamas’s bloody surprise attack on Israel was followed by the ongoing and devastating war in Gaza, Church-backed human rights monitors were withdrawn from the West Bank.

The Palestinian communities were “hurt” by international communities abandoning them, says Kavanagh, particularly as a wave of settler violence in the West Bank has displaced more than 4,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages, according to the UN.

When Kavanagh arrived in Jerusalem in January as part of the first volunteer group to re-establish monitoring work, it took time to rebuild relationships with some Palestinian communities, she says.

“Some of the UN workers were concerned, as they couldn’t find some of the Bedouin [shepherding] communities.”

Due to the security situation in the West Bank, Kavanagh was based in East Jerusalem, which was illegally occupied by Israel following the 1967 war and which Palestinians hope will serve as the capital of their future state.

Part of Kavanagh’s role was walking with Palestinian children on their way to school in the old city in Jerusalem. The headmaster of one school was so concerned for the volunteers’ safety that they walked without their jackets identifying that they were part of a church organisation.

'Things got openly hostile'

Carrie Garvin, a psychotherapist from Kinsale and founder of Irish Psychotherapists for Palestine, volunteered as part of an international group with the Lajee centre in Bethlehem in August.

She says she experienced harassment from Israeli settlers while in the Christian and Jewish quarters of the old city of Jerusalem.

“We walked through all of the old city and when we got to the Jewish Quarter things got openly hostile,” she says. “An elderly woman came up to me and said, ‘look at all these disgusting people, how are they getting here?’”

Garvin says the settlers who verbally harassed them “all had American accents”.

She also describes being spat on by young settlers sitting at a restaurant in the Palestinian city of Hebron in the West Bank.

Separately, while in the militarised zone in the centre of Hebron where around 1,000 extremist settlers live alongside local Palestinians, the armed settlers “circled us holding their guns”, she says.

In Jerusalem, Kavanagh was taken aback by the “daily humiliation of boys and men” in the old city. She says young men and boys would often be stopped at Damascus Gate or Lions Gate, or at the start of the Via Dolorosa where Jesus is claimed to have walked on his way to his crucifixion. The boys would often then be “left standing there in the sunlight” before Israeli police would “spread-eagle them” and “kick their legs to the side” and then forcefully perform a body search.

“If you did that to an Irish guy, he’d be absolutely mortified that people were standing there watching him being treated like that,” says Kavanagh.

For some Palestinian men, simply existing in the old city is part of their resistance to the illegal occupation of East Jerusalem.

However, Kavanagh says many boys have been moved from schools in the old city because of the increased daily harassment from Israeli security forces since October 7. Students, particularly male students, would be routinely stopped by Israeli security forces and their school bags would be opened and “everything is pulled out”, says Kavanagh.

She was in Jerusalem for Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims, where her volunteer group monitored access to Al Aqsa Mosque, a revered site in Islam where observant Muslims often travel to pray during Ramadan. Palestinians from the West Bank are restricted from travelling to Jerusalem without special permission.

However, during Ramadan, an increased number of Palestinians from the West Bank (mostly young children and adults over 50 years of age) are provided with permission to pray at Al Aqsa on Fridays, but Kavanagh says the rules are “arbitrary” and “would change every week”.

She describes a rule that a Palestinian could only bring one child with them into Al Aqsa Mosque as creating problems for mothers who arrived with two children and who were then forced to leave one at a checkpoint or return home.

Kavanagh says that even if there was a grandmother with the group she would not be allowed to accompany the other child. The Israeli authorities say these restrictions are necessary for security.

Also overseeing access for Palestinians during Ramadan were two older Israeli women that Kavanagh recognised as members of MachsomWatch, an Israeli women’s peace and human rights movement which opposes the occupation of the West bank.

“They’re mostly grandmothers who will stand watch at Israeli military checkpoint and man a hotline that Palestinians who’ve been refused entry can call for legal advice.

“A lot of people don’t get how many wonderful Israeli peace activists there are. And I really got that this time in terms of how difficult it was for them after October 7. Because it was hard for them to get up, dust themselves down, and say, ‘we still have our focus on a just peace and Israelis and Palestinians living together’.”

Kavanagh was also in Jerusalem for Easter.

“Isn’t it a dream for an Irish Catholic to be in the old city in Jerusalem for Easter and not have to queue to get into the Holy Sepulchre?”

However, there was little work for the volunteer group to do escorting Palestinian Christians to church as so few were granted permission from the West Bank to travel to Jerusalem. Her volunteer group took part in the traditional Palm Sunday walk that starts on the Mount of Olives but “it was nothing compared to other years as so few people from the West Bank had been able to join”.

Kavanagh was in a monastery in Jerusalem on a night-off from volunteering when Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel on April 13 in retaliation for an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus in Syria.

In the hours before the barrage hit Israeli airspace, she received a text from her son in Ireland saying, “I think it’s nearly time for you to come home now”. Kavanagh went outside and asked a nice watchman, “is there going to be a bit of action here tonight?” and he said, “in a couple of hours”.

“We went to the shelter and that was that,” she says. “I think that was probably hard for the family because they were watching it on the news. Sometimes, I think it’s harder for the people left behind.”