67-year-old retired Bourton-on-the-Water accountant tells of his experiences in Palestine as a human rights monitor

Standard reporter Ryan Merrifield met up with him recently to hear more about his experiences.

Between 1947 and 1949, Israeli forces conquered 78 per cent of Palestine, before finally taking the remaining 22 per cent, which included the West Bank and Gaza Strip, during the Six Day War in 1967.

"Israel say that they built a security wall, the separation barrier, as it's known, to keep them safe, to keep them secure,” explained Paul.

“But then they've allowed 750,000 Israelis to live on the wrong side of that wall, actually on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.”

This is despite the fact that Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power, which is what Israel is, from transferring parts of its own population into the territory that it occupies.

As a result, Palestinians living on the occupied land are tightly controlled by the Israeli military.

"I've been four times before and it's always been for about two weeks at a time,” explained Paul.

“The experience you have in two weeks can be huge, but it's not like living there for three months.

"The occupation of the West Bank has been going on for 49 years, and when you're there for three months you find you're actually living the occupation.”

He said that the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), an international initiative of the World Council of Churches, of which he was part, has several different placements for volunteers across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with the bulk of Paul’s visit spent in the latter.

Along with three other monitors from Ecuador, Austria and Sweden, Paul visited a number of ‘Bedouin communities’ which are regularly subject to ‘house demolitions’ by the Israeli military.

“I unashamedly admit to you that the thing that affected me by far the most were the house demolitions,” said Paul.

One such community is the Jabal Al-Baba, which is home to more than 300 Palestinians.

“The EU had actually paid for this Bedouin community, and a number of others, to be able to replace some very rundown wooden homes, which were not in a particularly good state, to be replaced with some metal homes.

"All the Bedouin did was to take down the wooden structures and replace them with these metal ones.

“But Israelis deemed those to be new structures, without permits, and so came along at five o'clock in the morning and dismantled them.

"As we arrived, they were just taking these properties away on a low-loader, accompanied by a convoy of military vehicles.

“They gave them five minutes notice, then just smashed the houses to pieces.”

Paul said, speaking to one of the Palestinian occupants, he was told the authorities were planning to build a new road to connect two Israeli settlements and ‘the houses were in the way.’

“He and his family were sat in the rubble of his home, and while we were there they invited us to share their food and their drink,” said Paul. “If someone had demolished my home, I'm not sure I could share hospitality in that way.”

He explained that UN statistics show that in 2015 there were 453 house demolitions in East Jerusalem, which caused 580 people to lose their homes.

But up to the end of July this year, there had been 614 demolitions, meaning 919 people had lost their homes.

“The Israeli military seem to have significantly stepped up house demolitions,” said Paul.

Article 53 of the Geneva Convention ‘prohibits the destruction of personal property by an occupying power, except where it's absolutely necessary for military reasons’, explained Paul.

“Of all the many house demolitions I went to, I never once saw anything that caused me to think I was seeing something that was military. I just found it extraordinarily sad.”

The four monitors covered a significant distance, travelling close to Ramallah in the north and down to near Bethlehem in the south, visiting the troubled communities to compile their reports on human rights abuses.

They also worked at military checkpoints, where Palestinians are forced to queue in order to pass through security walls just to go to work and school and even go to mosque, before monitors escorted them through in an attempt to protect them from hostile Israeli settlers.

However, Paul was also keen to stress that EAPPI is neither pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, and talked at length about working alongside Israeli peace activists during his stay, who are also fighting to end the occupation.

“There is one very famous group that meet every Friday afternoon called the Women in Black and it was the only demonstration where we were actually allowed to stand with them and hold the banners,” said Paul.

"Some of these Israeli peace activists are incredibly brave people.

“We watched them on several Friday afternoons where we saw drinks thrown over them by other Israelis, we saw them spat on by other Israelis.

“There are many Israelis who are deeply saddened by Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank.”

Paul said he got involved with EAPPI following his previous trips to the West Bank in which he had seen ‘some appalling things going on’ and felt he ‘just needed to stand up and be counted’.

“If you feel a call on your life, which I did, then you have to respond positively to that,” he said.