Assistant general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions HENRY FOWLER reports on day 1 from the GFTU’s residential Summer School at Quorn Grange Hotel
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Day 1: Bethlehem. There are lots of warnings to group members before we arrive: “If asked just say you are visiting the Holy Land and Israeli sites, suspend your Facebook and Twitter accounts, don’t mention divestment, boycott and sanctions.”
We catch a sherut (shared taxi) from Ben Gurion airport to Hotel Jerusalem, meet the Israeli Commission Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) group and transfer by minibus to Bethlehem, a Palestinian neighbourhood under the Palestinian Authority (PA).
From our hotel window, we can see the eight-metre-high separation wall with its barbed wire running along the top, watchtowers and cameras.
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