Towns that no longer are what they were...

Last week I had five days off classes and finally managed to make the journey up to the north of Israel with four other students. One of the other students, H., is half Palestinian and wanted to find the town where her father was from, called S-.

After travelling through Haifa, Nazareth, Tiberias and around the Sea of Galilee, we finally drove into S- well after sundown. Unfortunately, it was Friday, which meant sundown signalled the beginning of Shabbat in Israel. We had not even considered this because none of us had experienced Shabbat before - we had all previously only been in Palestinian areas.

The streets were empty and dark with the exception of the odd pedestrian in Orthodox dress who glared or stared in surprise at us driving along in our car. We had booked ahead for a hostel and had the address but little idea how to get there. We asked several of these pedestrians for directions but the only ones who answered us were new to the area themselves and couldn't tell us. We even asked a group of soldiers, but they had only been in the area for a few hours and couldn't help. Though they did tell us it would be best to park the car and walk: 'The locals won't like the fact you're driving round.' They even seemed slightly nervous as they spoke with us, like they would be blamed for our violation of Shabbat.

Fortunately, we had the owner of the hostel's phone number and after about twenty minutes of directionless searching, he came in his car and led us to the right spot. He was a lovely man, but obviously perplexed by the obvious culture shock we were experiencing at the Shabbat. He also probably also noticed that something wasn't right with us, that there was a tension in our group.

H. had been silent as we drove down the empty streets with only Orthodox Jews in sight. Everything was modern and had a European feel: the houses, the roads, the infrastructure.. It was a modern town, not the town that she had been raised on stories about. This was not the S- of her father.

She asked us over and over throughout the course of the night: 'what can I tell my father?'

We were all tired and hungry, yet Shabbat meant that no shops were open. The hostel man offered us what food he had leftover - some eggs and bread - and said there was a hotel that would have some food, though it would be expensive and we were on a budget.

The other four were uncomfortable here. It was not only the turmoil H. was experiencing that made the tension around us palpable - everyone else was also bothered by their surroundings: the near dead-silence, the low-lighting, the absence of activity, only the occasional Orthodox Jew appearing from the shadows and passing us by. And yet I was not uncomfortable.

I was awed by the strictness of the Shabbat in this place. I wanted to walk the streets and experience it more fully. I wanted to join the other people I had seen upstairs in the hostel who were eating their Shabbat meal together, singing their prayers. I wanted to wake up in this place and just observe.

But the others were distressed, and H. was distraught: 'this is the most horrible place I have been in in this whole place,' she said. 'What can I tell my father?'

We decided to leave. We would return to Tiberias (on the coast of the Galilee), where we knew some of our friends were spending the night.

It took about half an hour to make this decision to leave S-, all the while the hostel man hovered nearby wondering what we would do. We stood in a huddle just outside the front door. By the time we went to find the man to tell him we were leaving we didn't even have to say the words - he knew we would not be staying.

As we drove out of the town H. sobbed.

My head was full of questions. For the current residents of the town, S- is home. It is now an Israeli town with a strong Jewish culture. It has been that way since 1948. And yet, it is also still home for people like H.'s father - but not as it is, as it was. Two different S-'s.

Can you blame the people now living in S- for what happened there sixty years ago? Many of whom know no other home. The town has been in its current form for about three generations, but as one of the others said: 'does that make it right?'

Does it?

S- represents dispossession, and perhaps even cultural cleansing: the Arab culture of the past has been completely replaced with a Jewish one.

But what is right? Are things like right and wrong really so black and white? And even recognising it as wrong, what can be done? The Palestinian S- doesn't exist anymore, the Israeli S- does. This is how it is.

And yet the Palestinians still suffer. H. sobbed as we drove away. She sobbed for the town that was but no longer is. Just as so many Palestinians grieve the transformation of places that were once home: villages and towns that they still hold in their minds and hearts.