Palestinians in the West Bank city of Qalqiliya attend a festival celebrating Jerusalem as the Arab Cultural Capital of 2009. (Khaleel Reash, Maan Images)

I recently returned from a literary festival that was to have opened and closed in Jerusalem; but which, to our surprise, opened in France and closed in the United Kingdom.

Some 20-odd writers from the world over - including the popular British travel writer and comedian Michael Palin; Sweden's preeminent thriller writer Henning Mankell; and Canada's Giller Prize-winning M.G. Vassanji - found our events at Jerusalem's Palestine National Theater shut down by machine-gun toting Israeli soldiers in flak jackets. On the first evening, with a Gallic flourish, Jean-Paul Ghoneim of the French Consulate opened the French Cultural Center impromptu, and hosted our event on nominally French soil: we paraded through the streets in our party clothes, bearing trays of canapés and looking, I'm sure, very threatening indeed.

By the festival's closing night, the British Consul General Richard Makepeace had made plans to welcome us at the British Council - which was fitting because the British Council was the festival's primary sponsor.

You might well ask how a bunch of novelists and nonfiction writers could be so dangerous as to require a military-ordained ban in a democratic country. I can't tell you; except that our literary festival had the word "Palestine" in its title, and the use of this word in Jerusalem apparently constitutes a security threat. The city has been declared the Capital of Arab Culture for 2009, and according to Palestinians we met, the Jerusalem police have shut down more cultural events than they have permitted - including the timed release, by schoolchildren, of colored balloons in celebration of Al-Quds. Balloons are also a security risk.

During the week of the Palestine Festival of Literature (Palfest for short), we gave readings in Ramallah and Bethlehem as well as in Jerusalem, and taught workshops at universities in Ramallah, Jenin, and Hebron.

	Related Stories
	Deal on Gaza makes headway A journalist beaten - one year later Recovery battle for Gaza war injured

We lumbered about in a great tour bus, repeatedly grateful for our foreign passports (nowhere have I been more conscious of the liberating power of my US citizenship); but still, privileged as we were, we waited interminably at borders and checkpoints, in the shadow of the vast, ugly hopelessness that is the Wall, under the panopticon scrutiny of the watchtowers.

We answered questions barked by teenagers at the point of their guns. We got a very small taste of what it's like to be Palestinian. Members of our group likened it to living under apartheid; to Orwell's "1984"; to Kafka. But none of these allusions fully conveys the disturbing psychological experiment currently perpetrated on Palestinians in the West Bank.

The Ramallah-based architect and writer Suad Amiry put it best when she explained that to be Palestinian now means never to feel at home, because you have no control over time or space. You can live a lifetime in one place and yet not master its geography: routes long-familiar will suddenly be blocked off by barriers or checkpoints; while open spaces in the middle-distance will sprout settlements almost overnight, vast urban conglomerations that change the landscape altogether.

You can live a lifetime in one place and yet never know how long it takes to get anywhere: a mere 20-mile journey might consume a whole day, depending on the checkpoints and the whim of the soldiers you encounter. You might never get there at all: you could well be turned back.

To read the full article please visit The Boston Globe.