A JOURNALIST who spent more than a year living in Palestine’s West Bank has turned the diaries she wrote there into a book.

The tongue-in-cheek pseudonym Anna Habibti – a corruption of the Arabic for ‘I am a dear sweet little one’ – hides the identity of this 49-year-old Horwich writer.

Between September 2006 and October 2007 Anna lived in Nablus, one of the most isolated cities in the West Bank.

The journals in which she documented her experiences of the occupied Palestinian territories have formed the basis for ‘A Year on Fire Mountain: An Occupation Diary’.

Anna, who completed the book last November, said she was amazed at the “resilience and inventiveness” of the Palestinian Arabs she encountered – “not victims or villains, just ordinary people trying to get by”.

Anna said: “My mum grew up during the Second World War so I was brought up knowing about the Holocaust.

“I knew the Israeli Jews had lived through this awful thing, so in my mind they had to be the good guys and the Palestinians the bad guys.”

It was in 1986, when Anna watched TV footage of westerners Dr Pauline Cutting and Susan Whighton in a Palestinian refugee camp, that she began to rethink her opinions.

As she did more research she felt “guilty” about the negative views she had once held, and in 2006 an opportunity presented itself.

Anna was offered a position as guest lecturer in journalism at An-Najah National University in Nablus, and initially only planned to stay for nine weeks.

She said: “Despite everything I knew, when I arrived and saw for myself what conditions were like I was still so shocked.

“In the West Bank life is so difficult – the community is physically restricted by the constant presence of the Israeli army, and socially and psychologically stunted by decades of occupation.”

Anna, who also worked in the university’s PR department before taking a job with UNESCO, said one of her most bizarre experiences was visiting Qalqilya Zoo.

Due to lack of money and medicine, when animals died the zookeeper – also an amateur taxidermist – stuffed them and created displays.

Anna said she is shocked few people in Bolton have heard of the Nakba, the 1948 exodus in which more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were forced to flee their homes.

But she said she is determined for people to realise what happens in the West Bank is relevant to us all.

Anna added: “If you want to know why 9/11 happened, this explains it.

“I wanted the book to tell people what is actually going on in the Palestine which rarely makes it onto the news, but I also wanted it to be like a reference book people could go to for facts.”