An Angus stonemason will down tools to jet off on a mercy mission.
Alex Holmes, 59, from Inverkeilor, will work for three months as a human rights monitor with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
The trip will have a personal resonance for Mr Holmes whose father was a young officer with the British Army who was based in Palestine during the Arab Revolt in 1936-39.
Ecumenical Accompaniers (EAs) provide a protective presence to vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
They might accompany children to school to protect them from Israeli settler violence, monitor checkpoints or act as support to Palestinian farmers trying to work their land.
They also stand alongside both Palestinian and Israeli peace groups that campaign to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
Mr Holmes said: “This troubled and often violent situation has lasted for nearly 50 years.
“An end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine is not in sight.
“Meanwhile Palestinians suffer daily challenges and human rights abuses.
“My real concern is the humanitarian needs of the people.”
Mr Holmes said he heard about the EAPPI in March after giving a talk in Glasgow.
He said: “My individual presence in the West Bank for three months will achieve very little, but as part of a rolling programme, I hope I will be contributing in a small way to a strategy that works.
“With the severity of the conflict in Syria, and the geopolitical impact of the Sunni/Shia divide in the Middle East, the ongoing occupation of Palestine by Israel flies under the radar.
“All attempts at reconciliation and negotiating a settlement between Israel and Palestine have ground to a halt.
“While this stalemate continues, the Palestinians will continue to suffer more and more as the Israeli West Bank settlement policy continues unabated ever-eroding the possibility of a two-state solution.
“Meanwhile Israelis exist within a siege mentality, on a constant war-footing that demands three years of military conscription for its youth.
“It is particularly important for us here in Britain not to forget our country’s role in this conflict.
“It can be argued that Britain’s watch over this part of the Middle East from 1920 to 1948 acted as the seed bed from which all the subsequent decades of conflict have grown.
“This has a specifically personal resonance for me since my father was a young officer based in Palestine during the British army’s suppression of the Arab revolt.”