Bullets and Stones

May 19th, 2008 Karameh Coffee House, Ramallah, West Bank
The sunlight, and Sean moving, woke me up around 8:30, an hour before my alarm was set to go off. Today was Adam’s birthday. He was a little surprised when I told him.
“Is that really today?” he asked with a smile on his face. “Well, what do ya know?”
We sat around for a little while, reading and gazing out the window in the little niche where the living room sits before going to meet Kirsty in downtown Ramallah. I researched the city, and found that its name is derived from two words: Ram or Rama, which is Aramaic for “high place”; and Allah, which is, of course, Arabic for “God.” Ramallah is “God’s Hill.”
The walk takes roughly fifteen minutes, but we had a little bit of trouble finding the headquarters of the Palestine Monitor. We went from Clock Square, a short distance from the city center (al-Manara) to Rukab Street, one of Ramallah’s main streets. We turned to the left, west, and looked all over the place for our destination. We climbed to the third floor in three different buildings before we finally found it. We entered through a small door and went up the wrap-around stairs until we saw a sign reading “Palestine Monitor” on an open door. I had been here two years ago with my dad. Kirsty was waiting inside. She introduced us to Flo (short for Florent), a curly-haired, goateed Frenchman who works with the Monitor. Kirsty led us out the door and up the stairs into a much larger office complex, introducing us to even more workers. We heard a lot of names and I am definitely going to have to hear them again.
We stepped out onto the busy street. Cars raced past, barely avoiding slamming into other vehicles and people who darted in and out between the moving traffic. We caught a taxi-bus at al-Manara and drove to a neighboring town, connected indistinguishably to Ramallah, where the Palestinian Medical Relief Society is stationed. When my dad and I visited two years ago, this edifice was only recently built and was still in the process of being furnished. The very impressive facility was now finished. We met some of the workers there, including a few doctors, one of whom was in charge of the mobile clinics with which Adam will be working.

(written May 21st, 2008)
Adam was then told he was leaving in a few hours for the northern province of Sufat. He looked at us with wide eyes, unsure exactly what to say. We both glowered back, jealous of his immediate opportunity. Adam is a little more hesitant and nervous about certain situations, which I suppose is a good balance to Sean and me, who are a little more (perhaps ignorantly) daring and risky. We took a bus back into the city and visited the Youth Center, located in a basement. The young man working there didn’t speak English, so Kirsty translated as he explained the purposes of the center and some of what Sean would be doing (like teaching English every now and then; Sean was a little unsure about that, but he’ll try pretty much anything). The kids are now taking exams, so Sean would be working with me at the Palestine Monitor for the first several weeks until more could be offered at the Youth Center. We raced back to the flat so Adam could quickly pack a few things and then once again drove to the Relief Society’s center.
Flo and Kirsty then sat us down in a conference room and presented a sort of orientation for our work here, providing a slideshow of pictures and facts about the situation. The Palestine Monitor has never been accused of cheating with the statistics and information; they have no need to, because the truth is startling enough. I encourage you all to please visit www.palestinemonitor.org, and read the different links under the left-hand section titled “Facts @ a glance.” This is some compelling and shocking information that needs to be heard and understood. I also strongly encourage you to check out http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article382, which is an article written by Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, one of the founders of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society and now a member of the parliament. From the little I know about him, I have a lot of respect for this man. We met him yesterday during an editorial meeting. He came in and shook our hands, his suit coat draped over his shoulders like a cloak.
The following are just a few of things we learned. During Jimmy Carter’s recent visit to the region, he met with leaders of Hamas (the group now in control of the Gaza strip) in Syria and denounced the Israelis’ ground assaults on civilians and Hamas’ use of rockets against Israel, calling for a ceasefire, to which Hamas agreed. However, Israel refused this. They refused to stop fighting, which Hamas proposed. Many Palestinians seem to say that they have no problem with a wall, but not when it is built on Palestinian land. The wall crosses every international line ever set in place, whether that is the UN Partition Plan of 1947 and the Green Line of 1967. 80% of the Separation Wall is on Palestinian land. Gradually, Israel has (illegally under international law) expanded their borders, which has had devastating effects on the Palestinian people. Many argue that the wall’s purpose is for security, but the wall can be bypassed by those determined enough to do it. Supposedly, the wall was built to prevent suicide bombers. But the first suicide bombing committed by a Palestinian was during the First Intifada (1987-1993), and the wall’s construction was planned before that. An argument can certainly be made that the wall is much more for fragmentation, intimidation, and humiliation than it is for security.
Two out of every five refugees in the world is Palestinian. A meeting was held in Annapolis in November of last year, hoping (again) to bring peace. Israel agreed to dismantle fifty checkpoints in the West Bank, but only one has been taken down. Forty-nine earth mounds (debris used as roadblocks) were dismantled, but these earth mounds were situated on roads not even in use, already cut off by the wall. The ratio of Palestinians killed to the number of Israelis killed since the attempt for peace at Annapolis is 18 to 1. I could continue, but this would grow eternally long. Again, I encourage everyone to click on the links to those sites and spend a little bit of your time reading what you find. This will not only provide another (and extremely vital) perspective, but this will help in understanding the stories that are to follow on this blog. See the world “from below.”
Adam had to leave before the presentation was over. He will be spending the week in Sufat, and then a week in Bethlehem, and then back in Ramallah. Flo and Kirsty explained more of our work upstairs, such as interviewing, follow-ups, editorial meetings, and proof-reading (which is mostly me proofreading everyone else! I need to proofread my own blog more!). We have an incredible amount of freedom in what we do.
We ended for the day between 3:30 and 4, so Sean and I walked south back into Ramallah and explored a bit, going far down Rukab Street before turning back and finding some excellent shawarma, eating it on a little balcony in the shop. As we walked, several people would nod at us, saying “You are welcome here.”
On the way to the flat, we stopped at the grocery store and I picked up some oranges. I’m a strong advocate of fruit, and these were perfect. I ate one as I proofread an article by Maxie. Sean and I walked back into the city, finding wireless at Karamah Pastries and Coffee on a street corner on Rukab. We’ve made friends with some guys who work in an ice cream and slushie store two doors over who directed us here. This is certainly a night culture. People are walking late into the night and the stores are still open. Men sit huddled together around small tables, the older men intently rubbing prayer beads as they talk.

On the 20th (Tuesday), Sean and I arrived at the Monitor’s office by 9:30. We finally met Maxie. An editorial meeting was called, and the five of us huddled in Flo’s cubicle as we discussed story ideas, dividing them up between us. Sean and I would be traveling to Beit Sahour (outside Bethlehem) that night to cover a story, as well as staying the night in order to report on a few topics the next day. My little cubicle is right next to the window, which overlooks the street. I got on the Monitor’s website to continue reading about the conflict here when Kirsty grabbed Sean and me and asked if we wanted to go to a peace rally. We certainly weren’t going to say no, so we picked up our bags and left for Ni’lin, northwest of Ramallah. We were accompanied by Salah Khawaja, a member of the Arab Non-Violence Network who is from the little village. We were also joined by a pony-tailed freelance photographer from France named Alexandre Sarlin. We visited with him as we bumped along the rocky roads in a bus. He’s originally from the south of France, near Marseilles, but he now lives in New York.
The village is quite a ways out and located on a hill. Beside a cinder-block house, a bunch of teenagers and several middle-aged men sat under a tree waiting for everyone to arrive. We climbed over a hill to where the giant bulldozer sat. The purpose of the rally was to protest the building of the wall through this remote village. The wall will, of course, greatly affect the 5,000 people of this town. I will spare some of the details, because I am writing about this for the Monitor and I will post it here as well, so some of this will be repeated.
A convoy of soldiers arrived as we stood around the bulldozers, kids sitting in front of it. M-16s and teargas guns surrounded us. One solider yelled at us not to take pictures. Alex smirked.
“What’s he going to do?” he said. “He can’t take my camera. He’s nervous. Probably the first time he’s done this.”
A Palestinian man started yelling at the kids. Salah told me he was telling them that this was a peaceful demonstration to stand for the land and that they will not throw any stones. He told them to sit quietly. Then suddenly, one of the soldiers raised his arm and said something in Hebrew. A symphony of clicks resounded as the soldiers pulled sound grenades from their sides and began lobbing them, unprovoked, into the crowd. The first one landed near my feet and all sound around me drowned out. A loud ringing resounded in my head as more of these bombs went off. Rubber bullets came whizzing past as people dashed in front and behind one another, scrambling for cover. The teargas guns were raised and fired as we all went running across the field. Sean was next to me, his fingers plugging his ears. I couldn’t reach up because I was holding my camera. I leaped over a stone fence, scraping my face against a cactus-like tree as I landed. Some of the kids started picking up stones, hurling them back in the direction from which we came. The soldiers started advancing. Teargas landed nearby and my eyes immediately started burning and watering and my throat ached.
Several kids had slings and used them to fling the rocks at the soldiers who continued to bombard us with teargas and rubber bullets. Sean and I moved away from the kids, distancing ourselves from the uneven skirmish. Part of me wanted to tell the teenagers not to throw anything, not to lower themselves to the level of others, because peace isn’t achieved this way. I thought of Martin Luther King’s words: “We will wear them down by our love.” And the words of Jesus of Nazareth echoed in my ears over the ringing of the grenades: “Love your enemies.” But I couldn’t help see the intense contrast between armored soldiers with automatic weapons and a bunch of fleeing teenagers with rocks. In some sense, David and Goliath were fighting right in front of me.
The soldiers stopped behind a rock wall which ran along the hill. Projectiles of smoke followed the canisters of teargas long after the rocks stopped flying. One of the kids showed me his shoe, which had been torn by one of the sound bombs. We found Alex back at the cinderblock-house near the tree where we began. We were warmly invited in by the residents, who offered us water and sassafras tea. A rather rotund man sat smoking a cigarette and laughed often and tried constantly to speak Arabic to us. These people were incredibly hospitable, offering us their precious water. Several of the men present started pointing at me and took pictures of me with their cell phones. I apparently looked like Mohanned, the hero of some movie who was followed around by women. How could they have known?
(Note: several other photographers were present. Check out this picture from the Associated Press: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Mideast-Conflict-Israel-Ramallah-West-Bank-village/ss/events/wl/080601mideast/im:/080520/481/9b21b5c345db4a97a7fb2ae8497afd8a/. Sean and I are in the back.
We returned to Ramallah and climbed the stairs on Rubak Street to the Palestine Montior. No one was there, so we got a shawarma with Alex and then ran back to the flat to pack a few things for our stay in Beit Sahour. We hopped on a bus for Jerusalem, passed through a checkpoint, and then switched bus stations in the city to go to Bethlehem. We arrived in front of the enormous wall, through which we had to pass to enter Bethlehem. A huge sign hung near the massive gate of the Separation Wall, reading “Peace Be With You,” displaying one of the greatest representations of irony I have ever seen. We passed through security quickly. On the other side, graffiti covered the gray slates: “American Money, Israeli Apartheid”; “This Wall Must Fall”; and incredible artistic depictions, including some by Banksy, a famous British graffiti artist.
We bargained with taxi drivers until we got one for 15 shekels. He had a hard time finding our destination in Beit Sahour, but we eventually came upon the AIC, or Alternative Information Center. We were met by Kristhel, a young Dutch woman who organizes a lot of activities for the place. She led us down into the AIC where we hung out for awhile before going to Oush Ghrab, an abandoned military outpost a little ways outside of Beit Sahour. The city hopes to turn it into a park or some sort of educational center concerning the environment. But just recently a group of Israelis claimed it and want to turn it into another settlement. This was the first of three stories Sean and I were supposed to cover in the Bethlehem area.

To be continued . . . (rather dramatic end)