Demolished Homes and Another Protest

May 27th, 2008 Karamah, Ramallah, the West Bank
(The pictures are taking forever to load, so I will try again later this evening)
We had our second editorial meeting at 9:30 on Monday morning. Only four of us were there: Kirsty had been injured at the protest in Ni’lin the day before. A piece of a sound grenade injured her hand and she twisted her ankle as she was running for cover. Interestingly, she actually just walked into Karamah to say hello and was doing much better.
Shortly after the meeting, Sean and I boarded Bus 18 for Jerusalem. We called for a taxi at the Jerusalem Hotel, just behind the bus station, and were soon on our way to the eastern part of the city. The driver dropped us off in the neighborhood called Al Tours. The Judean Wilderness stretched to Jordan behind us. We asked some people standing outside of a house next to us if they knew anything about a recent house demolition. None of them spoke much English, but they knew the name of the man whose house was destroyed, and a guy around our age drove us up the street to the site.
A large square of twisted rebar and crumbled concrete were the remains of Amin Ibrahim al Abbasy’s home. On the far end, a makeshift shack shaded a mattress and a few chairs. A heap of clothes and other items salvaged from the demolition sat in a corner. Al Abbasy built his home twelve years ago and was at work when friends called to inform him that the army had come to tear down his home. On May 19th, he was told that he had been informed a year ago that his house was to be torn down. However, he had received no official notice or a set date. He called his lawyer, who in turn phoned the Municipality. The officials had no intention of a demolition, they said. However, when al Abbasy returned later, his large home was in a crushed mess on the ground. Sean and I learned all this from an already published article. None of the people we sat with under the improvised roof spoke English, so we didn’t get much information. We simply sat with them, drinking juice and staring at the wreck beside us.
We walked about fifteen minutes to Mt. Scopus and onto the campus of Hebrew University. We strolled all over the extensive grounds, and up and down the multiple levels. Hebrew University is a big place. We sat for a while at the amphitheatre, reading and watching several guys set up for a concert later in the week. We continued walking for awhile before falling on an incredibly comfortable patch of grass near the front entrance. We both agreed that this was what we missed most about Searcy (aside from people, of course): reclining on the front lawn under a tree.
I was going to meet with a guy about a story, so Sean headed down into the city to look for a camera. I joined Nawaf Hilo, a Palestinian in his late twenties, on a bus which took us over a few streets near his home. We had to pass through a small checkpoint to get to his house. I will be writing about this for the Monitor at some point, so I won’t go into much detail, but the reason I met with him was because his house is now encircled by the university, which is continually expanding and is attempting to buy him out. A patch of land near his house where his family grew trees was leveled three years ago for a parking lot.
Nawaf drove me to the Jerusalem Hotel and I walked to the Damascus Gate, where I sat on the stairs in the shade and watched the people go in and out and the kites fly overhead. Sean met me there about an hour later and we grabbed a falafel and went to visit with Mahmoud. We sat in the back of his old shop, surrounded by ancient pottery, and sipped on juice and talked about our experiences, politics, and the “music of language.” Mahmoud can sing five of them. I have a lot of respect for Mahmoud. Incredibly hospitable and filled with kindness, he is extremely intelligent and up-to-date on pretty much everything. I enjoy visiting with him.
Our bus ride back was the longest yet. This is not a culture of walkers. Someone would hit the buzzer to stop the bus and get off, and then, ten seconds after the bus started again, someone else would ring to get off. This happened repeatedly, which is a little frustrating to two guys who walk pretty much everywhere. Maxie had new keys for us back at the flat. Sean got a bunch of groceries and we watched part of Ocean’s 13 before deciding that we needed some sleep.
Sean and I met Flo, Hindi, and a large group of people at Al Manara this morning to go back to Ni’lin. The long dirt roads to the village are becoming very familiar. Around 200 people were present for the protest, including a bunch of internationals. Large Palestinian flags waved as the masses moved toward the bulldozers, protected by a barricade of military vehicles. They looked like two mechanic monsters as they churned up the earth to make room for the Wall. A rock fence, coils of razor wire, and a line of soldiers stood between the protesters and the menacing machines.

(written at the Flat)
Within moments of our arrival, sound grenades sent the majority of the protesters clambering back toward the trees. A thick curtain of teargas hung on the wind and swept over us. Sean and I got caught in its drapes. We moved out of the thick of it, but not before we inhaled much more than we had last week. The two of us stumbled to the rock wall, our eyes bleeding water like a flood and spit dripping. We could barely breathe, continually gasping for clean air and hacking as if to cough the bitter taste out of our throats. A man walked out of the smoke and handed us two halves of an onion and motioned for us to put it to our noses and breathe. Surprisingly, this method worked. I kept the onion with me, which was good, because we were gassed two more times. The onion certainly didn’t prevent from the gas from achieving its effect, but it helped to overcome it more quickly. The gas permeated the air from the extreme number of canisters shot. A jeep drove down to the stone wall at one point with a sort of 24-mouthed launcher mounted on the top. In less than ten seconds, that gun shot off twenty-four teargas canisters. The blue sky was checkered with a gray matrix of smoke.
The incendiary devices of the teargas ignited fires which devoured the dry brush sprouting from the rocky ground. Our red eyes were constantly squinted as smoke and teargas polluted the air. All around us shrubs were crackling and lit up in blazing orange. What could God be trying to say in these burning bushes?
Instead of running away in the direction of everyone else, Sean and I stayed along the rock wall, closer to the soldiers who fired over our heads. We moved along the wall as the teargas caught the breeze, trying to stay out of the crossfire of bullets and rocks. All the younger protesters were in the hills nearby; those who remained were the older, more experienced men. These protests don’t seem to be well-organized. These teenagers march in with loud, passionate cries, but they run as soon as the teargas hits and begin throwing rocks. They successfully disrupt anyone attempt for a peaceful protest. The soldiers know what to expect, and the kids respond just as the soldiers want: run from the sound grenades into the teargas and then spread out. Then, the rock-throwing starts. More creative methods are needed. One of the men stood on the rock wall and shouted furiously, in English, at the teenagers: “What are you doing?! Why are you throwing stones?! We are having a peaceful demonstration!”
Sean and I were with Flo and a Palestinian cameraman. We watched as a soldier lowered his teargas gun and fired the canister into the leg of this cameraman. He limped significantly the rest of the day. He told us to stay around, because the soldiers won’t fire at him if Americans are close. I hate the ease we have, but I’ll exploit it if we can use it to protect some of the people here. At the end of the day, thirteen people were injured, and five were taken to the hospital in Ramallah. Two of the five were seriously injured: one man had a fractured skull from a shot with a rubber-coated bullet and another man was hit in the jaw. We heard that another man was beaten and was having difficulty with his spine.
The field outside of Ni’lin looked like a war zone. Soldiers crept behind the rock wall as stones harmlessly flew aside. These kids can’t aim. Some of the rocks bounced past my feet as I was moving away from the people they were targeting. The soldiers knelt behind the wall, moving slowly to prevent from being hit, as if they could even feel a rock under all their protective gear. The army then jumped up and raided the trees as they fired their guns, pushing the remaining band of kids back. We sat under a tree with a medical relief team who came to pick up an injured guy. Several Israeli activists, from a group called Anarchists Against the Wall, sat with us. Flo, Sean, a Palestinian man, and I walked around the hill and back to the road. While all this transpired, the machines relentlessly dug. The bulldozers’ teeth continued to shovel the earth.
We drove back to the village crammed in a tiny bus. Hindi took us back to the ancient house to which we had gone on Friday. We climbed up to a roofed patio and relaxed for awhile, visiting with some of the internationals who had come to the protest. I sat on top of one of the four-foot walls and leaned against a supporting beam, looking at the village and rocky hills. Two bulldozers churned on a knoll nearby, but these were busy preparing the foundations for a school. Drinks and food soon arrived. Someone had prepared delicious sandwiches of pita stuffed with meat, pickles, and hummus. Another bus soon bumped us along the road back to Ramallah.
Sean had to go by the Youth Center to see what time they needed him tomorrow. He will be going to either Nablus or Hebron with the workers to “do somethin’ with little kids.” I hiked back to the flat to get our computers and then return to meet him at Karamah. On my way back to the city, I met seven kids who were speaking English and dribbling a basketball. Sean had met one of them, Muhammad, the other day. Their families had moved back here after living for some time in Chicago and New York. I asked if I could play with them. We had a lot of fun, and they were pretty good. We trash-talked and joked and pushed each other around and discussed the Spurs/Lakers playoff match-up. They told me they were going to be out at the court quite a bit, so I might try to join them again sometime. Maybe they can teach me some Arabic.
Sean and I sat at Karamah until our batteries almost kicked the bucket. We made dinner out of pita, hummus, oranges, and strawberry yogurt at the flat. I’ll be spending the day tomorrow in Sabastya, northwest of Nablus, reporting on a story.
I have listened to Coldplay’s “A Message” at least ten times tonight.

“My song is love/ Love to the loveless shown . . .”