Bil'in and Ni'lin

June 6th, 2008 The Flat , Ramallah, the West Bank
My hosts were asleep on Sunday night when I came in and asleep when I left around 7 the next morning, so I left them a note thanking them for their hospitality. Anna had offered to make coffee, so I went back up to her flat and drained a mug to help me stay awake the rest of the day. Anna gave me directions and I was on my way, going up the hill and through the market to the bus for Jerusalem. We were held up for some time at the checkpoint in Beit Jalla. The soldiers took the IDs of fifteen or twenty people for over thirty minutes before handing them back, but not before pulling two people from the bus.
Maxie was on the same bus to Ramallah and we hurried straight to the office for an editorial meeting, arriving a little after 9:30. Sean and Adam were there. They had taken a weekend trip to Tel Aviv, sleeping on the roof of a hostel across the street from the Mediterranean. Sean said he used “A Boy Named Sue” the day before to teach in English class.
We were given a lot of stories to cover in the meeting. Most of them were small, but we knew we would be fairly busy during the week. After awhile, Kirsty said we had a meeting in the conference room, so we all jumped up the stairs into the other office. A large cake topped with white icing and fruit sat in the conference room table, surrounded by several of the workers who had gathered to wish me a happy birthday. We sat around for awhile, slicing up the cake and passing it out and enjoying talking with everyone who filed in. I really appreciated that a lot. These are a great group of people with which to work.
At around 4 we left. Adam and I got some food at the little bakery down the street from our flat. I took a shower and felt like a new man. I’ve gone several days without getting wet a multitude of times, but for some reason this time was particularly uncomfortable. A hot shower and hot food were refreshing. We did little until 7 when we walked up the street to the home of Anne Roberts, the lady from Jackson, Tennessee, that we met in Ni’lin. Around ten people came to watch three short documentaries by B. H. Yael, an Israeli-Canadian filmmaker. They were very interesting, one of them dealing with the massacre of a Palestinian village in 1948. We discussed each one and our impressions of the situation. Understandably, the political and social occupation is a constant topic of conversation here. Back at the flat, we watched a movie and chatted with Maxie and her boyfriend Felix.
I sat at the office for most of the day on Tuesday working on the story about Claire Anastas’ home in Bethlehem. Adam returned to Salfit for the day to take pictures for a story he was writing. Later in the afternoon, Sean and I took a taxi to the medical relief headquarters to meet with Flo, who was going to show us how to publish on the website. The training took awhile because the Internet was acting a little sporadic.

(written June 7th, 2008 Palestine Monitor Office, Ramallah, the West Bank)
Sean left a little earlier than I did to meet with someone from the Youth Center. I worked for a little while on publishing my Bethlehem photo-story on the Monitor’s website. I then walked the forty minutes or so back to the flat and got some food at the bakery down the street. We did little that night.
Sean and I met Flo, Kirsty, and Maxie at Al Manara in order to drive to Bil’in. The 3rd International Conference on Nonviolent Popular Struggle was beginning on Wednesday and meeting through Friday. Palestinian Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad, Louisa Morgantini, vice president of the European Parliament, and Mairead Maguire, the 1974 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, were among the speakers. Some of it was very good, but nothing incredibly new or progressive was said. Most of it was in Arabic, so we had to listen to monotone translations on a headset with the Arabic blaring over the loudspeakers. Adam showed up later with Anne Roberts. The three of us quietly snuck out around lunchtime and met with one of Sean’s English students. A volunteer with the relief society, he showed us around to a table filled with food. We piled it on our plates and went to the top floor of a building where we were soon joined by the other participants of the conference. We opted not to stay for the entire day, because the conference was running late into the evening, so we caught a taxi with a young Irishman back to Ramallah. Adam and I spent some time at Karamah before finding food and hanging out at the flat.
The weather is becoming increasingly warmer, and this makes it difficult to sleep at night. Sean’s and my room was incredibly hot and I woke up sweating. The three of us spent the day at the office working on stories. I wrote a brief article about the fact that the conference was taking place. Sean left around lunch to get ready for English class. Adam and I ate at Obama’s Pizza directly beneath the Monitor’s office, visiting with the owners, both of whom have spent extensive amounts of time in the U.S.
Adam decided to stay at the office for awhile and work on a story; I left for the flat. I read a little and pretended like I was working on the computer while watching some TV. At 5:30, I met Adam in Clock Square and we went to Stars and Bucks, an obvious rip-off, but which had a great location above Al Manara. One of Sean’s students was having a small birthday party so we visited for much of the evening, hookah smoke filling the air and cars circling around Al Manara below. Our Irish taxi-mate from Wednesday, Fiachra, was there also. Sean had seen him walking around Ramallah earlier and invited him to come along. Everyone slowly left, leaving Sean, Fiachra, and me. A piece of his left ear is missing, bitten off in a boxing match. Even though he’s from what is technically designated as Northern Ireland, he is very adamant that he is Irish and not British. He is fine with people saying they are British, but he is very proud of his Irish heritage and claims that completely. Adam had invited him to stay with us, so we led him back to the flat, picking up some food at the bakery and the grocery store as we went.
We rarely sleep in. The sunlight and the heat and the cars serve as very effective alarm clocks. Fiachra left soon after we woke up. We were lazy for awhile, watching The Sting on one of the few English-speaking channels before deciding to be productive. Sean had the cramps, so Adam and I left him behind and went to the bus station behind the Monitor’s office. We were soon on our way back to Bil’in. We saw Sean as we were leaving, so he would join us later.
The service (pronounced ser-vees) dropped us off where the conference met on Wednesday. No one was there, so we went down from the town toward the mosque. The demonstration was taking place not far away. A bunch of people had been playing soccer when the soldiers began firing at them, dispersing the crowd. We met Tom Greenwood from England, who has been here since October making an independent documentary. The huge number of people gathered again and we all began walking down the road to a doublewide fence in front of stone barriers, behind which the soldiers stood. Large cries of “Free Palestine!” echoed across the fence to the hiding soldiers. Soon, the shooting started. This crowd was a little more experienced than the protesters at Ni’lin, because they stayed put, ducking when shots were fired. But the barrage kept coming. A teargas canister landed directly behind me. I was able to move without breathing it, but the chemical floated through my clothes and my skin felt like it was burning. Sean and I stuck around for awhile, crouching
Unfortunately, this sort of thing isn’t new at Bil’in, or many other places in the West Bank. Every Friday, someone gets hurt at this protest. I saw several people go down from extreme exposure to teargas. I wasn’t sure, but I think someone was shot. The medical relief team lifted him on a stretcher, his arm dangling off the side. Perhaps I’m naïve (but I choose to think not), but I am still disgusted that people sit around and concoct things with the intent of inflicting pain on other people. We have serious problems.
We went back to the spot where people had been playing soccer and spread out across the field. Armored jeeps sat behind tall fences across from us. The sixteen-mouthed teargas launcher was mounted on top of one and soon it belched every single one of its canisters. Sixteen spears of teargas cut through the blue sky and a massive cloud of smoke rose from where the canisters landed. I got caught in it. I couldn’t see and I stumbled over the rocky terrain, coughing and spitting. My throat felt like it was being scraped with sandpaper and my eyes turned blood-red. I fell out of the burning mist and regained my composure. But another onslaught came and the wind blew the smoke toward us. Sean and I went racing across the field, barely escaping down a hill. We returned once the air was clear and watched as kids pelted the side of jeeps and bashed the fence with rocks. After awhile, we walked back to the town with Tom and caught a service to Ni’lin. We were going to another protest. Apparently, swallowing teargas twice in one day wasn’t enough.
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi spoke to a crowd of people in the top room of a building in the town center. The speech was in Arabic, so a man sat next to us and translated the main parts. Once Dr. Barghouthi finished speaking, we joined a massive amount of people in the square and hiked out of town to the neighboring hilltops. People were beating on drums and blowing whistles and banging pots and pans. The purpose of this creative protest was to disturb the nearby settlement of Modi’in as they prepared for Shabbat. The time was opportune because the soldiers would not be present at this hour. Part of me was a little hesitant about disturbing people on their religious holidays. But, these settlements and the bulldozers disrupt the villagers’ entire lives, and the noise being made that evening was meant to represent a small amount of what the Palestinians experience everyday. Sometimes you have to step on people’s feet to be heard. Or beat loudly on drums as the sun goes down.
As the discordant noise of rebellion rang out through the ravine, people in the settlement began to appear on their porches. Several kids ran down the side of the hill and then up to the fence surrounding Modi’in. The sun was setting behind us, and the protesters on the hill were silhouetted against the fading light. Sean and I decided to join the kids on the other side, so we descended down to a stream that ran at the crevice of the two hills. A disgusting stench issued from the water, because this stream that lies on Palestinian land holds the sewage from the settlement. The water was a sickly green and lumps of brown clung to the edges of small inlets. We were careful as we crossed a large tire to the other side.
Before we could climb very high, the kids started flying past us. Settlers came out with sticks and some were actually shooting from their rooftops. Also, the military had arrived. We jumped back over and sat halfway up the hill on some rocks, watching as teargas canisters spiraled to the ground. I felt like I was watching some perverted fireworks show. We moved with ease away from the fumes. The wind was on our side in the evening, very unlike earlier at Bil’in. Sparks from canisters caught the dry grass on fire. Adam, Sean, and I hurried over to the spreading flames and began stamping it out and flinging dirt. Hindi quickly slid down and handed me a tree branch and he and I then beat the fire until all that was left was black earth.
The teargas kept getting closer, so we continued to move up the hill. Someone shouted and pointed and we all looked down to the water: fifteen or twenty soldiers were crossing and starting to move up the hill. They had never chased us before. The deep pop of rubber-coated bullets resounded, accompanied by a higher pitched click: live fire. We rushed over the summit of the hill and stood by some trees. But the soldiers kept advancing, their helmets and muzzle flashes soon visible over the ridge. The military were lowering their guns and taking aim. Slings were twirling and rocks were whistling. But the soldiers kept charging. We turned and sprinted across the rocks, hurdling over the stone walls and ducking as shots were fired. I crouched behind some cactuses (or cacti; both are appropriate) to take a few pictures. I saw one soldier aim and fire at a group of teenagers beside a tree. The bullet knocked off a branch not two feet away from a kid’s head. We were near the town, so we joined Hindi and Tom on the road. I turned to look at the chaos behind me. A rubber-coated bullet hit the ground about ten feet in front of me and bounced just over my head, whizzing past Adam and Sean.
Salah Khawaja was waiting at the entrance to a courtyard and directed us inside. I think this was the home of a doctor. We ran up the stairs and onto the roof, kneeling down and peering over the edge of the wall. Everyone was surprised that the soldiers actually came all the way to the town. A field spread out below us, dotted with a few olive trees; the road was to the left. I could see the creeping soldiers through the knotted branches and cactuses. Several stone-throwers jumped onto the road and started pushing the soldiers back with slings. Soon, the rocks stopped hurtling and the bullets stopped roaring. Whatever the reason, the soldiers turned and moved back toward the settlement.
We got a service back to Ramallah, but as we entered the main road a police jeep sped past us. The driver immediately whirled around and returned to Ni’lin. A checkpoint was being set up just down the road and we had too many people in the bus. We got out and waited until word came that it was safe to leave. Adam and I found a plastic plate and used it as a Frisbee. Sadly, it broke, but a kid found a bucket lid that worked even better. A small crowd watched as we threw in the dark, impressed with our skills. We had some light for a few minutes as real fireworks were set off. I gave the bucket lid to one of the boys and we left, taking a back road into Ramallah.
Instead of going to Al Manara, we got off with people in our service and went to the restaurant at the top of the Royal Suite Hotel. Sean, Adam, and I were joined by Hindi, his fiancé (or girlfriend; we haven’t really figured out which she is) Vivien from Holland, Tom, Benoit from France, Maxie, another guy from Germany, and Vanina from Italy. Several others, who had not been at the protests, arrived later. We had a good time, telling stories and discussing the day, including the settler who was posing as a photographer. A large, red-faced man with two cameras and a ball cap worn backwards had told some of us very different stories abut who he is. Apparently, he is in reality a settler. Vivien said he took pictures of quite a few people, including Sean and me.
At 11:30 we began the short journey back to the flat. Clock Square was just up the street, so we were in our lodgings in around twenty minutes. I went to bed soon after. A cool breeze found its way in through the window, which made sleeping much more comfortable that night.
I came to the office early this morning. Adam was not far behind. Sean has the day off, so he’s not sure what he was going to do. He’ll join us later in Jerusalem. Adam went to a small demonstration at Al Manara and found some people we had met yesterday in Bil’in: Jo, a girl from Ohio, and Ian from D.C. They came back to the office with him and the four of us went looking for food before settling in at Obama’s. Interestingly, they are living for several weeks with the incredible woman (whose name I is Zalinca Mustabe, or something like that) I met in Hebron last Sunday, who was harassed by the settlers. They had heard of our encounter with the settlers and came back after awhile to record my version of the story. I took them to the conference room and Jo asked me questions about myself, such as where I’m from, how I became involved here, and what I am doing this summer. I then told them the story from Sunday and my impressions of it. Jo ended with a few questions about the protest yesterday in Ni’lin and whether or not I think protests are effective. Ian filmed Adam and me pretending to do work for B-roll footage and then the four of us chatted on the balcony before they left.
On Sunday morning, we will hike up the Mount of Olives and meet my dad, my grandparents, two of my uncles, and my professors from Australia (who are two very close friends). My dad is leading a tour of the traditional sites, as well as introducing those involved to the Palestinian side of the situation. Call me biased, but I can’t think of better people to lead this tour. My dad has spent a lot of time here, as has my uncle Rob. The two of them are coordinating the group. My dad’s parents (who have been archaeologists, writers, and professors) have been to the Middle East almost forty times. Many people decided to come on this tour because of them. This is going to be a very unique experience for the people on the tour and I hope to share stories of my experiences so far with them. I am not much for tours, but this is a good way for people who have not been before to see the famous sites and to here seldom-heard perspectives. Sean, Adam, and I will be traveling with them for the next week-and-a-half.
I am very excited about seeing all of these people. Basically, I’m having a small family reunion. I do, however, feel a little guilty because of this little holiday. The people with whom we are living and working are not able to just take a break from occupation.

PS This is the link to the story about the home in Bethlehem, called “The House with Seven Walls”: http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article450. Relief Web, which is “the world’s leading on-line gateway to information . . . on humanitarian emergencies and disasters,” picked up the story and published it as well. Pretty darn cool.