Palestine 2.41

Today is my last day here. It may seem strange, but it seems I feel like having a tour around the house where we stay. It is a neighbours block and the most interesting part of the house is the flat roof. The drums containing the water that is supplied to all the block neighbours are here.

We can see the top of other roofs from here, and some are higher up than this one. In one of those higher roofs there is an outpost of the Israeli army, with its sentry box and a kind of curtain that seems like a fishing net, only it is of a military green colour. K explains the roof is illegally occupied, but hey, with no recognised authority to appeal to, there is absolutely nothing the family that lives there can do.

K also points to a pair of water drums left there in a corner, on our roof. Both have holes which are obviously caused by bullets.



K explains that the soldiers (or maybe the settlers, who are also armed) seem to be terribly bored and sometimes they entertain themselves shooting the drums, leaving them useless. The families living in the houses then loose their water supply for days or weeks, however long it takes them to replace the drums.

Looking on to the street, downstairs, we can see, apart from the military checkpoints, which we also see when we are at their level,





something we don't tend to pay much attention to, but which from here is so distinctive, and it is the street raised just next to the entrance of the houses. K explains that it is just one more of the humiliations. It is done with one of those machines that in a normal country would arrive when a pipe below the concrete asphalt needs to be repaired, would raises the street and hopefully in a few weeks would all be repaired. Here the machine arrives, raises the street, and leaves it raised for good, leaving the inhabitants of that house embittered and having to climb up the rubbish whenever they must leave and enter their house.



Sometimes the familiy can afford the luxury of fixing it.



Some times, they can't.



After the morning shifts and breakfast, I go to the lower street on my way to the tomb-with-mirrors-like checkpoint and towards the live part of the city. There aren't usually any more soldiers than necessary, but today we see a military vehicle loaded with soldiers, on the very street where Palestinians are not allowed to circulate with any other vehicles than bicycles or donkeys. The soldiers stare at us from the rear window of the vehicle and smile with sarcasm and they wave us good bye. They do not usually do this but I guess the incident a few days back seemed fun to them and they have recognised me.

I'm heading to a place that some times sounds like "kawawis", other times like "Kaa-o-ees" and others like "kwiz", depending on who pronounces it. It is too small to start asking for a service right to that town from here; I need to ask for one to Yatta and then change there.

I ask a man who speaks English and he answers: "You are going to Kawawis, aren't you?" "Yes. How do you know?" "All the foreigners that want to go to Yatta, are actually going to Kawawis". Of course. I am not the first one and will not be the last one.

He's taken me through the crowd (made up of men only) and the taxis, and in a given moment a bunch of men surround us, looking at me and talking as if angry. The man who is acting as my guide says something about "Spain", "help" and "Palestinians" and they all look at me again and shut up. He gets me a taxi and I leave.

The journey is incident free until we approach the city. An Israeli settler drives his car like mad, not respecting the Palestinian sign of "stop", almost killing a bunch of Palestinian school girls and then waving furiously at a Palestinian driver that had actually stopped to avoid an accident.

Once in the main street in Yatta, which is full of Palestinian boys and men, I go from shop to shop buying food for a couple of days. A man with a beard approaches me: "To Kawawis? Yes? I take you". By the time he has finished the sentence a circle of about 10 men has formed around us. The guy tells me he'll take me for 25 shekels; I was told it would be about 5, so I tell him that I'll think about it, but it's not like I have lots of options, since it is the only taxi I can see around here, so I buy some more food, which he helps me buy and carry, and we get on the van. It is the first time in Palestine that I get on a taxi on my own.

He takes me through roads full of irregular stone piles and roadblocks, which are basically pairs of stone blocks of about one to two cubic metres, planted in the middle of the roads in order to make motor transport impossible. He can hardly drive the van through them; at one point he shouts above the deafening noise of the engine and the stones under the tyres: "This road, destroyed by Israel". Which is a useful observation because, without this hindsight, it would be easy to simply assume that no road ever existed, nor the intention to build one, and what we are following is simply the trail of previous drivers, or that some one started to build it but then half way through these stones fell off and then could not finish it off...

The road is cut short by a perfectly asphalted road and the van has to stop here. It is like most Israeli roads, blocking Palestinian roads, leaving people isolated. It seems that this one road did go all the way to Kawawis before, because a stony trail similar to this one can be seen a the other side of the Israeli road, cutting it short, and Kawawis is left totally isolated, because it is only possible to get there on foot.

The taxi man starts to walk with me but when he sees that I walk straight to the Israeli road he apologises: "I can't, too dangerous". I perfectly understand. As the potential terrorist that he is, his presence near an Israeli highway would amply justify a shooting with a result of death. So there I go, with my hair down as "proof" that I am not a Palestinian, therefore not a terrorist, therefore they are not going to kill me.

Once on the verge of the road I should see L., who will get this same taxi to get to Yatta.

Trucks, big coaches and cars, some military vehicles, travel at high speed on this road that is not cut short by anything or anybody. I imagine their passengers must wonder where the hell I have come out from and where the hell I am going.

L. and I finally see each other in the distant and run to meet, I take her to the taxi, she gives me the key to the house where I will stay, she gets on the taxi with her stuff and I am left alone on this side of the road.

I finally cross the road for the last time in a few days, in a moment when no vehicle is coming, and the scenery that extends before me is amazing



but also devastating.



There is no indication of life apart from the tracks of the taxi on the stony trail, now empty, at the other side of the road, and the vehicles that come and go before I can see any passenger inside.

And, in the end, the Israeli settlement, with its barracks, with its death.



L. has told me where the bunch of "houses" where I should go is. Now I have to do a visual and memory exercise because the houses are so similar with the terrain they are almost invisible.



After walking for about ten minutes I arrive near a bunch of buildings not higher than two metres. The biggest one is dark grey, square; the others are like igloos made of stones. As I go round one of these "igloos" I meet a bunch of people sitting on a kind of platform, drinking tea and looking at me. The bunch is composed by two women, one of them very old and the other one a bit younger, and a man, whose age could be between the ages of the two women.

It feels like they were waiting for me. They welcome me, with the very few words that they can say in English and they give the sweetest tea I have ever tasted.

So here I stay, sitting on the floor of this platform, my back pack and my shopping on the ground.

With great difficulty I find out that the oldest woman and the man are a married couple and the youngest woman, who appears to be about 50 years old, with some golden teeth and others just missing, is only about 30 and is their unmarried daughter.

After two little glasses of tea I point to my things and the key I have been given. They in turn point to the igloo I have just come round from and they stay there, leaving me to organise my things.

The "house" for which I've given the key is made up of stones, one upon another, making up a circular wall, with a canvas covering the only resulting room.

Almost all the "houses" are like this, or so they seem from outside. This one has several mats and blankets, just enough to sleep. L. has left some bread and biscuits. Next to the food there is a notebook where people who have been here before me have been writing down "incidents". They are all about settlers abusing the Palestinians and soldiers not doing anything about it; one that stands out involves settlers burning a whole field of olive trees.

People have signed what they have written and I recognise some of the names, people I have been with, in other places, and I can imagine them here, in this same house, or on the platform having tea, or getting up at 6 in the morning, like they write, in order to accompany the older man with the sheep flock, and all this makes me feel even less lonely.

I finish reading the note book and as I get to the door to get out I notice the poster on it, hand made, irony touch in cluded:



There are three settlements; facing the valley, with your back to the road for settlers; one is on the right, another on the left, both on mountain tops (you can glimpse some buildings in the pictures but not too clearly) and another one also towards the right but behind, at the other side of the road, and this one can not be seen.

The scrawls on the map between the two settlements and Kawawis indicate an olive trees field and a family's house, there alone, facing both settlements. If I had come with some one else, one of us would have gone to visit that family so that they don't feel so alone in the face of danger, but as I have come on my own, instructions are to stay near the bigger group of houses, no visits, no outings with the flocks in the morning. In any case, those outings would have been made by a male, not a female volunteer, but that is another story.

As I get out of the "house" I find the young woman and a girl. The girl can speak English a bit better than the woman, the couple's daughter, and says she is her niece. I invite them to eat with me but they do not understand. The older one goes away and her niece stays, and I invite her to come in by signs. I begin to eat and I give her some food, and we eat something together. She asks me for some bread to take to her brother, I give her some, and she asks for some more, now for her sister. I also offer her humus and she asks me for cakes. After a little while she puts a few cakes in her pockets and she leaves, with the humus sandwich in one hand and bread alone in the other, and I stay with the certainty that this people are suffering hunger.

Because of the scarcity of food here we are told that we should eat on our own instead of eating their food with them, so I continue eating on my own. Shortly afterwards the younger woman comes, telling me, with signs, to go to her house with her. I point at my food and he helps me gather it. It it normally not appropriate to bring food to a house where you are invited, it is considered an offence, it would be like saying to them that they are not worth enough to feed you, but this family receives it with a smile and we all eat their food and mine.

When we finish, and after tea, the younger woman does the washing up with a remarkably little amount of water, a strange scourer and a bar of olive oil soap.

I get up in order to go to my cave to sleep but they are not going to allow me: "two, good, one, not good", which means, I guess: two [can sleep] well [in the little house, but] one [is] no good, [it is too dangerous]. And, although I feel quite uncomfortable with the offer, I don't feel at all like staying on my own in that cave knowing that the soldiers in the sentry on the top of the hill know that I am the only foreigner here.

So we go to the small house-cave where I am staying in theory and we bring a mattress and blankets that I will be using in their house.

I would normally prefer my independence and privacy, but here it would mean to sleep practically outdoors in the middle of a mountain, in full sight of two settlements with their sentry boxes, on my own, and I don't think it would be a good idea; I don't want to be paranoid but if any of those settlers or soldiers comes round and/or anything happens to me, I'm sure no one would even notice ... in any case, I am going to feel safer sleeping with another three people who know the place and who, in effect, are already looking after me.

And as far as privacy is concerned, well, it is only going to be a few days. Moreover, it doesn't look like they expect me to be with them all the time.

The room where we are going to sleep looks a bit like a multi-purpose room; there are a lot of mattresses piled up in a corner and they take one by one, distributing them around the room, against the walls. A boy who looks about 20 has turned up, although, knowing how people grow older here, he might as well be 15 ... He is also a nephew of my friend the younger woman. She is always smiling at me, always trying to make as much conversation as we can with more than limited language skills, her with her almost non existent English, me with my absolutely non existent Arabic.

My friend the younger woman says her prayers and, again smiling, lies down to sleep on a mattress next to me., with her headscarf or hijab on. I look at her expecting to see her hair but no, she doesn't take her headscarf off, she goes to sleep with exactly the same clothes she walks around in the house and surroundings. Thinking of it, I have not seen a single piece of furniture in this house, so chances are none of them have any other clothes than the ones they have on.

Palestine 2.40

This wants to be a small compilation of some of the pictures I have taken here in Hebron...

D says the government always denies the links between the soldiers and the settlers, but the fact is many of the soldiers are settlers themselves. A couple made up of a soldier and a settler girl comes along the street and as soon as they see us they stop holding hands.

At this side of the checkpoint, a soldier stops and search a boy once he has passed through the "coffin", as he is a potential terrorist.



At the other side of the checkpoint, this is part of the queue to cross the "border" inside their city:



And then, these are the colours I so much talk about, in the part of the city that is still allowed to be alive:

Palestine 2.39

When I arrive at home I find that we have to go to the house of a neighbour to take pictures of the damages some settlers have done to it during my absence. Basically after hearing some noise of broken glasses, they just found this mess; the picutes speak for themselves.

Palestine 2.38

I take the day off today and I dedicate myself to do some tourism, like I did in Jerusalem.

It is actually strange to get out to the rest of Hebron and see that there is normal life there, that constant humiliations and hatred do not need to be the normal way of life.

I again get through the checkpoint I described here,

http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2006/05/palestine-231.html
A soldier asks me, "why are you here?" I remain without answering for a few seconds, trying to figure out whether he means to ask this question or he's trying to be funny, and to give myself a bit of time, I answer: "because I want to get to the other side". He insists, with his quite basic English, "No, why you are here, in Palestine, in Hebron". Still not knowing what he really is after, I answer: "because I defend life". "Really", he asks, sounding completely uninterested. He looks at me and I answer: "Look that way (I indicate to the Israeli settlement), everything is death, silence. Then listen to that other side (where there are no Israeli soldiers or settlers, at least not for now), and you can hear life. You bring death to Palestine, where there are no settlers nor soldiers nor Israelis, there is life and joy, where there are Israelis, there is only silence and death." "I agree", he says. So I really do not know what this guy is about. I leave him there with its machine gun, in a neighbourhood full of armed Israeli settlers and unarmed Palestinians.

I get through the checkpoint that rather feels like a coffin with mirrors and as soon as I get to the end of the empty street I truly feel like I have just got out of a tomb where I was buried alive back to the world of the noisy living, blinding and colourful.

As I get out of the sepulchral street, then, this could be one more corner of the Old City of Ramallah, say, or even Jerusalem, although, maybe again because of the contrast, it seems to me that this has a lot more contrasts and colours – and noise, above all, the noise.



Then I turn right to go towards the mosque, and again I see on my right a high boring, daunting wall ("the" wall) and a few watch towers with soldiers inside.



I remember that behind this wall and towers is the illegal Israeli settlement whose inhabitants so terrorise our neighbours.



The Palestinians I see on my way seem to ignore this wall, it shows they are used to it, maybe resigned to it, but what can not be ignored is that, as one approaches even on this "side" where the Palestinian authority is supposed to be in charge, the streets become more and more silent and sepulchral, even though there are no checkpoints or soldiers in the streets, until a point when it actually is like on the other side of the wall, with all the shops closed, the doors painted in green, and with "David's stars" painted on them.



At the end of the street there is a kind of grille exactly like the one in Qalandia and other checkpoints. There are soldiers guarding it, on this side and the other, some inside some cabins from which they activate the revolving gate made of railings. It feels very claustrophobic. The gate has three "wings" that leave between them just enough space for one not-too-fat person – not even for one person plus some bulky baggage. Exactly like in Qalandia, only this is in the middle of the city. On each side there are like round walls of iron, so that the "wings" of the gate gets between those irons. So as to say: if the gate gets blocked, there is really no gap through which to get out, because you get trapped in a cubicle without any possibility to get out either through the sides or over the top.



I get into the gate and I feel the claustrophobia I have described. I have railings all around my body except under my feet, even over my head there are railings. During the long seconds the gate takes to go round and let me free from this cubicle, I get through a tiny space making very short steps, around three inches each, to avoid the iron bars scratching my ankles.

Behind me there are about twenty little girls in school uniforms accompanied by some teachers. Once at the other side, I stay discreetly a few metres away from the gate to see if they will make them go through the same process. They do.

I stay where I am for a few more minutes and I see what I was secretly fearing but wished it weren't true. After the little girls a man comes and, when he is in the claustrophobic cubicle I have described, suddenly the gate gets blocked and the man stays trapped thre a few seconds. The man looks stunned staring at the iron bars around him, so close to his body, and trying to make the gate revolve again. In the end the gate gives in and the man can get out. I stay a bit more until various men get in and I observe that the same thing is done to various others, at random.



No one says a thing, all this happens in silence, but it is obvious that the blocking of the gate is not coincidence and it is controlled by some soldier in some sentry box. Thinking of the whole exercise, it seems to be useless if it is "used" to spot potential terrorists, but very effective if the objective is one more humiliation.

Here is a good picture of what that "gate" looks like:

http://www.cpt.org/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album138&id=mosque_gate

I take some pictures and go on walking. I find a queue where Palestinian people are waiting to enter the mosque. I join the queue but the soldiers "in charge" of this spot tell me with signs that I can jump the queue.

I enter a small room where there are again various soldiers with their huge machine guns on their chests and they ask me whether I am a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim. They also ask lots of other questions and I ask, "why are you asking me so many questions?" (I mean, this is more questions than I was asked at any other checkpoint when I was actually entering Israeli, or settlement land, but this is a Mosque and a tourist attraction, theoretically in Palestinian land, although the last bit sounds like a joke.) I guess the Mosque could be considered to be a potential target, plus, today I'm on my own, with no blond or red head to certify that I belong to that group called "the foreigners".

On hearing my question, the soldier gets on his hight horse and snaps: "Right. Passport." with a commanding gesture of his hand.

I try to disengage myself from a confrontation that would be all too familiar and try to remind myself that I am a foreign tourist visiting the fourth most important holy site for the Islamic religion and the second one for the Jewish, naturally surprised at the intense questioning, and also naturally accustomed to being asked for my passport. I hand it to the soldier, he looks at it, he hands it back without a word and I mumble "What now?", expecting an answer like "You are detained", or arrested, or something. Instead, he says: "You have to wait." He looks at another soldier in a small office separated from us by some glass doors. That soldier is on the phone. I look away to the different walls, as if already enjoying the building I came here to visit, and at some point the first soldiers says, "you can pass".

He points to a door through which I get to a close corridor; there is a door on one side with Hebrew characters and at the other side I see a man with a black hat, glasses and ringlets on both sides of his face, who looks at me in a not-too-friendly way. I continue walking the corridor and I take a while to realise I am not going to be allowed to visit the Jewish part of the building.

I arrive at an enormous room where there are two Palestinians looking and smiling at me, and a third one approaches me, telling me to come in with his arms and also smiling. However he is not pointing at the next door but at a closet next to the door. He opens the door of the closet and I see a lot of capes hung from hooks, all with a hood, of very similar sizes, and all are of a very dark brown colour.

He grasps one of the capes and helps me to put it on. It is a strange feeling to put a hood over your head. The novelty of it makes you aware of the fact that this is not an ordinary place, and the hood itself makes you feel, if not isolated from the world outside you, certainly more aware of your inner self.

I also leave my shoes in a corner set for it and enter through the door that the seated men indicate to me.

The room in which I enter is now a room dedicated to prayers. It is divided into two kinds of "sections", one which goes from the door I used to get in here right to another door at the end of the room, in front of me. This section is about five meters wide. On the right of this is the wall, and on the left there is a carpet, or maybe various layers of carpets, and the carpeted floor is about five centimetres higher than the floor of the corridor, without carpet. The carpeted part is the main part of the room and has many columns; the not carpeted part is rather just a corridor between both doors, and it doesn't have a single column. There is no furniture, neither benches nor chairs to seat on.



The men I see in attitude of meditation are knelt or seated on the floor. Indeed there is an acute atmosphere of meditation, and having my head covered with this brown hood, seeing everything through the opening that the hood allows, therefore having a quite more closed rank of vision than with my head uncovered, contributes to this feeling of meditation and smallness. The question of why it would be unsuitable to help the men have this feeling too with a cape and a hood crosses my mind as none of them wears one, but the truth is, I do not feel uncomfortable with it; rather I feel privileged being able to visit a temple dedicated to a faith to which in principle I do not belong, and wearing special clothes to enter such a special site makes me wonder why we don't have this custom in other religions too, to put on something special at the door to become fully conscious of just how special the site you are going to enter is.

Next to the door at the end of the room there is another man who looks at me and smiles. I show him my camera while I raise my eyebrows, and he nods. In the western body language I have asked him for permission to take pictures and he has given it, and I hope this is what he has understood too.



I kneel on the stair that is formed by the height difference between the two sections and all that has happened in the past weeks, mainly the last one, comes right to my head at once. I pray to my God thinking, "but what are your People doing, Lord... And in Your Name?" And I end up recalling that throughout History, how many of the greatest crimes of Humanity, continue to be committed in the Name of God.

After a good cry I stand up and continue wandering, now in a room where there are more men praying.




My hood insists on falling off my head and I end up not caring; nobody says anything. Finally I leave the carpeted zone, I give back the cape, I put my shoes back on go out back to the street.

Once outside, the waiting queue that I have seen before is now shorter, but a few boys are still there, waiting since I jumped the queue. I ask them if they are detained and one says no, but that they have been trying to enter their mosque for two hours now and they are not allowed in. I ask the soldier and he answers without wanting to answer that he is waiting for some type of confirmation from somewhere. I wish them luck and I continue towards the street, but it seems that they have given up and they come with me. I realise they communicate by signs. The one that speaks to me say they are deaf-mute and he is the activities supervisor, and today they had wanted to go to the mosque together but they have not been allowed in. Another humiliation.

Palestine 2.37

J came last week; I have not seen him since the demo in Bilin.

J had been here before, before I had been to Bilin, and he was one person that would strongly encourage me to come here. He came through the same checkpoint as me (I now know we all come through that checkpoint!), while I was doing my shift. I was very happy to see an old familiar face (old as in, a few weeks old)

J told me that his idea for this trip was to go to Egypt before going back to his country, because he always wanted to see the pyramids, ever since his childhood. But now that he's here, and even knowing that most probably he will never again have this opportunity, he is thinking of not going, stay in Jerusalem, and spend what he calls "quality time" with friends, instead of travelling through "normal" Israeli territory and walk the Egyptian desert on his own after this almost traumatic experience in Palestine.

We more or less agreed that the ideal thing to do is usually to pay attention to one's feelings and do whatever one feels like in as much as it is possible, and that it would probably not make much sense to travel to Egypt and risk being bitter, thinking how comfortable he would be in Jerusalem with his people.

Then D joined us at the end of my shift, and commented that he could not believe that this had been a Saturday, because only one stoning had happened and otherwise it had been very quiet, which is not usual.

And of course it isn't usual. Today is Saturday and we are conscious of it from the start of the day, when K needs to "debrief" us of what can be expected today.

There is a "visit" from the "women in green" (WIG) scheduled for today. K and D explain what they usually do and what we usually do in response. They go in a procession from Tel Rumedia, the settlement up the hill, to the other settlement below, the one just below the school where we watch that the settler kids don't throw (too many) stones at the Palestinian children and mothers every day. They try to schedule this "march" so that they arrive at the bottom of the stairs at the same time as the children come out of school, and simply yell abuse at them.

We try and accompany them in this march without provoking them, which is quite difficult because our mere presence is a provocation, apparently, and we should expect abuse too.

Once they arrive at the bottom of the stairs facing the coming kids, we need to place our bodies between the Women in Green and the kids. It is important that we do not face the children, but the women. This is to avoid intimidating the children even more as we would stare at them. We need to face the women; they are the cause of the violent situation and it is them we should focus on, not on the children, it is not their fault.

With these instructions we go out to the street expecting some unpleasant situation.

We meet the WIG next to the checkpoint, where one can go towards the lower settlement (or to my "watch point", in my case) or up the hill to the other settlement.

There is a boy being retained at the checkpoint and one of the internationals enquiries why. As usual, there is no answer. The international then enquiries a higher commander that happens to be there and one of the Women in Green laughs at the international: "As if he [the officer] cared!"

I start walking with the women in green (WIG) up the hill and we're joined by the first girls coming out from school. All the WIG take pictures of us, some with mobile phones. There are also two men with them; they do not have cameras so they just walk and look at us in disgust. Most of those with cameras have already taken a picture of me by the time we reach half the hill. I take the picture of one of them, and one of the men says to me, "don't you have anything better to do, you scummy piece of shit?". I look at him and see a pistol on his belt. I take pictures of this belt while we go up, also placing myself between this group and the children going up the hill too, in case they start to scream abuse at them (and I try not to think what they would do if we were not here).

They continue to walk to the settlement up the hill and, as they enter it, we leave them. Not our business any more.

But right on my left there is the path through which Palestinian people are not allowed to pass to go to their homes, even though there is a court ruling that says they are. A soldier is standing there refusing to open a bit of the razor wire so that one of the little girl can use the path to go to her home. Two internationals are trying to reason with the soldier, which is usually useless but today it seems specially frustrating. The girl gives up and walks down the hill, prepared to go all the way round hills and paths taking a good twenty minutes maybe, to go to a house that I can see from here.

I start taking pictures of the path and the razor wire. I finish and we all walk down the hill but a soldier starts pushing M down the hill, saying that we have to go, M falls on me and I am pushed down by the impulse too. I shout out and ask why. The soldier just says, "you have to go"; I repeat, "why". N also asks why but we get no answer, we are just pushed violently down the hill.

I then call J to tell him the situation, he asks whether the girl is being allowed through the path and I tell him that she gave up, so he tells me that we should walk down. We walk down but the soldiers still push us down violently.

I try to film them as they push us and, in one given moment, a soldier grabs my camera and pulls, to steal it from me. I have the strip of my camera tied to my wrist so my camera doesn't go. He continues to pull and I scream, and scream, while I bend down to the ground, hoping that this will prevent him from taking my camera and arrest me. We struggle for a few seconds and he bends my glasses with his body, then the glasses fly and I stop seeing them. I am let go and continue screaming, asking for my glasses, panicking that I will not find them. Suddenly I see them under my foot – they are completely unusable now.

One of the women in green comes forward to me and, laughing, she screams, "that was a very nice show, you are good for theatre", and other "funny" phrases, maybe even abuse, but she is the least thing that worries me right now, and, besides, I can not see her without my glasses, I just see her shape.

Looking at my glasses trying to figure out if they are fixable, we walk down the hill, towards our apartment, being pushed again by the soldiers. Far away, J has filmed the whole scene. As we walk, another soldier quickly takes his hand to my camera but I am faster and he can't even touch it. I then see J being pushed around, some soldiers are also trying to get his camera, and I start filming again. A soldier gets right in front of me and for a few seconds there is a cat and mouse play between the two of us. The soldiers have thrown J to the ground and there he is, under a swarm of soldiers, being arrested – or so i think. Between not seeing well without my glasses and the soldier playing games in front of me, I can only catch – badly - the moment when he stands up and is carried away – or so i think.

Usually it is J or D who call IDF (Israeli Defence Forces, the official name of the body that "controls" the soldiers), and the rest of us just let them take care of the situation. But now J is being arrested and D is not here (where is he?). I call D to tell him that J has been arrested and at that very moment, J appears round the corner, so I hung up. So, J has not been arrested, but he does not have his camera with him any more, the soldiers have stolen it. I am still shaking from the confrontation, and looking at my glasses in despair. Some Palestinians have come out of their houses, probably alerted by my screaming.

We try to regroup but in the meantime the soldiers have come on a formation in front of us and they are already surrounding us. Suddenly eight or nine soldiers approach me and surround me. One says, "give my the camera", I say, "no", he says, "you don't want to give me your camera?" I ask, "why do i have to". At that point they all grab me – all except one; this one grabs the two internationals that are next to me from their collars and lifts them in the air while the others get me, to prevent them from helping me (I learn this later when we recap, because at the time all I can see is just green uniforms and black boots).

I start screaming again– and I think, "this is it, I am getting arrested, then deported, then never again allowed back in Palestine, I got this far, this is the end". Then one soldier grabs my left hand, where I still have my glasses, and the rest grab my right hand, where I have my camera. I still have it wrapped around my wrist so it won't go. The soldiers just twist my hand and my fingers, as much as they can, and just pull the camera to make the strip break, but the only thing that breaks is my skin. I scream and scream fearing the worst – that they will break some part of my body or that they will arrest me. As I scream with my mouth open, I notice one of their arms firmly pressed against my mouth – how easy to simply bite this arm. But I understand that this is a provocation, because if I bite a soldier then they would have a reason to arrest me, and they don't seem to be arresting me, otherwise they would be dragging me to their vehicle, and they are not doing that, they are only struggling to get my camera. So, I just go on screaming, it's the only thing I can do given the circumstances.

Finally I understand that I, a mere woman, can't win against eight or nine soldiers, men, so I have to let the camera go, and at least stop them tearing all the skin off my hand. What is clear is that I will not prevent the theft of my camera, that's for sure.

When the soldiers finally get my camera they leave me there, violently shaking. A Palestinian woman then touches my shoulder and shows me a glass of water that she has in her hand. She then literally pours it inside my mouth – so much for lack of communication. I drink a bit and say “shukran” but she insists that I drink more, and I do. Then I look around me and see that the street is full of people looking towards the group where I stand, which is pretty big now (actually, now writing, I guess they were looking at me, but I did not have my glasses to distinguish their eyes). There are people with badges showing their names, others with EAPPI waistcoats. Later I learn that they are Israelis and internationals from different human rights organisations.

I then see D and it turns out they have stolen their camera too. We go to the flat and we recap. Three cameras stolen. My screams have alerted the whole neighbourhood and every one, including internationals from other groups and Israeli activists have come out to the street, so it is a good thing I just screamed and screamed. A few Israelis were actually detained by the soldiers and someone called the police. The police is downstairs now and the police officers are very pissed off with the soldiers detaining Israelis. Some of the other activists think that we should report the thefts to the police but J and D say that they know, from experience, that if we speak to the police, we will be arrested then taken to the police station, or vice versa: "it always happens when they [the Israeli police] intervene in conflicts between us and the soldiers". Even then, some consider the possibility of speaking to them and report the theft of our cameras, since it is an illegal act – they can detain us, facilitate our arrest by the police, but never take our property, in theory they should be "done" for it. But we all take for granted that once we attempt to talk to the police, we will be arrested and probably deported. And we know that any one who has been arrested or deported will never be allowed entry in Israel again, and by extension (by virtue of their illegal occupation of Palestine), in Palestine too.

Those who are planning to stay in Palestine for a few more months think that, if some one is to go to the police station, it should be some one who is planning to leave for home soon-ish, and not them. The logic is that, if you are deported, you loose the time you had available, and spend it either in jail waiting for the deportation or at home, but if you were planning to go home anyway, then there is not so much lost. Then some of the "short-timers" think that it should be some one who has already been arrested who should go, since they are not going to be allowed back in the country anyway, because they have already been arrested once. The criterium for this is not the few more months that some one is planning to stay, but the few more times that some people are planning to come back.

In the end no one goes; we all want to stay here for as long as we can and we all want to come back, or at least if we decide not to come back we want the decision to be ours, and not these soldiers', or whatever Israeli authorities.

J calls IDF various times and finally the woman on the phone says that they will give the cameras back to us in a few minutes, but an hour passes and the cameras are still stolen. More calls.

All this time, I can't help but feeling guilty and utter useless and dumb: "how could I be so stupid? Did I not see that they would not stop until they got my camera? Why did it not occur to me to run to the flat as quick as I could and hide the tape, the camera?" [second thoughts: "Well, maybe that would have been worse, maybe then the soldiers would have raided the flat looking for it ..."] "No, that is unlikely". I hide my face in my hands. "Don't torment yourself, try to relax", I'm told.

An hour after we have two video cameras and one photo cameras stolen we receive a call to day they are "available". If we want them, we have to go to the checkpoint for them. It will be some time before I gather the stomach to approach a soldier, so I ask that some one else goes.

As we guessed, all tapes have been erased. Instead of a few bad shots, there are wonderful views of green military trousers, black boots and an engine – a green one.

They have also emptied the batteries completely, so, at least my camera, needs to stay at home being charged for the rest of the day. In any case I don't feel like going out and even less with the camera; my legs are still trembling and my whole body is aching. D for his part entertains himself recording everything he can from the window in his room.

After an hour or so, he tells me: "Ana could you go downstairs and tell A to go up to the soldier? A bunch of settler kids are throwing stones at a Palestinian house".

While he was saying this I have got to his window; indeed a bunch of kids from about five to ten years old are grabbing some stones bigger than their heads and throwing them against a Palestinian house right below the garden where they are.

I run down the stairs and arrive where A and V are and we all go to where the soldier is. By the time we reach them, the kids have stopped throwing stones. But as we arrive again next to the path with the razor wire we see two little girls waiting for some one to open a gap so that they can get to their house.

The soldier is right beside the girls, and they look like they don't loose hope of getting to their home the short way instead of walking for twenty minutes.

"why can't she get through"?

"she has no identification, so I can not check that she lives there".

"I know her and I know that she lives in that house you can see there"

"No one can pass"

"Yes they can, there is a court order (from the authorities of your country, Israeli) says that this path must be open.

"Eh?"

(We explain in simple English:

"An Israeli judge, from the hight court, has ordered, this path must be open."

"I don't know anything about that, my orders are no one passes, I don't know what you're saying."

The soldier's face looks more and more stupid by the second. A says to him: "she is not old enough to have id, and it should not be closed anyway".

"My orders are not to open, if I can't check that she lives there."

"I know her and she lives there."

"Ok, if you say she is too young to have id, I believe you, she can go".

And he goes and opens the razor wire, apparently disobeying the orders he says he has.

When we "officially" finish "work" we start cooking and we need some more pasta. I go to the only shop in the neighbourhood that remains open. It only has sweets, bread, pasta packets and little more, but at least it is a shop where kids can socialise when, for instance, the soldier of the day feels like stealing their ball.

The shops is full of kids that look at me and laugh, some scream with their arms stretched out, imitating my screams and my posture when the soldiers took my camera.

I smile and look up, thinking: "kids". After the jokes, some of them shake my hand, others simply lower their heads as if showing some respect. It looks like I am the neighbourhood's hero now.

I buy the pasta and the bigger boy, the one who didn't want the others to speak to me, approaches me and says, in English: "I'm sorry". I say everything is ok and I leave, while the screams continue behind me again.

Palestine 2.36

Today I'm in the upper part of the neighbourhood for a change. An old woman from one of the illegal settlements comes up walking shouting at every one finds on her way.

I'm told to be careful with her, although she is not usually violent physically. It seems she is one of those who can't understand that non-Jews are allowed to live on this land, and therefore it is necessary to make them disappear, and they feel frustrated as they can't just do it like the nazis did with them.

Indeed, the woman shouts at every person that crosses her path, Palestinian and foreigners. No wonder the Palestinians fear her, it is by no means pleasant to leave home and meet some one you know is going to shout at you the minute she sees you.

She finishes shouting at C and then she leaves her as she comes up the hill, then she sees me and starts sting of reproach again.

When she's finally close enough for me to hear her, she's saying: "you, are helping the people, who are destroying your civilisation! First they destroy Iran, then America ... now! Your turn!"

One of the boys, from Sweden, tells me that this woman called him "German" once, with an insulting tone. "She probably meant to say "nazi", because for many Jews, it's the same. I didn't think at the time, so I only said, "no ma'am, I'm not German, I'm Swedish", and she replied: 'I'm sure you are related in some way with the Germans'".

Palestine 2.35

I'm usually in the lower street, as I have already explained, but some times I am up the hill, where the children enjoy themselves playing ball games or asking us to take pictures of them. If you take one's picture that's it – they won't stop bugging you until you have taken two pictures of each of them and again in groups.

But most of the time they are in the street is spent playing football (boys mainly; I see very few girls, I'm not sure where they end up) and, saving the many differences, they remind me of my own childhood, when the street was our playground, like these children, who have at least this space, like I did, before the cars invaded it and evicted the kids of the next generation.

Now the kids in my street no longer can play on it, and I say to A that of course they are not in paradise, and surely they are maturing in a rush and they won't need to wait to be too grown up to understand the situation, but at least now, these kids are having a better childhood than the kids in London, or Bilbao, or even the kids in the settlements up the street and down near the school. I never see those kids in the street playing, only throwing stones, always doing acts of hatred.

Thinking of this I go some place, leaving them in relative tranquillity, and when I come back I find the kids sitting on the stairs next to the only open shop in the whole neighbourhood, because the soldiers have stolen their ball.

When I ask the soldiers why, they look at me and they keep silent – it is them with the power, full stop. Then they begin to mumble and another international asks them too. One of the soldier says: "because their brothers are terrorists, that's why". I can't believe what I hear and ask him to repeat it, but he remains silent.

I then ask for the details of what has happened to the kids and one of them, bigger than the rest, wants to stop them talking to me probably because I don't speak Arabic (I do catch that word). But the others confront him, they shut him up and they answer my questions.

They tell me one of the soldiers simply grabbed the ball, and that this is by no means infrequent, although there is no rule that forbids them from playing because some soldiers don't say or do anything when they are playing; it depends on what soldiers there are, each acts differently, even each day they act differently.

I guess that's what you do when you have absolute power over people who do not have any authority to turn to, who are absolutely unprotected, helpless.

Palestine 2.34

It is mostly quiet in the street where I "patrol". The shops are all closed down, all green but rotten because they are not used or painted or looked after, and most have David's stars painted on them,

just like the Nazis used to paint swastikas on Jews' shops, as if to denote that those shops, since belonging to Jews, belonged to the Nazi regime by default.

Now it is Palestinian shops that have a Jewish sign on their doors.

(The broken street, K explains to me, is also a common practice, to remove the pavement to humiliate them just a bit more, and make their lives just a little more difficult)

There is a feeling of being in a cemetery here, really, it is that silent. The only constant sounds I can here are the very distant, as if coming from a dream, of tooting horns. If it wasn't because that part of Hebron was the first I saw of the city, I would be still wondering where those ghostly tooting were coming from. I imagine the settlers must be asking themselves that question, because according to D they are not allowed to visit the “Arab” zone, and in fact I have never seen a single settler I the nice part of Hebron.

The only noise that breaks the silence within the area that is officially under Israeli control and where Palestinians still "officially" "live" are the settlers' cars. In the Israel controlled zone, Palestinians are not allowed to travel by car, or any other vehicle. I have seen a couple of bikes around, but I have never seen them put through the checkpoint. Israelis are indeed allowed to drive any vehicle in this area – and in any other areas for that matter. When D told me on my first day that "they drive like mad" I couldn't figure out what he meant, in these narrow streets, but now I know. The street is usually deserted, apart from the soldiers at the checkpoints and the odd Palestinian. But since Palestinians have no right to life in the settlers' minds, there is no reason to slow down if they see one crossing the street.

The consequences that these difference of rights have for daily life are quite painful even from the stone where I sit and witness part of that daily life. We do not know how the settlers do their shopping as we only see them on their cars or when they take leisure walks, but we have seen Palestinians carry heavy loads on carts and on foot, all along the street. Tasks that could take a fraction of the time and effort they take, have to be made arduous by the will of a power that has decided that a (religious, ethnic...) group can only go around on foot or on a donkey.

While Israeli settlers go about their daily lives protected in their cars or/and with weapons on them, the Palestinians are forbidden any kind of weapons and need to walk among these armed people.

Children from the settlement go to school in a van that makes various trips a day. Palestinian children walk to and from school somewhat protected by the international presence that we foreigners, armed with just our cameras, provide. (I really do not dare think what would happen to these children if this continuous influx of foreigners with privileged passports stopped.)

A wheeled machine similar to those that we can see in Bilbao or London sweeps the streets inhabited by Israeli settlers. As Palestinians are not allowed to drive any vehicle, the street inhabited by Palestinians has to be sweeped on foot. So there the Palestinian sweeper goes, with his bin on wheels, sweeping the street little by little.

There are two skips, full of rubbish, opposite the checkpoint. A huge lorry with Israeli plates brings rubbish and throws it on one of the skips, which is for Israeli rubbish. The lorry is ironically driven by a Palestinian – they can not drive their own vehicles, but they can drive Israeli vehicles in order to provide services for the Israeli settlers (and presumably the soldiers too). D explains that one skip is for the Israelis, and the other for the Palestinians. Whether the Palestinian skip can be filled with a lorry we doubt, and as for the reason why both skips full of rubbish stand on the Palestinian neighbourhood there can be no doubt by now – it is just one more of the continuous humiliations.

In any case, this wheels apartheid kind of gets to a halt on Saturdays because, as part of the Sabbath prohibitions of all kind of work, driving is prohibited to strict religious Jews. However, being their weekly festivity, it is the day when the street fills with settlers going from one illegal settlement to another with cakes in their hands and machine guns on their backs, in a kind of procession.

Since they are walking, not driving, through the so hated Palestinians' neighbourhood, and walking takes a lot longer than driving, they also have that much longer to harass and terrorise the Palestinians.

The result is that the Palestinians have learnt to fear the Saturdays in Hebron and they do their best to spend the day elsewhere (indeed, all here have done their best to spend the rest of their lives elsewhere, and the remaining ones are only here because they really have nowhere else to go). I too have been taught to fear the Saturday here. When the day comes, our daily plans change some how, and we all are more alert, breaks are shorter, and groups that can afford to, send more people to the streets as "reinforcements", and groups that can't, like ours, simply make sure that they don't send any one anywhere on their own.

Every night I go to bed begging that the following day will be at least as peaceful as violence free as the day just gone, still hearing the tooting horns in the distance, as if it was a dream already, remembering how nice the “other part” of the city is , and it really feels very, very far away from the middle of this environment of oppression and suffocation, and I go to sleep trying to imagine what these settlers would feel if they could witness how beautiful, cheerful and multicoloured life can be without them.

(well, I guess they did, when they saw the old city market and they destroyed it and threw every Palestinian out, and now it is a ghost city, but that is History and can be read about elsewhere can't it)

Palestine 2.33

Days pass in Hebron. My favourite spot to patrol from is the place where I first saw D when I first arrived here. The spot is good because from here we see, at the same time, the settlement (or at least the settlers that would come out of it to violently harass Palestinians) to our left, and the checkpoint to our right.

We are on a street used by the Palestinians to go to school which has been left just above, on a hill, the settlement. It is also used by Palestinians who live near the school to go to the "Palestinian" side of Hebron to work or to shop (because all the shops are closed here). And it is also used by the settlers to drive (or, on Saturdays, to walk) from one settlement to the other, and to beat, stone ... or just generally harass the Palestinians and make their lives impossible since, in their opinion, they are no better than animals, scoundrels invading their territory illegitimately for the last two thousand years or so, against the will of God.

The street is completely deserted because the Israeli government will not allow the shops to open. The international treaties signed by, among others, USA, Israel and the Palestinian authority, establish that all these shops should be allowed to be open. They actually established that they should all have been opened within 6 months since the date of the treaty.

D tells me that, since then, every six months a soldier goes to the end of the street, near the checkpoint I went through, and puts a piece of paper under a stone. In that paper it always says, in Hebrew only, that the shops will remain closed for another six months. And, until today.

Palestine 2.32

First of all, thanks for your worries and messages. I have been trying to think how to tell what happened to me in Hebron, for the past few months. In the end I have decided not to put it here but in the little book I am preparing with the whole story, with the pictures where they should be, etc. Some day, I guess, I shall announce I have finished the bloody book.

Hebron, specially the neighbourhood we are in, is specially depressing. It is the worst experience of my life, one of those where you think you are loosing your sanity. The Palestinian neighbourhood is between two settlements which are quite fanatic and fearful,

so fearfl they go out to the street with sub-machine guns,



and they routinely stone Palestinians.

The function of the human rights observer here is to absorb the violence. Literally. Simply, to put our bodies between the Palestinians and the stones, as dialogue with these fanatics is absolutely impossible. They shout at us, accusing us of supporting the same terrorists that are annihilating our civilisation , they insult us calling us Germans (meaning Nazis because for them supporting these dogs (they mean the Palestinians) is the same as gassing Jews).


This is the type of "conversations" we have had with the settlers who have deigned to talk to us.. Our cameras, acting as witnesses, annoy them bit time, and we try not to make them angry, trying not to provoke them with our presence and seeing that the Palestinians go up the steps opposite the settlement from a distance.

And this is the “nice” graffiti they have painted just next to the primary school that has been left alone facing the settlement (by the Israeli settlers, army, government... all but the Palestinians – no one puts their children in daily danger voluntarily!)



The presence of international observers prevents daily stonings, although some times they can not be avoided)

I have already explained that the Israeli children settlers are the most dangerous, ahead of the adult settlers, who are not so dangerous as the children but who are more dangerous than the soldiers.

The reason for that is the criminal impunity they enjoy. An Israeli minor does not have criminal responsibility. I have also written how some Israeli children settlers threw stones at us while we were helping some peasants to pick up their olives. I was also stoned by some children in Hebron, and this time they hit. On this occasion I was guarding the street and stairs when I noticed some settler children throwing stones towards the stairs, which I could not see because of the “do not provoke them” issue. I understood they were probably stoning some Palestinian and I approached the scene. They realised I was approaching them with my camera and they changed their target. While they were stoning me, the woman they had been stoning so far just ran away back to her home. That day she probably had to arrange for her family to eat somewhere else, as she couldn't do her daily shopping. At least she wasn't stoned - much.

The whole scene was watched by the Israeli soldier that was on duty in the settlement outpost. His only function is only to defend the Israelis from the Palestinians, therefore it is not his job to defend women who are stoned by Israelis. I looked at him. He looked at me back with an angry face, behind his machine gun. I asked him if he didn't care about what he had seen and he just shrugged.

The checkpoint I have described in the former entry,

http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2006/05/palestine-231.html

is where hundreds of people need to go through in order to get on with their daily lives; children and youth to their schools, older people to their jobs and businesses. Some pregnant women ask to be allowed to go round instead of through the beeping machinery because it is bad for their unborn children, but it all depends on how the soldier of each shift feels like.

They all have to go through the same routine I went through on my arrival. Of course people avoid it as much as they can, every one who could afford to move out have left long ago. That is why the street was as solitary, sad and silent as death, the day I came in – and ever since too.

The shops are all closed, and all the doors have the star of david painted in black on them. Street lights do not exist because the street lamps are vandalised. K says that in the Camp David agreements it was established that these Palestinian shops should be open so that the street would be as lively as the rest of Hebron. About the street lamps, he says that the Jewish settlers smashed them in a Sabbath vandalism orgy and that, when the workers came to repair them, the Jewish settlers stoned them, both the workers and the lamps once repaired, so there they are all smashed. Says K that each Saturday in this street is a Krystalnacht – a Night of Broken Glasses.

Our day finishes at dusk, when no Palestinian dares to get out of their home. When something happens, they know where to find us.

Once in the flat I read some files (they are actually accounts like this, maybe more systematic) by people like me who have been here before. Horrifying things, like a regiment turning up in a home and establishing their headquarters in their living room and terrace, making the family to sleep all crammed in one room and to prepare food for them, for free. Or Jewish children stealing Palestinian children their bikes, the Palestinian children complaining to the soldiers and getting arrested for it, then to be released and told that they have no right to have bikes and that the Jewish children will keep them. When I finish reading, I only say: "sickening" and I am congratulated for finding a single word that summarises it.

A Palestinian guy told us what happened on one occasion of so many, when he had to go through the checkpoint. For some work related reason he had to carry a laptop computer. The soldiers made him open it. He opened it. “Completely” said he soldier, making a move with his hand as if he was handling a screw driver. “I don't have a screw driver here, I have one at home but it takes me half an hour to get there”, said the Palestinian. The Israeli soldier shrugged his shoulders. So there we went for a screwdriver, otherwise he would have lost the computer. And he had to open it, the different components. The guarantee is no longer valid, but the soldier even things he's lucky he still has the laptop. If the soldier had stolen it, the Palestinian does not have any proof of any robbery (every one has to enter the cubicle alone), no Israeli judge is going to believe a Palestinian and if an international makes a statement in favour of a Palestinian s/he is going to be detained and/or deported, and the rest of the soldiers are not going to make statements against their colleague.

In another of the checkpoints alongside the Palestinian neighbourhood, they detained a boy for no reason, playing around with his id card. Our norm is to approach the soldiers after 10 minutes to ask questions. First a Palestinian boy approached them and they ignored him. Then I approached. One of the soldiers carried the detained guy away while the other soldier gave us conversation. When we demanded an explanation as to why the guy was being detained for longer than the army stipulates that some one can be detained before being arrested he turned his back to us. Then the Palestinian, who had been listening to the conversation before, said something along these terms: “the soldiers are accusing him of drug dealing, and they are searching him, but he says he is not carrying anything, and I'm sure he's not because otherwise they would have arrested him already. Then they took his id card and told him than unless he comes back within half an hour with cocaine they will not give him his id back and they will arrest him for not carrying it with him”. I look at him, terrorised, he shrugs and says: “usual stuff”.

Palestine 2.31

I come out of the flat where I have been staying very early in the morning, carefully not to wake up anyone. I don't want to risk arriving in Hebron after dark because I don't even know how to get to my destination, and this time too, I am travelling on my own. The first stop will be of course Ramallah – first taxi change. From there to Qalandia, which, I was assured yesterday, I will pass through with no problem.

But the taxi that takes us to Qalandia stops in the middle of a deserted road where there are only taxis and very few people. In the distance we see a wire fence, cutting off what seems to be what is left of the road. None of this looks familiar to me, and I have passed through this checkpoint several times...

Facing that wire fence there are a very elderly man and a not-so-elderly woman; they seem to be standing there waiting for something. Near me there are small television crews (two people seem to be enough, and they do not have huge cameras like the ones I have seen even in university at all...) and after filming a group of men who read a paper stuck to the wall, written in Hebrew, they walk towards the couple. Me too.

The tv guys ask some questions to the man and he tells them, and shows them some paperwork he carries inside envelopes. When he finishes talking and they switch off the camera, I ask the one with the microphone what is going on – he tells me that the checkpoint is closed today because some one attacked a soldier yesterday, and that this gentleman is very ill, that he has an appointment to go to the hospital and those papers are from his doctor and from the hospital. He hopes that, on compassion grounds, at least he will be allowed to go through. I ask the one with the mic again what will happen if he is not allowed to go through, if we are not allowed to go through. “Turn around, go on another road” “And how many hours will it take us to get to Jerusalem?” He moves his head, grins and answers: “Hmmm... maybe two, three hours”. From Qalandia to the bus station in Jerusalem it usually takes half an hour, some times less. But then I will still have the rest of my trip ahead, to Hebron.

But the man doesn't lose hope and calls a soldier he sees in the distance, to talk to him. The soldier comes, making sure another one comes with him, and both come slowly – they have the whole day. Like all of them, with their green uniforms, and their arms leaned on their huge machine-guns. For about five minutes the man talks to them, he shows them his papers, which they don't even look at or touch, and he trembles. He trembles a lot, and he puts away his papers and he doesn't know where to put his hands, and he leans them on the spiked wire, and he cries, and he writhes in pain, and he sits on the road... How is he going to start now a two or three hour journey, in his condition, he needs to go to hospital, can they now allow him to get through with a taxi?

The soldiers' voices have grown bit by bit more and more severe, and now they are almost shouting at him, and I can't believe my eyes and ears – even though I do not understand a word.

Suddenly the soldiers stop looking at the man who is writhing and they look at me, and then at something behind me, and they shout. I look in the direction they are looking and I realise that more and more men have been approaching this spot and there are now about thirty men behind the first group that has approached the wire.

The soldiers make gestures with their hands telling them to go away, to retreat.

Bit by bit they all go away, looking for taxis that will take them to Jerusalem. Eventually they shout at me too and I leave too, and the woman that was with the man goes as well, and we leave him there, trembling and crying, while the tv crew try to convince him that he is not going to manage to go through Qalandia, that he will have to go round the long way like the rest of us, or die right there.

Several taxi drivers ask me where I'm going and I say to Jerusalem and then to Hebron. They direct me to a taxi they say doesn't go to Hebron, but nearby.

When the taxi gets full we depart and after an hour into the journey, in a completely deserted road that looks more like Israeli than Palestinian, we get a puncture. The driver asks us to get off to change the wheel and it turns out the spare one is not in good enough condition. We all look at each other in desperation, but no one gets angry. The driver makes a few phone calls on his mobile and, in about half an hour, another van-taxi turns up to pick us up. Not a single car has passed by in all this time.

Like in all journeys where we share the means of transport, it is only when there is a setback that people talks to each other, while before we wouldn't even look at each other. So culture is not that different in this respect.

The women talk among themselves and one of them asks me in English where I am from. She travels with her son, who must be about six, or eight years old, and she is going to Jerusalem to visit her mother, the grandmother of the child. And she sets off to tell me her whole life. Her mother lives in Jerusalem, and she was born there. But when she wanted to get married, she had to go and live in Ramallah, where her husband lived, among other things because her husband doesn't have the necessary permit to “enter Israel”, that's to say he can't visit or live in Jerusalem.

So she has to travel on her own with her son to visit her mother, in taxis, thanks to the checkpoints, and some time spending the whole day travelling, like today, when they decide to cut roads and make every one go round in longer journeys.

While she tells me a bit more about her private life I start to think that, apart from wearing a hijab, and the fact that her husband can not visit her mother, he life is not all that different from the life of a married woman with a child in Spain, in London...

We finally arrive at a place full of people and cars that looks like a market, but without stalls. There are militarily vehicles everywhere, and some soldiers on foot.

The woman who has told me her life grabs my hand assuring me that she's going to find me a taxi that takes me straight to Hebron. Some taxi drivers shot something that sounds like “Al Kalil” - which is how they say Hebron in Arabic. Curiously, the name of the city means “friend” in both languages.

The woman talks to a few of them and finally leaves me with one who, she assures me, will leave me very close to the address where I need to go.

The taxi driver tells me to put my things at the back of the van and to get myself also inside the taxi. I get on but it is like an oven so I get out again. There are fewer women than usual; there is usually not a big difference in the number of women and men travelling, but today there is. The man tells me for a second time to get in the car – I imagine it is not seen as correct for a woman to stand still, observing. I grab my camera and I use it as an excuse to stay outside; the men continue to look at me and the soldiers order me not to take pictures.

When the taxi finally gets full, we set off leaving the hubbub behind. About two hours later we arrive in the centre of Hebron. During that time, we have passed through a couple of “itinerant” checkpoints, the ones that consist of five soldiers, a crossed jeep cutting the traffic, and a few stones planted on the road. At these checkpoints we don't need to get off, the soldiers just look through the window and some times they don't even ask for our papers.

Then in the centre of Hebron, what I have to look for is the checkpoint “inside” the city. It is the first time I hear about this and I can't imagine it. But I get there asking.

Hebron, at least the bit of Hebron where I am right now (I will later learn that is in theory under the “Palestinian Authority”, as opposed to the part where the settlers live, under Israeli authority) is the most lively and colourful thing I have seen ever since I arrived in Palestine. People talk, shout, the taxi drivers also shout and horn at each other, arguing for the few space inches they can afford to give up. The shops, selling either clothes or food, expel bright, happy, shameless colours. And a lot, a lot of noise.

Taxis are used to transport people, and most of them are small cars, there are hardly a few vans. For the transport of goods, wooden carts are used, pulled by men. It is th eonly way they have to fit between the huge rocks that the Israeli army has put in the middle of some streets, on the entrance – I am still talking about the part of Hebron “under Palestinian authority”.

In most cases, in the rest of the street behind those rocks, there are shops open, although maybe fewer of them, and smaller than on this side.

That is not the case of the street I am going to. All shops on the other side of the big square stones, tall as my waist, are closed, and only the green shut doors are left, guarding the premises now surely empty.

As soon as I get through these stones I receive a sensation that I am entering a territory where I am not welcome. The street is, or seems, very short; it get cut short by an iron structure that looks like a caravan, or a prefabricated little house, blocking the whole street from side to side, and what is on the other side can not be seen. The street is deserted, and that thing that is blocking the sight is the checkpoint. But there is no body to be seen.

In order to get into this urban checkpoint I have to get on some platforms that make a lot of noise because, being made of some metal, they are not too well fixed to what I guess is the wood that keeps them elevated from the street, and they are like suspended in the air, storming with each step I make. Then there are two very high steps that some one elderly would find it very difficult to climb.

Then I have to open a metallic door and then climb up and get in at the same time.

The interior is dark and claustrophobic, like a broken lift, and I can't see anyone. Behind me lies the door I have just opened, and it closes behind me on its own accord, and in front of me there is another door that will also need to open on its own accord, because it doesn't have a knob.

On my left there is a kind of bad mirror and suddenly some one shouts at me from behind it and I realise it is not a mirror, but a smoked glass, and that at the other side there is a soldier looking at me, pointing at my back pack. I ask him if he speaks English and he orders me to open my bag with a hand gesture, without talking. I tell him it is only clothes. He makes another gesture to open the bag. I open it and I show him the top of it. He makes another gesture to get everything out of my bag, but there is no counter for me to put my things on it, so I start to get my things out one by one and putting them on the floor. At about half my bag he looks like he is tired of it and he lets me know, again with his hand. I gather my things from the floor and I ask “what now?” The soldier doesn't look at me but at least the door opens.

I get out again to the sun and I find a street similar to the previous one – in reality, it surely is the same one, only as it is cut short by this “thing” one can almost not realise. But the atmosphere is totally different. There is a silence worse than sepulchral, like death, almost supernatural. In the distance, behind me, I can only hear the horns of the taxis, but they sound more like an echo than as if they were where they are, less than a hundred metres away.

To my left there is another soldier looking at me from top to toe and in front of me I recognise D, who is already coming to receive me, and I feel a joy that almost makes me jump. But the depressing atmosphere that invades everything is more powerful and I just shake his hand smiling.

I will later learn that D is on guard, like I will be during the next week, like we will have to do daily, while the kids are in the school, but specially as they come and go. Part of the patrol is to observe the checkpoint, and as part of it will be to see all that comes and goes, and how long they retain each person. That's why he has seen me before I got through the checkpoint – but I will learn all this later; I now bombard him with questions and tell him about my trip, which has taken me five hours.

He tells me he's still on patrol and that I can stay with him if I want, but it is better if I go to the flat where we are staying to leave my things and receive some quick training at least.

For that I have to climb the most steep road I have ever seen, and then to a fourth floor. There I meet J (not the same J as before, so we'll call him K) and I re-meet people I have known in other places. K explains the geography and circumstances of Tel Rumeida, and the neighbouring settlements that are making the life of their Palestinian neighbours hell. So much so that most houses are empty; the only remaining inhabitants are the proprietors who really have nowhere to run away to. And they do not resist, there are no demonstrations here, only silence, and an almost insane discretion, lest the settlers get angry. So taking pictures of them is out of the question, because they don't like it, and also talking to them is out of the question.

In the street, next to the door of the house where we are staying, there are two “posts” one on each side of the street, each with one, or two soldiers. And a bit further away, towards the left as we get out the door, there are another two. Right on the other side of them, further up, there is another settlement, which in reality consists of about ten prefabricated houses planted on a street/road that some international treaty had established as an access road for the neighbouring Palestinians. We have it forbidden to reach there.

K is happy that I am staying here for a week. He explains that the worse days are Saturdays, the Jewish festivity, because the settlers get a specially sadistic delight in attacking the Palestinians those days.

The street where I have met D is very much a pass-through street, both for the children and teachers, to go to school, and for the settlers, to go from one settlement to another to visit each other. On day weeks they drive their cars, and they drive like mad, and it would seem they just want to kill all walking human being – the Palestinians have it forbidden to use any vehicle in these streets – but on Saturdays they walk, which is even more dangerous because a simple glance can infuriate them, and they have firearms.

I leave my things where it looks like I will sleep tonight and I help out in the “patrol”, which simply consists of walking with the children at the end of the school day – specially the girls, which are most of them because this school used to be a girls only school.

When we get home we have dinner that we cook ourselves and I am invited to read a report of the most important “events” in the last few months. It will be worth to translate them into Spanish so I'll report on that another day.

Palestine 2.30 - Bi'Lin

I have been here in Bi'lin since I left Yanoun. The matter is somewhat different here. Bi'lin is very close to Ramallah; in fact the road that communicates it with the city that is the de facto capital of Palestine is one of the very few without a single checkpoint – it is no a long road, it is only about twenty minutes, depending on speed.

It is because it is so close to Ramallah that it is affected by the wall they are building around Ramallah. Again, Israel says it is for security reasons. Again too, the deeds prove that it is just another exercise, more or less civilised, of land theft.

W and I go out for a walk in the surroundings, observing the wall again and, as usual, we can't go back home without being invited for some food. Communication is difficult this time so we only learn that all the land we can see on the other side of the road belonged to M's father once; he tells us this while we eat from a tiny dish of olives.


While e are on the roof top, talking little, we see a machine that I had not seen in my life before.

We all look at it while it moves slowly over what looks like rabble from here but is actually fine gravel with which they are building the road. I take a picture of it and M tell us: “to take the olive trees”. I look at him in surprise and W explains: “that is the kind of machine they use to uproot the trees”.

I am going to take notice of what J and A told me and I will leave from here. Tomorrow I am going to Hebron, in South Palestine, at least to the South of Jerusalem. M tells us that something has happened today in Qualandia, the checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, and that it is likely that it is closed.

I call R in Ramallah and I ask him. He confirms that it is closed today but surely in a few hours they will reopen it. I ask him how long it will take me to get to Hebron and he says about two hours. In a normal country this would probably be about half an hour or an hour, depending on traffic, but here I will have to change taxis in Qalandia and then in Jerusalem.

W will stay here “on guard”.

I have to be thankful that, in all this time I have been here, I have not had to come out one single night.

Palestine 2.29 - Bi'Lin

Imagine you live in constant tension. Imagine that tonight, as you are falling asleep, you hear some one knock on your door asking for entry. Imagine that the person you live with, your wife, your flatmate, your mother... gets up and opens the door for them. Imagine the person who enters is another person who lives with you; your son, your flatmate's girlfriend, your father... and imagine that now, knowing that there is no one missing in the house, you can sleep.

Now imagine for a moment that the people who are knocking on the door are soldiers that are coming for you, or your wife, or your parents, or your children. Imagine you can never sleep in peace thinking they can come in any moment. Imagine that every time some one rings the door bell your whole family come out to the living room terrified, looking into each other's eyes, deciding who will open...

Today my flatmates came quite a bit later than usual and they have found the front door locked. They had to go all the way round the building, until they found one light on, mine. They knocked on the window and asked me to open the door for them. The door made quite a bit of noise, even though I tried not to make a row...

I was already going to bed when the upstairs neighbour came down with an expression of panic on his face.

“Who knocked on the door?”

“Us.”

“No one else?”

“No, no one else. We're just arriving now, we're sorry to bother you at this time.”

“No bother. I thought they were soldiers.”

Palestine 2.28 - Bi'Lin

There is a demonstration against the wall every Friday in Bi'Lin. The wall in Bi'lin is actually just a metal fence as I explained here, http://ana-en.blogspot.com/2006/04/palestine-222-pictures.html
but it is also called wall because it separates communities all the same.

More Israeli – and international – activists arrive during the morning and the street is quite crowded, even before the Palestinians come out of the Mosque. J and A are some of those internationals; we update each other on what we have been up to since we last were together. J has been in Hebron and Kawawis (not sure of the spelling) and he updates me with what he has done in those places, and so does A. I mention that it might be too late for me now to visit those two places, because I am leaving pretty soon now. They say it is worth and encourage me to go. I answer that if I leave then Bi'Lin is left without internationals, and it is when there are no internationals that the Army enters. His argument is that I should make the most of this trip see as much as possible in order to tell the tale back at home. He has a point. But haven't I seen enough? And today I am going to see a demonstration... Well, not Hebron, they say. I have indeed heard horrible stories about Hebron...

At about twelve, when then the Palestinians come out of the mosque, it is a god few of us, between Palestinians, Israelis and the rest of us. Israelis and foreigners have different “privileges” with respect to the Palestinians, who have none: the soldiers are less likely to arrest or harm internationals; they are more likely to listen to Israelis. So, each with their privileges, off we go to the demo.

Almost all of the Israeli activists are wearing Palestinian shawls. Some foreigners wear them too, but I didn't take mine here because I was told that if they saw it when searching my luggage at the airport it would have been a lot more difficult to be allowed to enter the country – if you are suspected of supporting the Palestinian cause you are accused of being a terrorist and you are not allowed to enter, that is how democratic is the state of Israel. And interrogatories and searches are said to be even worse upon departure, so I haven't bothered to buy myself one.

When the demo gets near the wall, the soldiers simply block the way.



For about half an hour all they do is chant in Arabic and and dance in front of the soldiers.

Then the soldiers get their megaphones and tell us to leave, in Hebrew.


Some of them ... look like robocops.





The 'shebab', the youngsters, look like they want to reach the fence and the soldiers' job, in theory, is just to avoid that.


Some of the shebab go down the hill in order to get to the fence across the field. The soldiers follow them and as they are more and more they throw them tear gas. They can not use anything more than sound bombs and tear gas, while they do not throw stones.

If they throw stones, it's carte blanche. That's why they provoke them, to be able to shoot them, while for the moment they leave us internationals and Israelis alone, on the one hand because they know we are not going to throw stones, on the other because there is no carte blanche with internationals. Although this could change at any time...

According to what the Israelis tell us that are their own rules, they can only throw the tear gas in an ellipse, because the objective is not to harm people with the canister that contains the gas but just to disperse people.

But then I see a soldier kneel on the ground and point his machine gun directly to the head of one of the Palestinian boys, almost kids who are already retreating towards the village, across the field, away from the wall. I then point my camera at him, and immediately another soldier pats on his shoulder and points at me with his head – he moves his lips and I read “filming”. The one with the machine gun looks at me and stands up. My camera has just avoided one shot on a head. But it won't avoid all of them...

Action goes on around me and I have to stop staring and pointing with my camera to avoid the baton of a soldier who is not looking where it's hitting.

Suddenly we hear a shot and the sound of a tear gas canister being thrown to the air. The smoke trail is not elliptic, but straight to where the kids are. They are not running any more, because they are picking up one of them who has fallen down and blood is coming out of his head. They had hit him in the head, that is what they wanted.

The soldiers also want to gas us but they can't because we are too close to them, and if they did, it would affect them too. They need to make us go further away first. So it all consists of a continuous up and down the road that used to get somewhere at some point but nowadays is cut short by the wall.

The soldiers push us, shout at us, some times in English but more often in Hebrew, they baton us, drag us, beat us with the back of their guns, pull our hair, until at some point we can't take it any more and we running away from their violence, or they pin us down on the ground and they squash us.

Then the soldiers run away from us, putting some distance, and pointing the gas at us.

But we get up and we run towards them, cutting the distance again so that they don't gas us – and start all over.

“It can bo on like this for about two or three hours”, says J, who has been here before. And I wonder if we will simply go back home tired or who on earth will decide when this will finish.

So for the two following hours the air fills with tear gas, people cover our faces with shawl or scarves; they are our only weapons. But we can'