Several times in the past week, I had resolved to go to Jabal Abu Ghenim, simply
to see with my own eyes what will soon become Har Homa. Most of those abortive trips
were planned to coincide with Peace Now protests advertised in the paper, but for
various reasons, something else always came up. So I just decided to go, just to see–just
to spend five or ten minutes taking pictures.
A "Wrong" Turn
I got on a bus in Jerusalem, and when we were within site of Abu Ghenim, the bus was
forced to turn around by an Israeli police van blocking the road to the Bethlehem checkpoint.
All of us got out and started walking towards the checkpoint, just out of view (at this point
a couple of kids saw me fiddling with my camera and asked me to take a picture of them.
I did–why not?–and then asked them if the mountain to my left was Jabal Abu Ghanim.
They responded yes). I walked to the checkpoint, passed through, and kept walking,
barely even wondering why I couldn’t take the bus. "Israeli security measures" I figured,
meaning some General somewhere decided to close the road for supposed security reasons and
perhaps to be a pain in the rear. If I had been in the States, I would have let loose a
torrent of abuse on the police, accusing them of violating my right to move freely in my own
goddamned country, but after two months here, I didn’t even give it a second thought.
That is until I came to the next group of Israeli soldiers. It took me a minute to figure out
what was happening. There were a number of Palestinian youths standing at the corner or leaning
on cars, all looking down the street away from me. Then I saw a handful of Israeli soldiers standing
behind the waist-high, plastic barriers that are so prevalent here. One of the soldiers–border
police, actually, but they look like soldiers to me–was bellowing at the group of Palestinians
who had gotten off the bus before me, telling them to take a right off the main road to Bethlehem.
[OK,
the photo isn’t quite what I described here. For some reason, I felt a need to take the photo secretly, so
I waited till I was behind the soldiers. Anyway, foreground left are Israeli soldiers, foreground center
is a flock of journalists, and background center is where the protesters were, and where I ended up taking
most of my pictures] Then I saw a few tourists with some really BIG cameras on tripods set up next to
the soldiers. Then I heard a loud pop, looked down the street past the plastic barriers, and saw three or
four people (perhaps 150 to 200 meters from me) running away from two small plumes of smoke rising out of
the middle of the road.
It was only then that it hit me. My God, how many times had I seen this on TV? Palestinians throwing stones,
Israelis firing guns. Unlike the first protest I went to (which was low-key and uneventful), I wasn’t really
scared. First of all, it was no longer a new experience. But more importantly, at the first one I went to,
I didn’t know what to expect. This clash, however, was already defined and had clearly been going on for a
couple of hours.
My immediate thought was to take pictures. How can I get a good shot? After chatting
briefly with one of the Palestinian youths sitting disconsolately on the "wrong side" of the confrontation,
I decided to ignore his gloomy prediction that there was no way around, and headed in the opposite direction
the Israelis wanted me to go. Two soldiers stopped me and asked for ID. I gave them my passport and played
"the stupid American tourist" insisting on going to Bethlehem. Actually, that was the most serious moment
of the day for me. One of the soldiers started to walk off with my passport several times, and might have
caused me problems (considering all the visas and entry stamps from Jordan, Egypt and Syria), but I think
he decided that I was harmless when I just sat down on the curb to wait for him like I couldn’t give a sh*t
what he did. He just gave it back to me, and asked me to go back to Jerusalem. I insisted on pushing forward,
even saying, "You know, I’m a stupid American tourist." I think he discerned that I wanted to get to the
other side, and very seriously–even pleadingly–asked me not to go. ("Please don’t do this. No, please, don’t do this.")
I went. Passed by another set of soldiers/journalists, and turned back north, up a side road.
It was then that I realized why the soldier with my passport didn’t know what to do with it. I encountered
another group of Israelis smoking cigarettes and just hanging out, and I went up to them to ask how I could get
around all this mess. They immediately directed me to their "leader," and said that "he will answer any questions
you would like." They all thought I was a reporter. With just a twinge of disappointment, they told me to keep
heading north and then turn right. That I did, whereupon another pair of Israeli soldiers said that I could get
to Bethlehem from the road they were guarding, but that they would not let me back through–the road was closed
to all. I thought about it, and said–the hell with it. I can stay in a hotel the night if I have to. But I’ll
find a way around. They’re just making sure they can’t be flanked. So I ignored his warnings and after a twenty
minute walk (all within clear view of Jabal Abu Ghanim) I saw the beginnings of the protest.
Tear gas
I started walking up the road toward the Israeli soldiers (well out of view) and I was slow to realize
why there were a number of men crying and spitting, running blind from the road ahead with their arms
covering their eyes. Part of me realized that it was tear gas. But that was beyond my experience. It was
funny, the first moment that my eyes began to itch, to tear. I almost started laughing. "So that’s tear
gas. Sumb*tch."
There’s not much of a story beyond that, though. I mean, we’ve all seen it on TV so many times. The
only difference is that things seem a little more, well, safe in real life.
I walked up to the front, deliberately talked to a few Palestinian men, making fun of the tear gas
(that is, how the stupid foreigner who has never encountered it feels) and to identify myself. "Ana
Taalib fi jaami’at birzeit." I am a student at Birzeit University. I don’t know how many times I’ve
said that. I mean to say, "I’m not really a stranger. I belong here. Sort of." I always feel a need
to do that, to explain my pale skin.
I never regret it. Of course, I get the required and all too frequent compliment on my miserable
Arabic ("ibtaHki-l’arabi kways"). But it always goes beyond that. In this instance, one man made sure
that I got a surgical mask (to filter out the tear gas) by lying to an ambulance driver that I was an
American journalist (SuHufi-l’amriiki).
And then I just stood against the wall, in view of the Israeli soldiers, and took some pictures.
There was one young man in a white Tee that had designated himself as the "Gas man" (my words). He
grabbed at least half the canisters of tear gas the Israelis fired and tossed them down a side
street, away from the protesters.
There were two or three photojournalists there–one of them, a woman (American I might add w/
a touch of pride), had muchos cojones. She was out there, in the line of fire with one or two
other Palestinians. Another photojournalist threw-up I think. It is a sign of Arab character
that three or four Palestinians helped her walk behind an alley and rubbed her back and shoulders,
trying to comfort her until the effect of the tear gas wore off.
I saw the one injured man get carried out of the no man’s land by three others–that was the most
chilling sight. I had seen that too many times.
Still, the whole thing seemed more like a game that a little child plays with his parents. The Palestinians would move close every time the Israelis took a break in firing the tear gas. They never got close enough to throw rocks. They took the tear gas and threw the canisters away from the crowd. The Palestinians could have walked down the road that I had taken and opened a second front, thus flanking the Israelis and forcing a retreat. But they knew that that would take the protest to another level. If the Israelis were forced to retreat from Rachel’s tomb back to the Bethlehem checkpoint, it would have been a major coup, the first item on the news in every country, but it would have drawn live fire, tanks, etc. A full military assault. Deadly force. As many would have been killed in a day as were killed as a result of the entire month of September. So they kept it at this casually dangerous stalemate. A tacit agreement not to escalate. The protesters, I think, knew their actions could not change anything, so they did not take many risks. They just loosed some of their frustrations. For the Israeli soldiers… it was just another day. (After reading several news accounts, it is clear that the clash was more intense in the morning, and in the evening, several Molotov cocktails were thrown at Israeli positions at Rachel’s tomb. Perhaps not just another day or just a way to release tension).
A Souvenir?
For me the excursion ended when the "Gas man" didn’t get one of the canisters quick enough.
Instead, it released all it’s gas into the street, and the whole crowd retreated. After I few
minutes, though, I saw my souvenir. The gas canister had stopped emitting gas, and it seemed
like all the smoke had dissipated, so I walked up the street towards it. I didn’t notice that
there were but a handful of Palestinians up the street (most of them wearing gas masks). Up
until then I had just gotten a little teary eyed. Maybe my chest started to struggle once or
twice. But when I was twenty meters from the empty canister, my eyes began to burn.
I turned around and started walking back, my eyes pouring out tears. The last time I cried
that much was during the long break up with Alia. That time, though, I felt the pain in the
emptiness of my heart. This time, from above my eyebrows to the beginning of my mustache, and
between the areas just forward of my sideburns, it burned. Fire. No matter how much I cried,
all I could feel was pain. I stumbled back to where the mass of Palestinians were standing.
All I could think of was water. I need water. When I cut and cook onions, all I need to do is
wash my eyes out with water. This is just a horribly intense blast of onion. But is that safe?
I don’t know anything about this. Is it bad to wash my eyes out?
That was the end of the day. I didn’t go back. A three-year-old kid asked for my surgical mask.
I wouldn’t have given it to anyone, but the kid was so cute, I couldn’t help it.
I wandered up the street then with the stated aim to find the alley where all the gas canisters
were thrown so that I could get my souvenir. I never did find it, and after wandering around Bethlehem
for an hour, my knees started to hurt, so I started trying to find a way home. I asked a number of
different people–including Palestinian soldiers who all crowded helpfully around me, offering me
the option to speak in at least six different languages, just tickled to see a paleface speak Arabic–and
each person I asked had an utterly incomprehensible and roundabout way back. In the end, I walked
back to the protests and took the side road I had originally taken. Of course, I couldn’t get past
the Israelis (I didn’t try, mainly because I was worried they would recognize me and I didn’t want
to explain what I had been doing) and eventually–after playing soccer with a couple of kids–I got
virtually identical directions from two teens and a shepherd about how to cut cross-country back to
the road. It was a short walk through some olive groves to the street and I passed the checkpoint
without incident (American citizenship, don’t leave home without it).
[The mountain that started it all, Jabal Abu Ghenaim, viewed from a residential area in the heart of Bethlehem.]