Nigel and Hanan and I went back to Ma’alufiyya/Arak/Khammara yesterday.
A cursory glance at the site, just driving past, you would never have
realized
that there were clashes there.
A few days previous–last Saturday night actually–I took a
cab back
from Jerusalem that passed by Ma’alufiyya (it is the
main road from
Ramallah/Al-Bireh to Jerusalem). It was kind of like the morning after,
the hangover from too much drinking making you dizzy while surveying
the
wreckage your friends had made of your apartment the previous night.
The
van zig-zagged all over the obstacle course the road had become,
dodging
piles of rocks, dumpsters, the burnt-out shells of cars, and destroyed
Port-a-Potties that had been used as shields and obstacles during the
day. 
Earlier
that Saturday evening, Abdullah Khalil Salah had been shot once,
precisely
through the center of the left side of his chest. [Photo
left: Carrying Abdullah to the ambulance. Photo copyright Al-Ayyam]Through
his heart. I
didn’t know that at the time. I was busy convincing myself that I was
happy
that I had been stood up by an Israeli woman, that I hadn’t really
wanted
to go out with her that evening anyway.
But that was why we went back to Ma’alufiyya. Cathi Grosso–a
coordinator
with Birzeit University’s Human
Rights Action Project–wanted Nigel to photograph the area
where Abdullah
had been killed. We were also dreaming foolishly of finding one spent
cartridge
of live ammunition. Some piece of evidence. Reports have reached the PR
office that a few Israeli officials are saying that, because an autopsy
was not conducted, Abdullah must have been shot by Palestinian police.
When Nigel told me there wasn’t an autopsy, I was stunned.
Obviously,
the cause of death was obvious. A bullet penetrated the ribcage,
pierced
Abdullah’s heart and left lung, expanding as it traveled, and left a
gaping
exit wound in his back.
"But they have to do an autopsy!" I protest. "I mean,
it wasn’t
a car accident!"
"Yes it was," answers Nigel. My vacant expression
prompts him
to continue. "It is like a car accident here." Nigel asserts that
attitudes
are different. It’s considered a normal occurrence, and when you see a
body with a small hole in one side and a big one on the other, you
hardly
need to cut it open to figure out what happened. As an example, Nigel
says
that, when the University’s lawyer–after visiting a detained student under interrogation–says that the student is "OK," he really means,
"They’re
torturing the sh*t out of him, but he’s not in any danger of dying."
Nigel adds that even the doctor didn’t want to take
the time:
The statement of death was two quick sentences in English. Something in
medicalese along the lines of, "He got shot in the chest, and it ripped
out a couple chunks of his lung and heart, and then he died."
The biggest fallacy with these rumors of PNA involvement is the
implication
that witnesses would try to protect the Sulta. For
Christ’s sake,
the students–from the Islamic Bloc, Left-Bloc, and even pro-Fatah
Shebiba–have
repeatedly tried to organize a march where they would start protesting
at PNA administrative headquarters in Ramallah and end at an Israeli
checkpoint
(the Sulta always gets tipped off, though, and
prevents Birzeit
buses from entering Ramallah). Nigel simply doesn’t believe that
Birzeit
students–even some of those aligned with Shabiba bloc–wouldn’t tell
on
the Sulta if someone was shot.
So we spent two hours wandering along the road and up on the
hill above Ma’alufiyya [photo left, Hanan walking above Ma’alufiyya].
We weren’t just looking for the elusive spent cartridge. Nigel had read
in some newspaper or other that Israeli soldiers had used a new kind of
tear gas in the clashes–tear gas that had made him nauseaus for four
straight days after the clashes–and we collected and examined hundreds
of canisters that were littered all over the region. They were all
American made. "560 CS
Long Range Projectile–150 Yards–Chemical Irritating Agent (CS)"
brought to you by Federal
Laboratories in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania 15681, a division of Mace.
Nigel also wanted to find the
fizzled tear gas canister that one Israeli soldier had tried to shoot
near a flock of journalists. We thought we might have. Near
the area where Nigel said the soldier was, I found a V.L.R.C.T.M.J.
(Very Large, Rubber-Coated Thing-a-Ma-Jigger) that could be stuck onto
the barrel of a gun. We weren’t quite sure what to do with it. It
really did look like there was a live tear gas canister stuck in the
barrel, and we were terrified that it would detonate if we played
around with it.
Then Nigel started getting ambitious. He decided that the best
way to find out more was to ask people who lived in the area. He
immediately solicited Hanan’s help–she’s a San Fransisco born Canadian
whose family is from Beit Jala and she speaks the best Arabic of the
three–and she promptly passed the buck, suggested I should translate (basically so she
could avoid harassing people in their homes). I, of course, pleaded
absolute incompetence.
Working solo, Nigel convinced a fellow who lived in a house
about 100 yards from where Abdullah was killed to give him a live
cartridge that had been dropped by an Israeli soldier during the
clashes. But a live cartridge is useless–soldiers carry
live ammunition, and it could just as easily have fallen out of a
pocket as from a clip that was being loaded into a rifle. And logically
speaking, since live ammo was only to be used in life threatening
situations (according to Israeli rules of engagement), the soldiers
would have carried fully loaded clips, not boxes of bullets and empty
clips.
Our primary efforts were without fruit. In fact, we couldn’t
even be sure of the exact location of Abdullah’s death. Nigel’s photos
and memory got us–we think–to within fity to a hundred feet, but
Nigel didn’t see the shooting with his own eyes, and Hanan and I weren’t
anywhere near Ma’alufiyya that Saturday.
Just as the sun was about to set, we heard a voice in the
distance on a loudspeaker. We don’t know who it was. At that point, we
were wandering around Area C, and in clear view of everybody,
including the Israeli jeep three hundred meters down the road. We
called it a day, and when we descended to the main road, we had a
plastic bag chock full of spent tear-gas canisters and a few other
interesting tidbits.
Problem was, the bag couldn’t be sealed at the top, and even
if it could, there were some holes in it. The tear gas canisters still
reeked of gas (some of them even stung a bit when you picked them up),
but since I had been carrying the bag for hours, I no longer noticed
the smell. So I kept asking Hanan and Nigel if they could smell the gas
during the entire cab ride back to Ramallah, and since they could, they
tried to ignore me as the other riders coughed and sneezed.
Back at Nigel’s, we came upon a bunch of left-wing activists
preparing signs for the upcoming Birzeit U. student elections–Nigel
has recently dubbed his roommate’s half of the house as "Communist
Central." Our return gives the shabby, unfed election workers a break
to examine our finds (and have a slice or two of the pizza Hanan
bought).
Hanan–I think it was Hanan–had found a small cardboard box
with labels in Hebrew that was the perfect size for holding live
ammunition (namely the bullet Nigel had acquired). One of the campaign
workers admitted knowledge of Hebrew, and translated the writing on the
cardboard box: It had contained rubber bullets.
Our V.L.R.C.T.M.J. [photo right], upon closer examination,
turned out to be a rubber bullet launcher (there are several types.
This would have fired round metal balls covered with a thin sheet of
hard plastic. The cardboard box contained cylindrical metal plugs about
the size of a thimble, covered by a half-centimeter of rubber). As best
Nigel and the left-wing could figure, this kind of rubber bullet is
shot in bunches of 15-18. A whiff of grape-shot in a hard plastic shell.
We decided to try again tomorrow. One of the campaign
workers–a former roommate of Adbullah’s–promised to go along.