My time working in Palestine is drawing to a close. Although I don’t fly back for almost another month, I will stop working at the end of February and will be traveling around the area for my last two weeks, and so today I have to return to Nablus to begin what will be nine long days of goodbyes. Once I finish writing this it’s off to the shops to pick up a couple of bottles of arak and then to catch a service north. Hopefully, there will be kunaffeh and musicians waiting.
This last week has gone by calmly for me, though the same cannot be said for everyone else. On Monday, a friend and I went to visit Jericho: a beautiful, mountainous, desert city; one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world; barren in its wilderness, and a breath of fresh air after the stifling and oppressive Hebron. We came to Ramallah to spend one night, but here you can drink in the bars, and so I ended up staying three. Plus, of course, I had to get to the Friday demonstrations, so it would have been a waste going back south for just a couple of days…
Whilst I was relaxing here in Ramallah I got a word that the pair who were in the apartment had been attacked by local shabab. We’ve been getting hassle from them for a while now – they knock on the door asking to come in, sometimes just opening it without us answering, obviously trying to catch a girl alone in the apartment or looking for an opportunity to steal stuff – and we had been advised to try and get pictures of them so we could identify them. On Wednesday, Coralie and Bastian heard noises outside the flat, and so went to take photographs of them; they were confronted with three (possibly four) kids wearing masks who then pushed and threw rocks at Bastian, tried to grab Coralie and then stole her camera. After this, the shabab ran off, and thankfully they were left unhurt, but very shaken. Hebron is not a nice place to live, what with the settlers threatening you and the soldiers stopping you, but when the shabab try to steal stuff from you it really feels harsh and overbearing. The police and the neighbours were all informed, and we’re careful not to leave anyone alone in the house now, so hopefully this is the last of the problems we’ll have from them. There is no guarantee of that, though.
On Friday I went again to the demonstration in An Nabi Saleh. I was particularly interested as these demonstrations were meant to be the scene of some of the most brutal crowd control methods employed by the IDF, but when I went last week the army was unusually restrained. I wanted to know if this change of tactic was a long-term measure in order to reduce the escalating violence of the weekly protests, or just a short-term change to deflect the media attention they had so deservedly earned. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m sure that by now you can guess (as I should have) which it was to be.
The military attacked with their usual combinations of sound bombs and tear gas, turned the village into a closed military zone, and patrolled the streets firing at anyone who looked Palestinian and threatening to arrest anyone who didn’t. After a few hours things began to calm down, and I saw one of the most beautiful sights I have seen in my four months here: the soldiers had occupied the central square of the town with their khaki and guns and, rather than throwing rocks, the shabab decided to just get on their bikes and cycle around the square, ignoring their presence and occasionally playing Frisbee. We sat drinking coffee and looking on, all the while feeling that, as the soldiers got more and more irritated, this was a genuinely pleasant form of non-violent protest.
But, as with the day, the calm does not last forever. As the final military jeep was pulling out of the town, a solitary rock found its target and shattered the vehicle’s windscreen with a satisfying clatter. Whilst everyone was pleased, we realised that now we only had a few minutes before that horrible gas would come raining down. We tried to hide, but the high-velocity canisters seemed to land everywhere; worse was the skunk wagon which came to spray its vicious-smelling shit-water across the village streets. A fourteen-year-old boy was hit in the arm with a rubber-coated steel bullet, but apart from that no one was seriously hurt. At sundown, the army finally retreated, and we returned to Ramallah to get some rest.
Yesterday, I heard that the US again used its veto on the UN resolution regarding settlements. This is an obnoxious, obstinate, and idiotic move by the United States, although fully in character with how she has acted over the last decade. Other members of the Quartet have stated that this will result in their expulsion, which would be an excellent development, but I am not too optimistic. We can only wait and see how things transpire.
It’s raining in Nablus.
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