Today was my first real experience of the Israeli occupation up close. I rose earlier than was strictly necessary, partly out of a sense of excitement, but mainly out of fear. Last minute doubts had me near paralyzed in bed for a quarter of an hour.
By the time I'd made the short walk from my hostel (on the edge of Jerusalem's old city) to the bus station at Damascus gate, I would have laughed at my early morning self - so brimming with confidence and eagerness was I. The clock read 9.30 am.
I was heading to the small Palestinian village of Bil'in, the site of a long running dispute between the local Palestinian population of countless generations and Israeli settlers and their military proxies. The Israelis had annexed large swathes of the village behind - to use the Israeli euphemism - a 'separation fence' in recent years, but the dispute went back to the Israeli expansion of 1967 when the village was first occupied.
This fence - or to avoid the euphemism - a series of three parallel fences (one of which is electrified) encircle the village on two sides. (To see what this looks like from the Israeli side watch 'Louis Theroux and the ultra Zionists') This ugly, artificial, blight on an otherwise resplendent landscape cuts families, friendships and ancestral lands in two - and is illegal under international law.
Every Friday afternoon for the past few years have seen hundreds of local Palestinians and a handful of international activists attempt to conduct a peaceful protest up to the primary Israeli guard post where the two sections of the 'fence' intersect.
After a short ride by local bus to the West bank city of Ramallah, I found a willing taxi driver to take me the 10km or so to Bil'in. Highlights of this journey include my enthusiastic driver producing a pristine photograph of his 22year old son Hasan, proudly posing in the full regalia of one or other of the Fatah military units - complete with black beret and thousand yard stare. My driver Faizul assured me numerous times that his son's Shotokan karate skills are second to none, and in between praising Yasser Arafat and Barcelona football team, kindly gave me some pitta and spiced fishcakes to sate my rumbling belly.
Arriving a couple of hours before the march was due to depart, and much to the amusement of the locals, I set off into the surrounding foothills to get a better sense of the terrain, the town and the man-made barrier that divides them. To sum up the look and feel of the village of Bil'in concisely, imagine a sleepy rural mountain village in the south of France - complete with the rhythmic drone of cicadas and the slow pace of life attendant to country living.
By the time I returned to the center of town from my brief foray, a small but growing assembly of protesters had gathered around the house of a leading local activist. The house also doubled as an operations room of sorts for the expanding protest, from which protesters young and old helped prepare banners, signs and Palestinian flags. Here I met a number of other internationals, Israelis (from the group "Anarchists against the wall" and local activists. Two of the internationals were - like me - affiliated with the I.S.M (International Solidarity Movement).
John and James (I have changed their names here for security purposes) hailed from Sweden and the USA respectively. Both had been in country for a number of weeks already, and James was on his second 'tour'. Out of the three ISM activists in attendance, I was thus the greenest and naturally bombarded them with endless questions. Whether or not they sensed my nerves - they showed no sign.
Within the space of an hour the assembled crowd had swollen to approximately (by my own shoddy estimate) 2-300 protesters and over a dozen local and foreign journalists. Almost all of these journalists carried gas-masks, wore full length flak-jackets, helmets, and knee pads. A sight that despite the inherent dangers of facing the I.D.F (Israeli "Defence" Force) had me literally laughing out loud - it was such an incongruous sight in this sleepy little village, especially considering the lack of any such protection for the Palestinians they had come to report on.
With retrospect, I made an underestimation here on two counts. 1. The disproportionate force that Israel utilizes in any encounter with Palestinian demonstrators (peaceful or not) and 2. The sheer bravery and courage of the Palestinians (especially but by no means limited to the children).
Just as the procession looked to be heading out, I broke off from my ISM friends and darted inside an abandoned building overlooking the intended route. After a quick scrabble up a ruined staircase, I set up my camera on the first floor to capture some aerial views of the march beneath.
As the protest eventually set off , the accompanying sounds of the Muslim call to prayer echoed down the narrow village streets. Men and boys affiliated with Fatah mounted their bright orange and green flags on the front of a truck that doubled as a mobile musical accompaniment to the march (via a rigged up loudspeaker)and as the lead vehicle (at least initially) in the column. This loud and colorful procession moved slowly down through the thin winding streets of Bil'in and up the old road towards the Israeli lines.
After running up and down like some kind of demented paparazzi, snapping pictures from every conceivable angle I could manage, I rejoined the front of the march alongside a young Palestinian man named Mohamed, riding at quite a pace out in front in his red motorized wheel chair.
I'm sure that given enough time I could write a novel about Mohamed, but in the interest of concision all I will note is that this man survived an Israeli sniper's bullet to the base of his neck nearly a decade ago - at the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada (Intifada translates as 'shaking off'). After receiving a wound that would likely kill most people, Mohamed went onto marry and, remarkably - sire two children.
As the procession led by Mohamed began to ascend the few hundred meters up to the ridge line and the first fence, a bright yellow bulldozer pulled out of a side street and immediately took up position as lead vehicle. The bulldozer, occupied by a lone Palestinian, was quickly swarmed by young men wielding the green, black, red and white livery of the Palestinian flag. As I was to discover later, the intention of this lumbering piece of heavy machinery was primarily symbolic - although the role of driver remained fraught with danger. Big slow moving objects are not hard to spot - and it takes a brave man to steer something that obvious(and percievably threatening) towards the fourth largest military in the world.
By this point I had dropped back 20 meters or so from the front of the march, leaving the heaped and crowded bulldozer, Mohamed and his motorized wheel chair, and a number of Shabab (local kids - the ones you see throwing stones on the telly)at the front of the noisy procession. As the shimmering reflections from the Israeli guns ahead glistened menacingly in the mid-day sun, it seemed momentarily as if they might allow our peaceful march to reach the gate unmolested.
Suddenly a quick succession of loud pops and an angry rasping buzz heralded the arrival of the American manufactured high velocity tear-gas canisters (developed to punch through concrete walls). Amazingly, the first volley fell somewhat short of the front ranks of the march - to much whooping and hollering from the shabab out in front. By some small fortune, the wind actually blew some of this gas back towards the Israeli lines.
With the second volley however, we weren't so lucky. The I.D.F conscripts had clearly received a talking to from their commander because before I even knew what was happening, six or seven canisters were cascading down from the sky like fallen stars. Unfortunately for myself and those around me, this volley landed but a few meters away.
For those of you that have never been tear-gassed, I should emphasize that tears are the least of your worries. Within seconds I was doubled up and retching, with the distinct impression that somebody very heavy was sitting on my chest. Speaking personally, I found the worse symptoms to be the primordial fear that the gas taps into, the instinctual reaction is to run as fast and far as possible, yet it leaves you physically incapable to do so. Many protesters on this and other marches were to succumb to the pressing, cloying suffocation of the gas.
After the initial shock and pain, my legs finally kicked into gear and I began to stumble back down the road only to find my path blocked by a wall of gas produced by a canister that had landed to my rear. I honestly cannot remember exactly what happened next, but I was either bundled or pushed aside and found myself face down in a shallow gully by the side of the road - mercifully out of the path of the oncoming gas. Gasping for air and totally blind I felt like I was drowning - my mind wandered to the furthest reaches of the cosmos asI found myself, if only for a second, wishing for annihilation. At least in death one doesn't have the dreadful sensation of panic brought on by a lack of oxygen to the brain.
Some minutes passed before my ragged gasps were replaced with the sweet sensation of regular, steady breathing. I still could not see more than a few feet in front of me and my eyes streamed with tears that, full of gas, burnt the eyes horribly. My relief was short lived however. As yet another barrage of gas began to fall around me I forced myself up and half ran and half fell back onto the road and down the hill. At this point cries for a medic reached my ears from the front of the now fragmented and ramshackle column. These cries were then repeated and relayed further back down the line to the incredibly brave medics of the solitary Red Crescent ambulance in attendance at the rear. Later it emerged that the injured included an old man and a number of children suffering from gas inhalation.
By the time the ambulance had passed by, a quick glance up the hill told me that apart from the bulldozer and perhaps a dozen shabab the only protester that had made it to the gate was - amazingly - Mohamed in his motorized wheel chair. (By the way this was not because the Israelis did not try to stop him) Like me, the vast majority of demonstrators had retreated a considerable way back down the road.
Arrogantly determined not to let a bunch of kids and a wheelchair user go it alone, I took a quick sniff of my indispensable ethanol sachet (it reawakens your senses after the gas )and pushed on up the hill.
As I drew closer to the gate, I saw and smelt one of the I.D.F's nastier weapons systems in use. 'Skunk' as it is colloquially named, is a disgustingly foul smelling sludge fired out of a high pressure hose attached to a tanker truck. According to Wikipedia the smell remains on clothing for up to five years. Days or weeks on the body. At the time of writing this, I still get the occasional whiff from the invisible particles borne on the wind and onto my skin. By the time I was close enough to see what was happening clearly (my eyes were still half closed at this point) I could smell the fetid stench hanging thick in the air.
What I saw next shocked me, Mohamed sat solitary and unmovable at the front of the now significantly diminished protest, whilst he, the bulldozer and a number of shabab came in for a sustained and terrifying bombardment with 'skunk', tear-gas, flash-bangs, sound grenades and rubber coated steel bullets. Watching the onslaught ahead of me, I moved warily up the hill. As if guessing my intention three more tear-gas canisters fell around me, one literally at my feet. Once bitten twice shy goes the saying, and I promptly ran as fast as I could back the way I had come - not looking back even once.
These violent scenes were repeated for another fifteen minutes or so before, to my astonishment, the yellow bulldozer (now more of a grey brown color) retreated past me and the other demonstrators at the foot of the hill, looking much like it had been hit by a missile. One of the enormous industrial tires had almost completely separated from it's axle, creating a hideous grinding noise as the exposed metal was dragged slowly along the road. All of the windows had been blown out by sound grenades and rubber coated bullets with the exception of one, riddled with bullet holes but still hanging loosely in its frame. As it passed us the new paint job became explicable as the stench of 'skunk' filled up the nostrils. A girl kneeling beside me started vomiting into the coarse dry grass.
During all of this chaos Mohamed stayed pretty much where he was up by the wire. A lonely figure silhouetted against the ridge line, the embodiment of the brutality of this long and squalid occupation but also its possible salvation. If all of the demonstrators had shared his bravery, one wonders what the Israelis could have done to stop us reaching them.
Some thirty minutes later it was all over, only a few shabab attempting to throw stones remained anywhere near the 'fence'. After the chaos and the frenzy, myself and a number of other internationals, Israeli Anarchists and local Palestinians retired to the nearby house of one of the village elders for warm pitta, humus and black coffee. Sharing tales of the fallen comrades that had died but a few hundred meters away - at the hands of this same Israeli unit.
A couple of hours later I hitched a ride back to Ramallah with a few international development types. Discovering to my annoyance (that is an understatement) that my memory card had inexplicably ceased to function, rendering my frantic photography attempts entirely worthless. Nevertheless I vowed to return for next weeks march, where scenes similar to that I have described are sure to be repeated in this quiet and beautiful Palestinian village of Bil'in. C
For footage of yesterdays protest use the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/user/haithmkatib
