I always remembered Fridays as being lazy days in the Middle East.. Usually, one wakes up a little late (which I did, waking up at 9:30ish am), eats a hearty breakfast (which I didn't, but hey..), and then heads off to Friday Prayer..
I had known -- we had all known -- that Fridays were days of some unrest.. After Friday prayer, a rally was called (almost a Friday tradition), and the people assembled. There weren't many of us.. Only about a hundred or two hundred people, but we marched as though we were thousands, from the mosque, through the city square, and to an Israeli checkpoint that closed Ramallah off from other areas of the West Bank. I didn't expect that there would be any escalation, despite having before heard in the foreign media when I was in Canada that "Friday protests" were often the immediate precursor of heavier fighting.. Still, I figured it might be a good idea to put on my UPMRC jacket.
As soon as we got to the checkpoint, a few cowboys from Sweden started running towards the soldiers. I don't know why they weren't killed. Right behind them were a couple of Japanese folk, also running. When the Swedes got to the checkpoint, they stood there, cameras in hand video taping everything. This was good.. Probably nobody would die today. The Japanese, eager to outdo the Swedes, ran into a field adjacent to the checkpoint, carrying heavy camera gear. I would have definitely shot them if I were a soldier. Our team was assembled and grabbed a stretcher, ready to go for any wounded. To this point, however, we had every reason to believe that this was nothing more than a little adrenalin rush..
Some of the Palestinian children began to throw rocks at the jeeps that were assembled on the checkpoint. The children skillfully catapulted wave after wave of rocks at the soldiers, both with their hands and with slingshots. All of a sudden, we saw an orange projectile catapulted into the air.. "SOUND!!!" Cried one of the Palestinian spotters. I froze. Before I knew what to do, a loud bang brought me off my feet. It was a sound bomb.. All it did was momentarily disorient, but it also told us all that the Israelis were ready. They knew there were internationals, so we hoped that it wouldn't go much further than sound bombs.
Our medic team of 5 had set up behind a large mound of dirt where we could see most of the happenings in the field of "battle". After a few more volleys of rocks, another Israeli soldier jumped out of his jeep, pointed his gun at us, and started firing. These were not bullets like one would imagine. One even had the idea that he could outrun them. A few whizzed by my head, no more than a couple of feet from my ears.. It started as a pop, followed by a zipping sound, and then a little thud. Before long, it became clear to those of us who had never seen this before that the bullets were rubber bullets (a misnomer really, as they have an iron core). It also became clear to us that the medics were being shot at by snipers in the building with these self-same bullets. We were no less than 20 or so meters away from the action, and so we concluded that the aiming was deliberate. Before long, one of the medics with us was hit. This time was like all the rest, but the thud of the rubber bullet did not match the
usual thud, which was usually in the ground. Instead, it sounded like the beating of a person. And then, a muffled "UUGGHHH!" An Icelandic fellow who had just arrived in Ramallah the day before had been it.. He made no fuss of it, and luckily was not severely wounded. In describing the wound, he said it was as a hammer slamming into his thigh.. Being a white man, he had quite the bruise to prove it.. I collected the bullet that had hit him, with the intention of making him a souvenir out of it (Pic 1)..
It was not long before the snipers from everywhere were shooting, and reinforcements had been called in. About 15 youth from the ages of 4 to 17 were caught behind another large mound of dirt, pinned in by the fire. Finally, we called out to one of them to go down at the next bullet..
BOOM!! Wizzzzzz. PACK. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!! One of the kids began yelling.. the medics ran over, and grabbed him on a stretcher and carried him back. the rest of the kids took cover behind us as we ran to the ambulance. Luckily, they were able to get out.
I don't really know what the point of today was. It cost the Israelis a hell of a lot of money -- at least $20 000 by our count -- to mobilize the troops. This multiplied by the number of checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians see that as a victory.. It also gave those kids a feeling of doing something.. I guess that's good, since it represents hope.. But from our standpoint, it was all worthless.. We sat there, waiting for somebody to get shot, just so we could take him away. How glamorous..
tarek : )