Friday Protest I

The small Palestinian village of Bil’in, sitting almost on top of the Green Line that divides Israel from the West Bank, holds a demonstration every Friday to protest The Wall, just a kilometer out of town.

Of course, I’m sure the villagers wouldn’t go to all that hassle of being shot at with rubber bullets, drinking tear gas by the chamber-full, and lighting the town’s dwindling supply of spare tires on fire… if over half the town’s farmland wasn’t located on the Israeli side of The Wall.

Every Friday, with the chants of the noonday prayers barely faded, Bil’in’s leaders and youth are joined by “internationals”: a motley mix of human rights and anti-globalization activists, and chattering, camera-clicking Japanese tourists. Together, they march down to The Wall, where, without fail, a Thin Olive-Green Line of Israeli troopers wait. For a few hours, the two sides exchange gifts. The Palestinians offer chanted slogans and stones; the Israelis have tear gas canisters, stun grenades, and rubber bullets.

I’ve been twice: the first time a couple of weeks ago with Kieran Nelson, and once again yesterday by myself.

Some idiot (clearly not a writer) once said: "A picture's worth a thousand words." So here's a few thousand words. Plus commentary.

Kieran took all the photos for Friday Protest I. Those from Friday Protest II are mine.

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This is Ferdinand, an Austrian documentarian. He had a homemade press jacket and a newscamera the size of a rocket-launcher from Halo. His advice for us? Munch on an onion to help with the tear gas. Don't duck or crouch, because Israeli snipers aim for the lower body. And Sean? Is that your name? Don't wear that head scarf, or they'll think you're a Palestinian.


This picture was staged as all hell. An older man made this tyke pose with the Fatah flag for a sequence of clicking cameras: Reuters, Japanese tourists, and Kieran.


Abu Ammar, or Yasser Arafat. His people's greatest hero and greatest villain. He had the vision and the will to lead Palestine onto the world stage, and the petty ego and tolerance for cronyism that made the Palestinian Authority an inflexible, calcified, corrupt joke of a government. His ugly mug adorns the mosque from which Bil'in's young men will soon stream to march down to The Wall.


The march begins. It's carnivalesque. Half the crowd is made up of young boys who earlier were trying to sell us beans and bracelets. Shouted slogans, flying banners- typical CNN B-roll. Here's what's weird: a curious lack anger, of fervor, of intention, in the crowd. It was passionate and boisterous, yes… but it had the playful, just-for-shits feel of a campus pep-rally, empty of the seething rage I’d always expected a Palestinian protest to contain. The villagers played it up for the cameras, pressing their faces into the lenses- it seemed that the volume of their chanting increased in proportion to their proximity to a videocamera.



A fair number of "internationals" in the crowd. The way Clay (an American I met who'd been before) explained it, whiteys and Jappos are there so that the Israelis don't use live ammo. They don't want to shoot foreigners... too much bad press. This wasn't very reassuring, considering that Clay had five stitches in the forehead from being hit in the face by a tear gas canister.


The Thin Olive Green Line. You had to zoom on the camera to see them. They were about 100 meters away. Later, I learned that tear gas launchers have a range of over 100 meters.


You can't tell, but there are twice as many Japanese tourists as Palestinians at the front. Most of the Arabs- especially the youth (who knew what was coming), and all the boys (no children were allowed near the front)- started to straggle backward as we approached the Jews. The Israelis laid razor wire across the road to prevent us getting face-to-face with them. It worked today.


Japanese. Those cartoonish herds of faceless bobble-heads, with their galaxies of SLR cameras and mind-bending mouse-chatter of a language, who roam the world with their Lonely Planet guidebooks held out in front of their noses. At least they're getting good photos for Facebook; this is at the very front line. When the Intifada turn into a tourist attraction?


These soldiers are very, very close to Kieran. They snuck up on our flank, to use the lingo. One of them caught him by surprise, and Kieran found himself staring down the barrel of a gun about 15 meters away. He was...er... surprised.


So this picture sucks. It was when the tear gas started exploding in our midst. It all happened very suddenly. One second, there was a line of Arabs shouting at a line of Jews, with a line of Japanese (and me) documenting them. Next second, I was face down on the ground with clouds of tear gas going off everywhere. One of Palestinian ringleaders had been shot in the knee, and was writhing on the ground. I filmed him rolling about for about five seconds before the tear gas made it impossible for me to see, breathe, or film. Then I ran.


And Kieran wept. And then Kieran munched on his onion.


You may not be able to tell, but I had just met up with Kieran after five minutes of hacking up a lung, weeping buckets of tears, and toweling my face with the sleeve of my rain-soaked jacket. I'd never been tear gassed before, and as I ran, I held the camera to my face and shouted into it. I watched the footage afterwards. There was my face, red-eyed, with the camera rocking back and forth as I ran full-tilt, shouting: "It's like fuckin' bear mace!"

Tear gas is incredibly effective. It does no permanent harm, but it's incapacitating. You can't see or breathe, and it feels like your nasal passages and exposed skin is on fire. You can't film... or fight. And when one- or ten- persons flee, the herd reaction follows. One well-placed tear gas canister can do the work of a hundred cops. Fortunately, the effects only last for five minutes. Then you go back for more.

And later, you feel foggy and heavy-headed, like you've smoked too much sheesha.


An activist we met who'd served in the German army told us that Israeli snipers couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Yeah? They aimed well enough to pick out the ringleader of the protest and bounce a rubber bullet off his knee, when he was standing side by side with two internationals.


Kieran saw the bruise left by the rubber bullet and scoffed. I'm sure it hurt, but this guy was writhing... like... well... he'd been shot. Shot for real, I mean. I don't want to say he hammed it up for the surrounding cameras- and there were many. I've never been rubber-bulleted before, and don't ever plan to find out if this guy was faking the pain.

This all took place in a concrete garage, which served as a kind of field hospital for protest victims. The Israelis, possibly not realizing that an injured man was inside, unloaded tear gas and rubber bullets at the building. Ferdinand, who was inside at the time, later told me he had tried to haul ass out of the garage, but was, in his words, "under fire".

The injured man was later evacuated by a local van. As it pulled away, all the Palestinians made loud, howling noises, meant to simulate the siren of an ambulance.


A Palestinian stone-thrower and his sling. And yes, I've heard all the David and Goliath references already. And yes, it is ironic.


Kieran must have been crying.


Ugh.


These kids have balls. They are also seemingly immune to tear gas. I've seen children run up to an erupting canister, pick it up with their bare hands, and fling it back at the Israelis. Alternately, they boot it a safe distance down the road. Or, like this kid, they wait for them to stop gassing, then collect some souvenirs.

My first Friday Protest was... disillusioning. There was a tame, tired routine to it all, an elaborate pantomime where both sides knew exactly what was going to happen and what was expected of each other.

For the Palestinians, it was the Friday afternoon father-and-son activity. It's Fri-day. Ain't got no jo-oh-ob. Time to hide behind the foreigners, throw some stones, shout some slogans, dodge some bullets, breathe some gas, perform for the cameras, make that token effort to keep the Intifada going. Oh, it's raining. Shit. I guess we'll cut it short today and go home for tea.

Familiarity breeds contempt. How many Protests have there been? Fifty? Sixty? All the spontaneity, the seething rage and fervor, has been boiled out of what's become a weekly picnic. You should have seen those whooping, laughing Palestinian lads. This was a lark to them- a game, not a war.

And the Israelis. It's routine for them too. "Oh, here come the Arabs. They'll stop at the razor wire. Yep, that's right. Ok. Now, Shlomo, lob off some tear gas at them. No, wait. We'll let Galit do it this time, because she's a girl. Oh, sorry, Galit, you're a woman. Ok. Pinchas, shoot that silly bastard organizing them in the knee. He knows it's coming. Try not to hit the white guy next to him, or you'll be scrubbing latrines for a month. Listen up, guys. It's going to rain soon. Maybe we can end this earlier than last week. With any luck, we'll... er... discourage them a little, and the rain will do the rest."

And the Japanese. It seems like the Intifada had become something you cross off your Holy Land “Things to See” checklist. “Ok, I’ve swam in the Dead Sea, been to Bethlehem for Christmas, seen the Western Wall… and been shot at by the Israel Defense Forces. Check, check, check, and check.”

Bah, I was cynical that day. Maybe I swallowed too much tear gas.