Nilin certainly felt like a war zone as we arrived in the village under the afternoon sun. Eyes gazed at us through holes in crumbling concrete structures as we made our way to the center of town, where the crowd would soon gather following afternoon prayers. It had been months since I had last been here, but the poverty and anguish were just as striking as the first time I had arrived. We were here to take part in the weekly demonstration against the wall which Israel is building through the town, protecting the illegal settlement colonies on the outskirts and cutting the poor farming community off from the pastures and fields which sustains it. It is a common tale among the Palestinian villages along the ever-expanding Israeli border, under attack since the nakba in 1948. The nakba, (the Arabic word for “catastrophe”) was a deliberate military ethnic cleansing campaign in which the Israeli army drove 70% of the Arab population of Palestine from their homes and herded them onto ever-shrinking reservations in Gaza and the West Bank, just 22% of historical Palestine. Today, bulldozers demolish houses and other structures, the illegal Jewish settlement colonies creep ever closer to the center of town, and now the planned route of the wall would permanently annex much of this lush, green land to Israel. As the settlement colonies fill in behind the wall, the situation is made irreversible and prospects for a just, fair peace diminished exponentially. Every week, Palestinians and a dedicated group of international activists gather here to peacefully demand that Israel stop its sixty-year long ethnic cleansing program, stop construction of the illegal wall, and finally implement the two-state solution which the US and Israel have been unilaterally blocking for over thirty years.
As we proceed down the main road through town, shopkeepers smile from behind store counters, peddling shawarma and fallafel, beckoning to us to relax with a tall, hot glass of chai ma khaleeb. It sounds good, but we respectfully decline. We have somewhere to be, and so we continue our stroll toward the town center. We reach it before long, and find a few chairs outside of a decrepit wooden structure that passes for a restaurant to take a brief rest in the shade with some Arabic coffee while we wait for the crowd to gather. It is a beautiful day; the bright blue skies overhead punctuated by fluffy white clouds, relaxed conversations among the villagers, pats on the back, smiles, and the familiarity of lifelong companions in the small town. Kids kick a soccer ball back and forth carelessly into the air under strings of green Hamas flags, casually blowing in the lukewarm breeze and shimmering in the midday sun. It was hard to believe that this was the frontline of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the West Bank. Countless towns and villages just like Nilin were forever wiped from the face of the earth, and more tragically from the pages of history in 1948 by the advancing Jewish army, which burned and demolished communities that had seen hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of history in order to make way for the new chosen people. The new Jewish state, Israel, was built on the ruins of that society, whose names and places are not found on any map or mentioned in any book. Wealthy Jewish children in modern, chic urban centers like Tel Aviv are perhaps unaware of what once stood under their feet, the proud families and traditions, the rich culture and society that was brushed away. By contrast, the villagers in Nilin are certainly aware, and so they struggle against becoming erased and pushed away, transformed into nationless nobodies and permanent refugees like five million others. To discuss the nakba in the past-tense is to seriously misunderstand what has happened and is happening, for the catastrophe of 1948 is ongoing every single day without pause, as Israel seeks to destroy not just the modest physical structures which Palestinians have constructed, but the very idea that there is, ever was, or ever will be such a place as Palestine. With grotesque violence and shameless brutality they are trying to grind an entire society and people into the dirt, to make them disappear, forgotten forever. Today in Nilin is just one more day in the battle to prevent that from happening.
Soon, oddly-dressed activists from around the world, sporting peculiar haircuts and even stranger hair colors, begin to gather in the center square, brandishing expensive photography equipment and nervously chatting and glancing around as we await the start of the march. I sit and think of what it must be like to live here, to have lost everything, to be totally defeated while the most wealthy and powerful block any solution, any remedy. No dignity, no rights, just endless pain and tears, and sinking, crushing poverty. Before long, a man begins shouting in Arabic into a bullhorn. I have no idea what he is saying, but I understand that it is time to line up and begin the march. Emotions run high as we gather together, working ourselves into a frenzy, shouting allahu akbar. Some clutch Hamas flags, outlawed by the US/Israeli-backed Palestinian Authority, in protest against the perceived collaboration of Palestinian President Abu Mazen in the dispossession of the Palestinian people and the suppression of dissent to Israeli policy. He has proceeded with endless negotiations and talks, expanding meaningless bureaucracies that do nothing but line the pockets of his wealthy cronies and building up huge militia forces which harass and suppress his own people to ensure Israel's security, while the Israeli machine works day and night without pause to wipe Palestine – and the Palestinians – from the map. As if to illustrate this point, militiamen from the Palestinian Security Forces casually sit on a second-story balcony overlooking the square, laughing and smoking cigarettes as the people of Nilin prepare to confront the Jewish colonists and the army that protects them just outside the village on their own, abandoned. Oddly (or perhaps not to those familiar with the conflict) it seems as if they have no dog in this fight. Palestinian flags also poke from the top of the crowd, thrust passionately into the air by a few of the younger children. They remind me that Israel will never succeed fully in its objectives; no matter how much they attack, suppress, destroy, and terrorize, they cannot destroy Palestine. Children who have never known anything but dispossession and occupation, who have been prevented from even entering the Palestinian capital city of Jerusalem, who have never seen the holy Dome of the Rock or prayed at the al Aqsa mosque still believe, still hope, still wave their flag. It is touching beyond words, powerful beyond my limited capacity to feel or know. I run ahead of the crowd, snapping photos and looking ahead for the Israeli soldiers.
Before long, I see soldiers to our left forming a line and preparing to stop us from advancing any further down the road toward the settlement colony. I rush ahead to meet them, camera out to capture what is sure to be a dramatic and powerful moment, the confrontation between the occupier and the dispossessed, the attacker and the victim. Yet the eyes of the thieves are not cold and steely, they do not hate. The soldiers we encounter, barely 18 years old, clutch their rifles to their chests as they move to block the road, looking as pathetic and timid as the children they still are. The crowd moves timidly toward the soldiers, hands in the air shouting “shalom, shalom,” indicating our nonviolent intentions and using the Hebrew word for peace. A man from the village bursts through the crowd and lifts his shirt to expose his chest, shouting at the soldiers in what sounds like a peculiar mix of Hebrew and Arabic and pointing at his heart. He seems to be insisting that the soldiers shoot him, as they did a 10-year old boy from the village the week before. He was the third this month to die in the weekly demonstrations. The man then lies at the feet of the soldiers, shouting and crying the tears of a defeated and broken man who has nothing left to lose. One of the soldiers lifts a radio to his face, calling in support from the large base near the settlement while another casually tosses a sound grenade into the crowd, causing many to scatter and run as it explodes with a deafening “bang.” Despite the startling sound, I remain near the soldiers along with a few others who have seen this routine before. Young men from the back begin to throw stones at the soldiers with slingshots, which rain down around me, as the crowd grows more timid. I could see a jeep full of reinforcements racing down the dirt road toward us, as the soldiers yell in Hebrew that we are now all in a closed military zone and will be dispersed by force if we do not move. No one does.
The soldier in front, more confident now that the reinforcements have arrived, lowers his gun filled with tear gas towards the crowd and pulls the trigger several times, sending screeching, hissing gas canisters soaring through the air all around me. Suddenly my world is consumed by suffocating, burning smoke. All around me people are falling to the ground, choking and gagging for air. Eyes and throat burning horribly, I try to find a way out of this hell, to freedom, to clarity. Pulling my kuffiya over my face as I stumble helplessly through the thick plumes, I see a woman to my left crouching to the ground and vomiting. I stop to help her, and ask her if she is all right. She nods and answers in French, so I keep moving out of the clouds, the loud explosions of flash-bang grenades behind me and the whizz of gas canisters overhead. Eventually I find a clearing among some olive trees, where I sit for a moment to recalibrate my camera and get ready to go back toward the front. Youths with their kuffiyas wrapped closely around their faces, both to conceal their identities and to grant them some reprieve from the relentless sting of the gas, hurl stones toward in the direction of the soldiers from improvised slingshots while I sit to catch my breath.
I hear gunshots as I walk back toward the village to regroup with some of the other demonstrators, and Red Cross volunteers rush past me with stretcher in hand to pick up the fallen victims. We regroup in the field and start back down the road, snapping photos as rubber bullets zip by and gas canisters explode in front of us. I recall that live ammunition is routinely used by the IDF against demonstrators as well, so there is no telling what lies ahead. I stand in the road, surrounded by chaos, shouting slogans against the occupation and taking photos until the burn of the pepper gas becomes unbearable and forces me to retreat closer to the town along with many of my comrades. I find a seat on a crumbling stonewall alongside the others and light a cigarette, waiting for the next onslaught of gas and gunfire. Before long, a young man with bloodshot eyes comes charging down the dirt path shouting “they are coming; they are coming down the road!” Through my telephoto lens, I can see the jeeps driving from the settlement toward where we were sitting. I get up and start to run along with the others, trying to find some kind of cover from what promises to be a ferocious onslaught.
Shots and explosions ring out as the soldiers disembark from their vehicles and begin to pursue the fleeing demonstrators into the village. We sat on the curb, sweltering in the heat as we watch gas canisters gliding through the air, leaving a trail of white smoke behind them before exploding on the ground. The soldiers are trying to root out the masked boys throwing stones, while most of the internationals recuperated on the edge of town. It had been a few hours, and after a long stretch of seeming inactivity we decided we should get ready to leave before the Israelis totally closed off the town and sealed us inside. We walked back toward the center of town to find a place where we could grab a quick fallafel and a Coke for the road. As we walked toward the center, we heard shots ring out again, followed by several loud explosions. Now the gas canisters were falling on the streets. In disbelief, I looked to my left to see columns of Israeli soldiers jogging neatly into the village from all around us. The bang of stun grenades, screams, ambulance sirens fill the air around me. Shopkeepers close the steel doors over the windows of their stores and take cover as the assault blindsides the city. Shocked by the totally unexpected turn of events, I dash into the rusting, open doorway of one of the many abandoned buildings on the main drag. Once inside, I saw a backdoor swinging open and made for it. Out of nowhere, a well-dressed, middle-aged man with white hair appeared in front of me and said, “welcome, welcome,” frantically gesturing for me to enter his home across the street. Not knowing where else to go, I rushed through the door to find his family huddled together in an outdoor courtyard, the flowers growing all around interrupted only by a spectacular view of the rolling green fields in the back of the village, which extend all the way to the mountains beyond. In the sky, I notice an F-16 refueling in midair.
Fearfully glancing skyward every time we hear the whiz of the gas canisters, which could easily land in the courtyard by passing over the wall, an old woman wearing a hijab and abaya hustled a young boy into the house as the man and I sat eying each other, unable to communicate yet drawn together by our common cause and the hell that had broken loose on the other side of his garden gate. “Magazine?” he asked, pointing to the camera which I clutched with white knuckles in my hand. “No, no,” I tried to explain, it was for myself, but he did not seem to understand so I soon gave up. Within minutes a beautiful woman, whose slender features and sensual feminine complexion were betrayed by her tight-fitting abaya and whose large round eyes were elegantly framed by a bright blue hijab, emerged from the house with a tray of orange juice. Even in such times, with a war going on just outside the door, the graciousness and warmth of Palestinian culture was overwhelming. It simply would not do to have a guest in one's home without providing him with tea, coffee, or juice; so, come hell or high water, it shall be offered. We made a few more attempts at small talk before resigning ourselves to the futility of the effort and listening to the terrified shouts, gunshots, and explosions outside. “Do you think I can make it out the back?” I asked, pointing toward the green field behind the house with my finger. He shook his head slowly, and said, “There is no way here,” then turned to the front and said “very dangerous here,” stating the obvious. I thanked him, but indicated that I would risk it and started walking out the front door. “Go from here,” he said, and pointed down the small road in between the abandoned building I had initially hid inside and his home. “Shukran,” I responded, shaking his hand as I rushed into the chaos and madness outside.
I did not get far. Smoke bombs and gas canisters dropped onto the street I was on, lobbed over the first row of houses on the main road through town. On the main road, I could hear people shouting and running, closely echoed by loud bangs, gunshots, and the sound and pungent aroma of tear gas canisters. I continue walking, driven ahead by the need to find a way out of Nilin sometime that night, racing against the Israeli closure that was undoubtedly coming. As I pressed on amidst the continuing chaos, a scrawny, odd-looking man of about fifty leaned out of a garage door and beckoned me to come inside. “It is not safe out here,” he said, “the soldiers are coming this way.” With that, I disappeared into the garage behind him, slamming the door shut behind me. Inside the garage the man's companion, slightly older than the first, balding, and only slightly less scrawny, sat smoking a cigarette watching Al Jazeera, which was showing Israeli tanks pulling out of Gaza. The brutal slaughter had finally come to a conclusion with a tense unilateral cease-fire two days prior, but that was hardly cause for the residents of Nilin to celebrate. “You want coffee?” he asked, pointing towards a pot that was sitting on top of a makeshift heater. Barely able to speak, I nodded yes, and sat down in a chair in the back of the garage.
The place looked like a squat. Two dirty beds and a few old chairs were sloppily placed in the back of the place, with a television propped up on top of a rickety table. Piles of junk were everywhere – doors, car bumpers, linens and cloth, and various trinkets. I found particularly amusing an old ashtray that was overturned next to the television, a statue of a Rastafarian-looking man sitting in a bathtub smoking a joint. I smiled and pointed to it; my new saviors started laughing, placed it on the table and lit me a cigarette, then brought over my cup of coffee. I took a sip and it was terrible, so I added a heaping portion of sugar to drown the bitter taste. As I sipped on the coffee, the men sat down and eyed me curiously, then finally asked me where I was from in very broken, barely comprehensible English. “From America,” I answered, and the men looked delighted. “Ahhh Amrika! No more Bush,” they said, smiling. One of the men laughed and pointed to his shoe, a reference of Abu Zubaidy, the journalist who had flung his footwear at the visiting President at one of the dozens of ceremonies that have occurred in the years since the war started, supposedly to symbolize the handing over of sovereignty to the people of Iraq. As sound grenades and gunshots punctuated the atmosphere outside, we entered into a sort of game, whereby one of us would mention a politician or world leader and the others would respond with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. As it turns out, the men loved Saddam Hussein for his many social programs, such as universities, hospitals, and other public subsidies, loved Chavez, loved Arafat, hated Abu Mazen, and were as yet unsure about Obama.
Suddenly we heard a series of loud explosions and the rush of gas outside the door. The older man pressed his hand to his lips to be quiet, while the other walked to the door and peered through a small peephole onto the street. He turned around, whispering in Arabic and waving his arms, and rushed frantically back to where we were seated. The other man turned the volume on the television all the way down, and we sat in tense silence for what seemed like an eternity as we heard the soldiers pass by outside, not daring to speak above a whisper. We listened intently, jumping at the slightest sound, while the younger man kept checking through the peephole every few minutes, reporting back to us that the soldiers were still outside. I stared at the door, waiting for the moment when the soldiers would hear us, burst through the door, and nervously and accidentally open fire, killing us all. Or, more plausibly, arrest me, confiscate my camera, and send me back to the US. I sat in the chair, looking at the terrified looks on the faces of the other men, and closed my eyes as another loud explosion rocked the building and the sound of an ambulance screeched by outside. We could hear the soldiers checking the neighboring buildings, walking slowly down the street from door to door.
“The Palestinian people have peace,” the man said, sitting back in his chair, “not like the Israelis.” What an odd thing to say right now, I thought as he opened a secret compartment in his bed and pulled out a large bottle of beer and poured us each a glass. I sat back, took a long drag on my cigarette and a sip of beer, and slowly began to understand what he meant. Somehow, while the world outside had disintegrated into absolute chaos, we sat in an oasis of friendship and quietude. We had created peace for ourselves, while the Israeli soldiers attacked peaceful protestors outside. The beer proved to be far too small, but the generosity of my savior, and the kindness and warmth of the people in the village was overpowering. Yet I was terrified beyond words, unable to think or express myself clearly. What was worse, I had no idea who these people were. Sure, they had been nice to me, but what if one of them was wanted by the IDF for some reason? What if they had a record of political involvement with Hamas, or some other group, which Israel found less than favorable? I would be their accomplice, and I could pay the price for being in their company should the soldiers find us here. “You will have a problem with the soldiers?” the man asked me, wondering how our situations compared with one another. “Yes,” I said, placing my hands behind my back as if I were handcuffed. “Oh god,” the man said, obviously surprised to find that even me, an American, could fall prey to the IDF. “And you have this!” he exclaimed, pointing at my camera. “Give it to me,” he said, gesturing for me to hand him my camera bag. He stashed it behind a pile of junk, swapping it on the table before me with what must have been a thirty-year old film camera. Evidently, I was to pretend that this was my camera in the event the soldiers took me. A good thought, yet with my passport inside my camera bag I would be forced to expose our little trick if the soldiers entered. I decided to say nothing, and just hoped against hope they did not find us.
There is no way of describing the terror I felt. Every time the sound outside would die down for a few moments, leading me to believe that it was all over, a gunshot or explosion, the smell of gas, or the sound of Israeli soldiers and military vehicles just outside the door would convince us to stay inside. After what seemed like an eternity, we heard a car driving down the street blasting Arabic music, and we knew the coast was clear. As I retrieved my camera bag, I struggled to find a way to tell them just how thankful I was for what they had done for me. All I could think of to do was hug them, so I awkwardly embraced each of them before emerging onto the street under the clear blue sky. As I approached the main road, I met a boy of probably nineteen who asked me where I was going, and I told him I needed to get back to Ramallah. “I'll call the bus,” he answered, which arrived almost instantaneously. I hopped in, and we proceeded to drive down the main street back towards the center of town, presumably to pick up others who sought to leave the village in the direction of Ramallah as well. The van was equipped with three small LCD television screens, which were evidently connected to a DVD player in the dash. As we gained speed, the driver removed the innocent Tom & Jerry DVD and replaced it with a disc that contained clips and images from previous protests in the village, including footage of an enraged mob carrying the dead body of a young boy, Ahmed, who had been killed the previous week, through the town. While I became absorbed in the film and the adrenaline coursing through my veins began to subside, a group of young men violently burst from a side street, kuffiyas trailing behind them, shouting wildly; a thick cloud of gas and the sound of gunshots followed closely behind them. The driver accelerated through the center of town towards the main “highway” (for lack of a better term – it was not a highway at all, actually a one-lane, winding road that happens to lead to other villages and, eventually, Ramallah). Before we got there, we saw from a hill a bulldozer lifting rocks and placing them across the road, blocking traffic from leaving the village. Armed soldiers stood in front of the bulldozer, presumably to stop anyone who might be foolish enough to try to drive out anyway. “Ok,” said the driver, cursing in Arabic as he turned the van around, “they block this exit, we go out the other way.”
So we set out back through town, to leave from the back and head back to Ramallah at last. After a ten-minute drive, we began to descend down a large hill – which proved an excellent vantage point to see the same happening from this side. A large bulldozer was lifting boulders, guarded by IDF soldiers who were preventing anyone from challenging the blockage. But our driver would not be outdone. He drove back into the village, and then turned on to an off-road, makeshift dirt path, which lead up the side of a hill toward the highway. Carefully winding the large van around tight, steep corners, while avoiding deep crevasses, we approached the highway slowly, while the driver and the passengers in the front nervously scanned the highway for Israeli patrols that might be passing. Finally, the driver decided to go for it, and he floored the van, driving through a gap where the villagers, providing a much-needed escape in moments such as these, had cut the guardrail. We did not get far, however. Just a few meters ahead, the Israelis had established a roadblock, stopping and checking all passing vehicles with the authority of well-pointed M16 rifles. Our driver hurriedly removed and hid the protest video as he pulled to the side, while I slipped my passport out of my camera case, then kicked the case under the seat and out of view. The soldier knocked on the door, the driver nervously obliged and opened it. As I was sitting in the second row, I held my passport out with the cover showing, revealing to the soldier that I was an American as soon as he stepped on to the van. He glanced at me, and then at the driver, then opened the glove box, tearing wires and other paraphernalia out and spilling it on the floor. Seemingly content, he stepped back off the bus slowly, and waved us on. I wondered what he was looking for in the van's tiny glove box, which was barely large enough to hold the few cigarette lighter electrical plugs, which the driver had stored there. After we were a safe distance away, I reached for my camera bag and replaced my passport in its pouch, sat back, and closed my eyes. I was exhausted, but I couldn't wait to return next week.
Jerusalem is a city which I try to avoid visiting as often as possible. The fault line of every one of the religious, ethnic, and social conflicts in this troubled land, the tension is palpable everywhere you turn. Add to the mix a heaping dose of fanatical tourists bumbling around, maps in hand, Israeli soldiers, and generalized ignorance that it is in fact an occupied city, and perhaps once could understand why it is a difficult place to spend much time.
As the assembly began to break up, those gathered for prayer gathering their belongings while the soldiers, still chuckling and smiling, dragged the barricades they had erected to the side, we slunk our way to the bus station in complete shock. It was right around the corner, and we boarded the bus, paid our fare, and sat in silence for a few minutes. When I again tried to speak, I could feel the tears welling up behind my eyes, trying to burst out. It was a long ride home.
As the assembly began to break up, those gathered for prayer gathering their belongings while the soldiers, still chuckling and smiling, dragged the barricades they had erected to the side, we slunk our way to the bus station in complete shock. It was right around the corner, and we boarded the bus, paid our fare, and sat in silence for a few minutes. When I again tried to speak, I could feel the tears welling up behind my eyes, trying to burst out. It was a long ride home.
