bil'in friday

Video coming soon. Stupid non-Mac-compatible camera.

The first day after the delegation is officially over is a Friday, and a few of us who are still around go out to the protest in Bil'in. The residents of Bil'in hold a weekly nonviolent demonstration to protest the confiscation of the village's agricultural land by the Apartheid Wall. While Bil'in is far from the only village that holds these nonviolent protests, they've been at it for over five years and have become one of the more famous.

We manage to find a cab driver with a big enough vehicle to fit all of us, but then realize he doesn't really know how to get there. This is not helped by the fact that many Palestinian towns and villages are not marked on Israeli road signs. Thank God someone has one of those handy maps we got from UN OCHA showing every road and movement obstruction in the West Bank! We arrive in plenty of time to meet the demonstration at the assembly point across from the Bil'in Popular Committee headquarters.

There are not too many internationals in the crowd today, but there is a good crew of Israelis. Israeli activists--mostly young anarchists, with a few old lefties mixed in--participate in this and many other of the Friday demonstrations every week. Of course the vast majority of the crowd is Palestinians, from Bil'in and other places in the West Bank. We see some folks we recognize from Nablus.

The march out of the village is spirited despite the ungodly heat. The aim of every week's demonstration is to march through the gate in the wall and onto Bil'in's village land. I don't know when they last made it through. The gate is at the end of a narrow path on top of a steep, rocky hill, giving the Israeli army the high ground, the most favorable position, and us the least.

Sometimes the soldiers hang back a little but this time they're ready to meet us, lined up in two rows in front of the gate, in full riot gear with tear gas launchers at the ready. It's hot and they want to get this over with quickly.

Because none of us have taken the nonviolent resistance training workshop offered by the Bil'in Popular Committee, we're advised to stay at the back of the demonstration. There's a bit of a stand-off, that tense pre-melee dance that goes on whenever the unarmed side is daring the armed side to attack. Some kids skitter up the scrubbly embankment near Bassem's grave and pick up rocks. Demonstration organizers are up at the front in a second, trying to convince the kids to put down the rocks. Many people consider rock-throwing, a tradition from the First Intifada, to be within the spectrum of nonviolent resistance when the other side has live ammunition, but they're still trying to stop them, determined the soldiers should not have any excuse even though they don't need one.

Meanwhile the front of the demonstration has pushed right up against the riot shields of the first line of soldiers. Many times there are internationals at the front of the demonstration but this week it's all Palestinians, which means the response is expected to be quick and harsh. After five years of confronting soldiers, these people aren't scared of shit. They're primed, on their toes, donning bandannas, keffiyahs and gas masks, waiting for the skirmish to begin. Some of the shebab are laughing at us, hanging out in the back, sending us friendly challenges to come up to the front with them. Other people are looking out for us, giving us advice as we're obviously newbies. Someone passes out cut onions, to counter tear gas inhalation. "Remember to look up," a young guy reminds us, gesturing at the sky. Tear gas canisters fly hundreds of meters, get scalding hot, and contain an explosive charge to disperse the gas. Even if you're not directly targeted you can be injured if one hits you or lands close by.

People have lots of tips, but there's only one instruction you really need to remember. "When they fire the tear gas, run."

And all of a sudden, they do. I have enough time to hear the person next to me say "Run," then all hell breaks loose. I can hear the sharp cracks of tear gas canisters going off somewhere behind me; I shoot a glance back toward the gate and see the area where the kids were gathering rocks is already thick with those sinister white trails of descending gas.

It turns out run means RUN and soon the majority of the crowd is sprinting up the path back toward the village. You have to be quick because sometimes the soldiers are right behind you. Young men from the front of the demonstration have already made it all the way to the back, some carrying their coughing, choking friends between them. How the hell did they run so fast? I guess if you do this every week for five years you get in pretty good shape. I am not in pretty good shape and it's taking all my concentration to keep moving without tripping, colliding with someone or passing out. It's so hot it's like running through soup. I'm secretly glad we stayed in the back because I don't think I could physically have run the distance from the front to safety. I can't imagine having the wherewithal to be directing the action or helping someone to safety right now; it's all I can do to take care of myself.

Another round of loud cracks--five, six, ten at a time. I look away from the path just long enough to see a bright white cloud of tear gas blooming on the ground just feet behind me. We must be several hundred meters away from the soldiers at this point. The wind is not in our favor, blowing all the gas back toward the village. I get one good waft of it--hot, acrid, stinging, burning the skin, eyes and throat. It seems harsher than the tear gas I've encountered at protests in the Americas. Maybe I've never been this close to it or maybe the Israelis have their own extra-evil mix. I remember to breathe through my keffiyah but one whiff is enough to give me a pack-a-day-smoker's rasp the rest of the way back to the village.

Some weeks there's more back-and-forth between the soldiers and the protesters, but this Friday when the intense heat makes fainting and respiratory problems more likely, the majority of protesters head back to the village after one round of confrontation. A few hard-core shebab stick it out by the gate, slinging rocks at the soldiers in the thick of the tear gas. No one's going to stop them once the gas starts flying.

Afterward we're all invited to Iyad Burnat's house for tea and recuperation. He looks gently amused by our sweat-soaked dishevelment. "That was mild!" he says with a grin. Sometimes the soldiers chase people all the way back into the village and fire tear gas into the houses. "My daughter knew the smell of tear gas when she was one month old," he says. He shows us a spent canister of the kind the army was firing today. This kind can travel 500 meters.

Iyad has that quintessential Palestinian mix of warmth, humor, stubbornness and dignity, always with a little bit of sadness underneath. Bassem's martyr poster hangs on the living room wall, along with a picture of a relative who's served eight years of a nine-year sentence in Israeli prison. Iyad discusses a new flanking maneuver they've been trying out to get around the soldiers and up to the gate. He talks about it like a military operation, which I guess it sort of is, except only one side is armed.

Iyad's wife brings out Bil'in handicrafts for sale and serves up cup after cup of sweet Palestinian mint tea. Meanwhile their kids pile into the living room, eager to entertain us. The girl can sing and one of the boys dances, a bundle of spastic energy. Iyad seems like he'd be a great dad, someone who'd raise his kids to be kind and always hold their heads up. I think about the fearful thoughts he must have sometimes, about how his kids will be made to pay for his being a leader of the resistance. At the same time it's so obvious that this is what he's fighting for. This is the only reason people who live here need to go out and face the soldiers week after week. And after I've caught my breath and drunk some tea, I'm ready to go back and do it again too.