Despite the fact that it's Saturday, we're back at work. Birzeit University (pictured left) has its weekend on Friday and Sunday, for the Muslim and Christian staff and students. Personally, I always have hoped that when we finally make peace with Israel we'll celebrate Shabbat on Saturday as well. In Palestine, at least at Birzeit, the four-day working week is a distinct possibility.
Rumors that the police of the Sulta ("Authority" - the shortened version of Sulta Wataneeyyah Falistineeyah or "Palestinian National Authority") have opened fire at Israeli troops in Hebron, just like last September. Adli (pictured right) - who also works in the PR office at Birzeit - asks if I want to go back tonight with him, check it out and crash over. I agree. I have visited Hebron with Adli many times before, the last during the redeployment on 17 January 1997. Seeing the clashes in different parts of the country gives you a good overview of the situation and sense of how it will work out. I believed that it was going to escalate. I was later to find out - unfortunately - how true this was.
The drive through Wadi An-Nar affords me the sixth or seventh opportunity to photograph this amazing road, with the compiled results and enlargements available on the next page. I'm still not - unlike Adli - sick of it. U2 are playing "Helter Skelter" on the car stereo. Adli likes music a lot and knows every word of the English songs he likes, unlike me, something that makes me smile. It's very easy, as a visitor pointed out once, to forget that Adli is Palestinian.
Adli gives me a guided tour of the settlements on the way - Pisgat Ze'ev (pictured above) and Ma'ale Adummim (pictured below). Both are actually whole towns in their own right and roll on for miles, Israel's castration of northern Jerusalem from the West Bank. Abu Ghnaim is the last hole to be plugged.
The closer we get to Hebron, the foggier it gets, as we pass over the hills surrounding the town. We pass through Sureif, the village from which the Tel Aviv cafe bomber originated from. It is, of course, under curfew and during the next few weeks we would see massive Israeli actions in the village. Tonight, a jeep sits at the entrance, its rotating blue light shedding eerie beams and shadows in the fog. This is one of the coldest areas in the West Bank. A last checkpoint before we arrive, which we drive around to save time, and we arrive at Adli's home.