In Bethlehem, things seem quiet, at least today. Over near the biblical matriarch Rachel's Tomb, the scene of violent confrontations during the last few days, the street is littered with rocks. We spot a collection of children on a grassy area nearby, throwing stones at unseen soldiers. It's a scene I have witnessed many times before but one that never fails to remind me that the acceptance of any peace process's terms is ultimately not in the hands of the signers of accords in Washington and Cairo.
The bombing in Tel Aviv is still rattling through my mind like a freight train. What, if anything, will it mean to these protests? Will it distract the media from the mountain? It's mindboggling that people here believe that blowing themselves up will secure justice for their people when you look at the short term consequences of their actions.
While these events are going on, disillusionment with the performance of the Palestinian Authority is all-pervasive. While all this mess continues, corrupt officials make money out of kickbacks from Western aid and nationalised monopolies, and ministers talk contentedly into their mobile phones while being chauffeured around in their new Mercedes with VIP passes granting them access to the parts of the country where other Palestinians cannot travel.
Nizar Kabbani, the well-known Syrian poet, wrote a poem in a different era that reads like a prophetic echo of all this; corrupt Arab governments and the PLO leadership during the lazy years of its exile. What we have today is another version of that:
Like mussels we sit in cafes
one hunts for a business venture
one for another billion
and a fourth wife
and breasts polished by civilisation.
One stalks London for a lofty mansion
one traffics in arms
one seeks revenge in nightclubs
one plots for a throne, a private army,
and a princedom.
Ah, generation of betrayal
of surrogate indecent men,
generation of leftovers,
we’ll be swept away -
never mind the slow pace of history -
by children bearing rocks.
The 100 children here today are involved in a cat and mouse game with the Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police. Another way of putting it would be that these 100 children have about 50 Palestinian policemen and 50 Israeli soldiers running around all afternoon trying to control them. The Israeli soldiers are holed up in a Muslim cemetery and the kids every now and then tear off around the Palestinian police to run to the boundaries of the cemetery and throw stones.
During a quiet point, we wander round the side of the graveyard and photograph the soldiers through a side fence. I look through my telephoto at a soldier and see him aiming at me (below), despite the fact that I am standing by myself, with no stonethrowers even within the 300 meters line of sight I have in every direction. Click image for wider angle (91K).
I therefore take three photos of him instead of one to let him know that I am not intimidated. An old woman (pictured below) walks down the road with groceries on her head. She stops by the Palestinian police line to tell them off, "Why are you stopping the kids throwing stones? Let them throw stones!"
I meet Khader, from the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, who is standing in the right of the picture above. We laugh at the fact that we always meet at such events. JMCC offers services to the local and international press here, and usually has a good bird's eye view of events. Khader reckons that it is going to quiet down. I'm not so sure yet. I hassle him to finish the JMCC website with me, so it can be put on line. "After the clashes die down," he says, smiling. This project has remained unfinished for way too long. "Yeah, right!" I say to him.
The kids are off again. The Palestinian police throw up their hands in dismay. We run over to where the kids are throwing and crouch behind a wall. The Israelis respond with plastic-coated metal bullets that elicit sharp puffs of white memorial stone and teargas, shooting the latter in completely the wrong place - behind the kids and in the gardens of nearby homes (below).
The kids respond by picking up the hissing canisters and throwing them back into the graveyard. One Israeli soldier gets trapped by the gas and is forced to run away through it and retreat. Everyone cheers and laughs. There is a lull in the rocks and gas and the Palestinian police move in, chasing the kids back out of stone-throwing range.
Some kids don't want to go, and the Palestinian police begin to push them roughly and kick them. Kifah points this out and tells me to go photograph. Some older teenager gets in my way, shouting "Mamnoah!" ("It is forbidden!"). I stop photographing for a few seconds and turn to face him, asking, "Who are you?" in Arabic.
"Shurta! Police!" he shouts, in both languages. I am pissed off at being harassed by this kid (who very well may be working for the police) because he doesn't want me filming any possible Palestinian police brutality. I wave my press card until he sees it, wait until he focuses back on my now-raging eyes, and tell him forcefully, "Ehkee ma'a Yasser Abed Rabbo, yazalamee!" ("Go speak to Yasser Abed Rabbo [head of the Ministry of Information that issues press cards], man!").
It's like I have hit him on the head with a club. He stands there, stunned, not knowing what to do. Judging by the expression on his face, he probably thinks that Yasser Abed Rabbo personally ordered me to come down and film today. I leave him standing there, file the success away for later use, and head off after the policeman pushing back the kids. The kids aren't too bothered. They know they'll be back later.
Meanwhile, we're getting wasted by the teargas. The kids are all laughing and clowning around (pictured right, click for 87K enlargement). Some come up to us and offering lemons and onions, whose smell seems to dissipate much of the effect of the gas. They are having a great time. I ask a kid, "Which is better? Onions or lemons?" He affects an 'I've-seen-it-all' voice, shaking his head wisely and saying, "Onions are good. Lemons are also good. Hey, they're all good!"
The kids are now going off down a side road, back onto the main road in front of Rachel's Tomb, which they block with portabins.
They smash loose stone slabs from a building site to make rocks, walking with purpose towards the Israeli position near Rachel's Tomb. I get an intense photo of one teenager (pictured left), his face smouldering with anger.
Down near the barriers where the Israelis are, the place looks like a warzone, with broken rocks carpetting the ground, rolls of barbed wire, and portable barricades. I guess that few tourists will be visiting Rachel's tomb today.
To some extent Bethlehem's Palestinian residents share the same problem as their neighbours in Hebron, although to a lesser degree. In Hebron, militant religious settlers live right in the center of a town populated by 120,000 Palestinians, a recipe for trouble if ever there was one. Although Rachel's Tomb isn't in the center of Bethlehem, it is within the city limits, and draws many of the militant religious settlers that live in the settlements surrounding Bethlehem. The tomb is considered a Jewish religious site under the Oslo accords and is afforded Israeli army protection. The resulting presence of armed occupation soldiers in Bethlehem therefore invites tension into the city. This is why clashes about issues affecting Palestinians on a national level usually start in the more severe melting pot of Hebron and move to Bethlehem before spreading to the rest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile the kids have evaded the Palestinian police by taking routes behind buildings to get closer to the 'frontline' near the tomb, but eventually the Palestinian police catch up with them and manage to contain them. No more will happen today. We go home.