I know the media is necessary but seeing a bunch of Americans or Europeans who either get flown out here for the event or who live in West Jerusalem (i.e. the Israeli side), never fails to leave me feeling a little ill. They rely heavily on Israeli and Palestinian resources, often never travelling to the West Bank unless the story is "big". This means when people are splattered across the road of lying dying in some hospital full of bullets. When they are not covering these important issues and are not at home, they live in the American Colony Hotel Bar, drinking themselves to death.
Accuracy is also a problem. An article about the end-September clashes and the university reporting it on the Internet in the Daily Telegraph, by renouned war correspondent Robert Fox, had so many errors in it I was shocked. We had 30 Birzeit students dead in the first paragraph (only one was brain dead), "callers" not visitors to the website, the name of the head of the student Fateh movement was misspelled and described students in photographs as "fleeing", which they most clearly were not. If 30 people really had been shot dead, I think the students would still be throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers at the Khammara checkpoint. It may not always be possible, but I am a firm believer that journalists should live in the area they are reporting on.
To be fair, and show it's all not gloom and doom, NBC News did hit the nail on the head the day after this. Martin Fletcher, their reporter, said:
"The Palestinians have only about 3% of the West Bank -- that's eight towns. Israel controls all the rest. But within a year Israel must hand over more land. The Palestinians expect about another 70%. The Israelis can give as little as they want. Under the peace agreement Israel ALONE can decide how much land it needs to safeguard 130 settlements scattered throughout the West Bank. Today the Palestinians are rejoicing in Hebron. But as the peace talks get tougher there won't be so much to celebrate."
Shopkeepers on the main roads were all issued with a disgustingly-coloured lime green paint by the Balaadiyah ("Municipality"), with instructions to paint their shopfronts this uniform colour to welcome Arafat when he came to town. The economy may be terrible, the settlements may be still there, the closure preventing people from moving between the different Palestinian areas and into Israel for work, but at least as people drive down the streets, they will look nice. Great.
The graffiti being painted out was against the occupation, with more recent opposition to the Palestinian Authority also evident. This form of communication which for many years served as the newspapers and leaflets of political activism in the West Bank is one of the things that will soon be relegated to history. Meanwhile, Hebron is turning green.
Palestinian children in Hebron, in common with the Ramallah redeployment, manifest the fascination of the gun culture that exists here. For years, a gun meant power, and kids crowded round every policemen to look at and touch his gun. The Palestinian police here were a dour lot, not smiling a whole lot. I guess they have an inkling of what they're getting in Hebron and, more significantly, that the people have an inkling of what they are getting in the Sulta ("Authority").
It promises to be interesting, watching Hebron. Seeing the Islamic nature of the town, the Palestinian Authority had better tread carefully. Alienating any of the big families that run the city would be a bad mistake. Lots of Hebronites are more than just interested in guns, they own them. With the settlers thrown into the mix, one imagines the whole area as being a kind of zoo*, where every type of animal can be seen. Unfortunately, not all of the cage doors are locked and some of the warning signs have fallen off the walls, leaving you not quite sure if everything is as safe as the ice-cream stands and childrens' swings suggest.