Some of the first things I witnessed take place after the Palestinians entered the Police Station were scenes like this. All traces of the former caretakers - in this case a sticker on the door in Hebrew - were systematically being removed.
The two guys here seemed to find it funny. It reminded me of those theraputic plate smashing stalls at the fair. When I started to photograph them they started giggling like two kids and asked me to make sure I got a good photo.
Right and Below: The evening of the redeployment saw Palestinians visiting the former prison in Ramallah. Families and their kids turned out in force to the latest attraction. It was an incredible atmosphere, almost surreal, and people were milling around inside pretty aimlessly, simply because they could.
If you had lived in Ramallah prior to the Israeli redeployment, and had experienced the oppressive atmosphere of military occupation, these scenes would have been unimaginable to you. When Gaza was handed back to the Palestinians in May 1994, a nightly sundown to sun-up curfew was lifted for the first time in seven years. A whole generation of children had grown up without being able to walk on the beach as the stars came out, trapped inside their crowded houses. Imagine the psychological change that the end of that curfew brought.
Many internationals working in Ramallah at the time began suffering from a new strain of White House Handshake Syndrome, a malady that fills the sufferer with amounts of optimism reaching such levels of toxicity so as to affect normal brain operation. I couldn't take my eyes off all the guns.
I spotted the "Israeli Prisons Authority - Ramallah" sign (left) and figured it wouldn't be too long before Palestinian Authority officials did (right).
After years of living with a foreign authority in control of your hometown, with its soldiers speaking bad Arabic or Hebrew at you on the streets and detaining and beating people in this very prison, I am sure it felt good to remove these symbols. Especially I imagine, for those who had been detained here in the tents section of the Ramallah prison compound, 50 yards opposite to this sign.
Of course, after bashing away for a while at the plastic sheet, the two policemen discovered that it slid out, but - hey - that wasn't the point!
Later that night I slipped home. My housemate Ann's mother and sister were visiting for Christmas. At some point this morning, after working out that redeployment was imminant, I had 'disappeared' into the crowds armed with camera, offering apologies. As it turned out, they had had a great day, wandering around and getting into the whole festival of it all.