At around 8:00pm, while sitting at home with a couple of friends, the sound of literally tens of weapons firing live ammunition broke out in the centre of Ramallah. Running into the street, it became obvious that the centre of things was somewhere on Sharia' an-Nahda, more commonly known as 'Police Station Road'.
I ran out of the house down a side street with an international student studying at Birzeit, and find an apartment block roof near to the police station. I don't want to walk out into the street, obviously a foreigner, trying to film some internal Palestinian craziness. Previous experience has taught me that people in that situation can get very hostile. We find a doorway. I grab my friend, who looks like he is about to walk round the corner into the middle of it. At this point it is definitely safer on the roof.
On the way up the stairs, an old woman comes out of her apartment into the corridor, looking scared. "What's going on?" she asks. "I don't know," I tell her, "There's police shooting at each other and who knows what is going on, it's like a small civil war."
"No way!" she says, "Unbelievable!" She goes back into her apartment and shuts the door. We get onto the roof. There is so much shooting. Getting near the edge is a little scarey. It's like a war down there. Automatic weapons fire is tearing up the streets of Ramallah. I see Palaestinian riot police with batons beating people and dragging them away. I film uniformed and plain-clothed security forces shooting down the streets (see image strip on right).
One policeman is telling another to shoot in the air not straight down the street and gets impatiently brushed off. [click for streaming or download (50K, shift click in Netscape) of 18 seconds of RealVideo - sound not available. A longer (358K) zip file with slightly unsync-ed sound is available here.]
I hear someone, saying something about "photographers". Bad scene, have I been seen? I look down to check out what is going on, if anyone can see that I am up here. I'll take shots of the Israelis and Palestinians shooting without thinking about personal safety too much. Hey, it's their trip. But if Palestinians are shooting at each other, I'm not protected by the usual norms any more. In these situations you feel glad to get any footage or photos. Down on the streets below, they are beating and smashing the cameras of photographers.
One Palestinian friend was nearer the absolute centre of town, the Manara, where the trouble had spread to:
"The first thing I saw," she said, "was four guys restraining a policeman, saying to him, 'Calm down, you're a policeman. You must respect the uniform you are wearing.' The policeman, trying to push them off, shouted back, 'I don't care if I'm a policeman or not, I am going home to get all of my guns and shoot every one of those sons of whores.'"
"In the Manara I could still hear the shooting near the police station. There were a bunch of guys with guns, not in uniform, trying to push people away. Suddenly a bunch of shebab began running from the Police Station Road down Main Street. A bunch of riot police, that everyone was calling Kuwat Khassa ("Special Forces") began chasing them. Every time they heard something they would stop and chase off in another direction."
"Fifteen riot police with batons ran into this shop and pulled out this young guy - about 18 years old - and all of them started beating the shit out of him with their batons and started dragging him towards the Manara. One of the police, really tall, looking like an officer, walked into me."
"He said, 'Go away from here'. I told him, 'I'm an observer, I work for the United Nations.' I grabbed his uniform sleeve and asked him, 'why are you wearing this uniform, you're not acting like a policeman? You can't just pull somebody out of a shop and start beating him. Have some respect for your uniform.' He asked me if I had a camera and I told him I didn't. 'Until you have a camera and can take pictures of this, keep your mouth shut and your eyes closed.' I told him, 'There are laws against this and you are the people supposed to be following them,' I told him. 'Go home, it's better for you. You don't know what you are talking about.'"
It turns out that all this began because of a football game (That's 'soccer' for Americans) between the two Palestinian teams of Al-Am'ari refugee camp (on the edge of Ramallah towards Jerusalem) and the Silwad district in Jerusalem, a few kilometers away.
At the game a kid supporting Silwad starts making rude noises at the Al-Am'ari team after a bad play. A member of the Palestinian intelligence, from Al-Am'ari, started to hit the kid. As the kid is following the golden rule of live football spectating and is standing in the middle of supporters from his own team, he gets vindicated when they beat up the Al-Am'ari Intelligence guy. He has a walkie-talkie and calls friends from the Intelligence and tells them that he got beaten up and needs help.
They come and are surprised because the guys from Silwad have overheard and have blocked the road with stones and whatever "like in the Intifada" between Al-Am'ari Camp and the center of Ramallah, a kilometer's distance. After that, the Intellegence guys, seeing the road, call for help from the Ramallah police, saying that there is a fight in Al-Am'ari camp because of a football match.
A couple of patrols go down. The road is blocked and hundreds of guys from Silwad throw stones at them. The police leave and go back to the station. Some Silwad guys, having had some fun but not enough, come to Ramallah and began throwing stones at the Ramallah Police Station. The Ramallah police, not knowing what was going on, came out and started shooting at anyone nearby. Palestinian youths in the streets started throwing stones back at the Ramallah police, who started shooting at and beating everyone in sight.
Another Palestinian friend told me:
"There was lots of shooting. When we got to the corner of Police Station Road, people didn't dare to go around it. I went round to see who was shooting at whom. Policemen and armed people in civilian clothes were shooting at people in the street. The way they dealt with it was unbelievable. It looked like they were waiting for this and wanted to beat the shit out of people. Like they felt they had had all this training and no opportunity to use it."
"I found out later that some guy had come and shot at the police station. Those inside went out. They didn't know shit about what was happening. They didn't know what was happening. As far as they were concerned, everyone in the streets were involved. They began shooting everywhere in the streets."
"When I saw this I couldn't sit there and just watch, as I am a big mouth! The first thing I said when I saw them kicking the shit out of people who were just watching what was happening was, 'You guys, if you feel shame about what's going on, it's better not to do it than to kick people out of the place so they can't see what you're doing."
"This was the first thing I said and it was enough to piss off some policemen. When the police started shooting again there were still kids around everywhere. Three or four children were injured by live ammunition in the arms and legs. Policemen were injured by stones. They were dragging away people, people who lived and worked in the area, and the police didn't give them a chance to explain what was happening. And they were beating them!"
"I was shouting, 'It's amazing how easily your hands get on guns and you start shooting, and you are shooting at kids and passers-by! You can't do that!' I finished by saying to them, 'I wish you had the courage to do this in some other situation', having in mind and making it very clear that I meant at the Israeli occupation soldiers and not Palestinian civilians. I was basically implying that he was a collaborator."
"Then one of the riot policemen began to attack me. He had a Kalashnikov in his right hand and a baton in his left. I was standing there in flip flops because I live nearby and had come to see what was going on. He charged towards me and attacked me! I grabbed his baton as I saw it coming towards my head. He was pushing me. People are running all around in panic. I found myself being pushed back. Other people were being attacked as well. The police were shouting at us, 'Your mothers' cunts! We don't want to see you around here! Get lost! We don't want to see one of you brothers of whores here.' Eventually, I don't know how, I got away from him. My T-shirt was ripped and I was bleeding on my back."
My friend, the first quoted above, described how they were getting people to clear the area:
"They were saying to shopkeepers, 'If you don't close I'll shoot!' One guy in civilian clothes was tapping people on the shoulder with his pistol, telling them to go home. He did it to me. I told him, Shoo?! Mamnoah tajowal zay al-yahood?! Momnoah awa'if honn? ("What?! It's 'forbidden to go out' like with the Israelis?! It's forbidden to stand here?" - Mamnoah tajowal or "Forbidden to go out" was the phrase the Israelis used to announce curfews when I first arrived in 1994 and they still occupied the town.) He looked at me like he wanted to kill me..."
Having freaked myself out enough on the roof, I headed to the Manara, to hear a Palestinian policeman telling people to go home. Everyone who has anything to do with the Palestinian Authority police and security branches at this point are driving around in official jeeps, pistols out and waving around, like we're watching Rambo. Actually that would make a good diary entry sometime. How the most popular video rentals in Ramallah are films starring Stallone, Van Damme, Schwarzneger and Segal. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.
I watch what is going on from a seventh story restaurant window with a perfect bird's eye view. The waiter asks what we want. We order two teas with mint. I film a little as the governor Abu Firaas turns up down below, keeping to the safety of the Manara, surrounded by 10-15 security men. Everywhere he goes, talking urgently on a mobile phone, they follow. From above, it's almost funny. By this time, a waiter in the restuarant has asked me politely to stop filming.
"The police asked us," he says and points at the street below, "a photographer down there had his camera broken." In the restaurant, everyone carries on smoking their arguilis (waterpipes filled with sweet tabacco), someone puts some music on, and only we are left checking out the street below.
Policemen are pointing their rifles at local residents watching from their balconies telling them to go back inside. When one family is slow to comply, a group of police charge off upstairs (below, highlighted).
I'm a little disturbed by all this. I tell my friend, the international student, "There have been lots of fights between the various security apparatuses before in Ramallah, and between groups of people, but not usually with any real shooting. What happened tonight has never happened before.
So many bullets. There must be people dead after tonight. I can't see how there couldn't be people dead after tonight. All the shooting, straight down streets. I want to talk to an ambulance driver before we go home."
After we pay and leave, I asked an ambulance driver how many people had been taken to the hospital. "It's forbidden for us to talk," he said. "What?!" I asked him. "It's forbidden for us to talk." I stare at him in disbelief.
The grocery store owner near my house greets me as I walk by. "It was all about a football match," he tells me, smiling. At this point, I haven't heard the story. I laugh, thinking he's joking. Later, I find out that he wasn't.
The image in my mind, from the first roof, of Palestinians shooting at Palestinians down Ramallah city streets is juxtaposed in my mind next to a stupid copper who couldn't keep his temper under control at a football match. And, as the streets welcome the night, I know somewhere deep inside, that Ramallah has changed somehow. Maybe just for me, maybe not.
At the time of writing and posting this diary newsflash, a friend comes by after buying food in the centre of town. He reports that he saw a white jeep going round and round the center of Ramallah with a huge 30mm machine gun mounted on the roof, held by a guy standing in the back door.
