Around midday Saturday I set off for Hebron with a fellow intern, Alex, whose command of Arabic and personal charm both greatly exceed my own. "Settlers' Road 60" is the stretch of pavement one follows to reach the city, and in so doing we passed the village of Beit Omer, which is currently seeing both IDF raids and settler violence. We also passed the settlement of Efrata; it's possible that the recent shooters and stabbers trickled out of there, but most people I speak to assume they came from Hebron, where there is no shortage of disagreeable settlers.

After inhaling delectable cylinders of shawarma Alex and I made our way from the center of H1, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, to the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is guarded by Israeli troops. The transition from the bustling streets of H1 to the ancient Tomb of Abraham felt a bit like leaving a hot, crowded, sweaty party in the living room to visit a sick, frail, pious relative in the attic. (An attic which the guilt-ridden progeny of said ailing relative are desperately trying to renovate.)

IDF truck skids into the Tomb.

While in the Muslim "section" of the Cave—where Dr. Baruch Goldstein sprayed a roomful of worshippers with his M-16 in 1994—I considered how much more keen I might have been to attend mosque as a child rather than church. At the time, my main complaints about the latter were about cold, damp pews and loafers too tight for my feet. Both of those elements are eliminated in the Muslim style: you get a room full of carpets and a no-shoes service. In any event, I think I still would've preferred to be at home watching Thomas the Tank Engine and subsequently end up a heathen. But I suppose we'll never know.

Leaving the Patriarchs' lair and entering the streets of H2, I'm sure that Alex and I underwent the same bewilderment as any visitors to Hebron. We had crossed over into the "sterile zone." The barricaded shops, the abandoned schools, and the glares of the settlers (some all too happy to finger the triggers on their chunky firearms) briefly placed us somewhere other than planet Earth. Eight-hundred illegal residents have turned this section of town—population 30,000—into an urban husk. Walking through the crevices of H2 while the sun beat down, I felt like I'd been placed in an ant farm by a kid who forgot to introduce the lively creeps that creepeth.

Barricaded avenue.

Living in a void did not appear to bother the settlers I came across. What bothered them a lot was seeing a couple of Westerners socializing with Palestinians—the sight of it turned several smiles into scowls. They must learn to mingle.

After a local kid showed us around his neighborhood, Alex and I had tea with a well-dressed, well-spoken shopkeeper named Munir whose company gave me a decent place to start a piece (that I should already be writing) for Isis. In the middle of teatime a brief but noisy fight broke out in front of Munir's shop; an IDF car showed up in the time it took to capture the two photos below. I couldn't tell you what the tussle was about.

Fight breaks out.

Fight broken up.

Soon after tea we shuffled across town to the checkpoint, back to H1. As so often happens, the wall separating the one section of the city from the other looked ugly and stupid. In making conversation, the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint asked me what school dances are like back in the States.

I said that when you're younger, there's very little dancing and it's not that fun; the kids divide into two large groups, and they don't dare leave their respective corners of the room. But pretty soon they grow up, and they learn to mingle.

Feline munching in an abandoned checkpoint post.

I know that this page has been a bit video-heavy the past few days, but a) there's a post coming up on Hebron very shortly and b) this is the most breathtaking interview that I've seen since the days of Messrs Diggler and Brent. Fact.

How does this "interview" impress me? Let me count the ways:

• The utter staginess of the fake launch-party, EPK-style decor. That probably took an entire afternoon to set up.
• Mr. Wilson's slippery grasp of the English language.
• His adherence to the age-old strategy of claiming to have once been "pretty big" in "you know, Eastern Europe" in order to avoid immediate, verifiable exposure as a failed pop star.
• The fact that the best fake-journalist the producers (i.e. Patrice Wilson) could come up with was a brunette version of Amber Rose (linked above).
• The visual evidence that both of these people have been practicing their lines in the mirror for roughly three and a half weeks.
• That Mr. Wilson's definition of success is for one of his label's artists to become the biggest joke on the Internet. That is a novel approach to music marketing.
• Just...just listen to him.

I myself am alright with Yorke & Co's middle-era, though I too subscribe to the OK Computer heresy:




But to the Pablo Honey-haters—try and tell me the following song doesn't tug at the heartstrings.

Yesterday was a giving news day.

• Item 1: Upon walking into the office we learned of a new influx of gun-toting settlers to a village in the Jordan Valley. 
• Item 2: Midday the IDF showed up in a village in Hebron and teargassed a funeral. 
• Item 3: After lunch, a bomb exploded at Jerusalem's central bus station. 
• Item 4: As the sun began to set, I got a call from my editor to write up a story about two youth down the street threatening to set themselves aflame. 

Why might we have received these four stories on the same day? Follow the blood (don't slip):

On March 12th, someone snuck into a home in the illegal Itamar settlement, located in the Samaritan Mountains, and stabbed to death three children and their parents. This has prompted a few instances of retaliation by settlers in Hebron: on Monday one opened fire at a Palestinian funeral in Beit Omar while another stabbed a Palestinaian man in At-Tuwani. I imagine that the settlers in the Jordan Valley are a different face of this same retaliatory movement. They arrived at dawn on Wednesday in a group of 25, armed with rifles, claiming that they didn't want trouble—but they've come to kick the Arab shepards out of their homes.

The IDF showed up shortly after and told all the Arab villagers who've lived there for 15 years to pack up.

Later that day, the IDF saved any settlers the trouble of interrupting another funeral; since there are a wealth of settlements around Beit Omar, the village has seen increasing crackdowns, raids, and general harrassment. The Itamar killings have hardly lifted that fog of paranoia. So:

Earlier in the afternoon on Wednesday, during a woman’s funeral in Beit Omar, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets at mourners leaving one man with slight injuries.

According to Muhammad Awad, spokesman for the National Committee Against the Wall, during the clashes other Israeli soldiers set up a checkpoint at the entrance to Beit Omar and searched civilians resulting in at least three arrests.

This is the right hand of Israeli policy. The left hand—which knows what the right hand doeth—is currently striking Gazans from the air and shelling them from afar. Saturday saw two dead civilians and Tuesday saw four. These attacks are in response to the 50 rockets fired by Hamas and its proxies on March 20th, which made a splash but didn't end up killing or injuring anyone.

Then yesterday an explosion rings out in West Jerusalem. It comes after many rumblings from Palestinian militant organizations about "response to Israeli crimes." But we do not yet know who is responsible for the Jerusalem bombing. One would suspect Islamic Jihad, but they have only praised the bombing, not taken credit. The same goes for Hamas. Praise, no credit. Why has no one taken credit?

I am not yet persuaded to conclude what the editor-in-chief at PNN wrote this morning (that English rendition is mine). I am aware of Israel's resort to false flags in the past—the Lavon Affair, its funding of Hamas during the PLO's heydey—and I've heard rumors that Wednesday bomb was remote-controlled from a cell phone, and that this is wholly foreign to Palestinian terrorist methodology (though I know it isn't to Hezbollah). But I don't know how likely it is that the Israelis wish to be the ones to inaugurate a new era of attacks in Jerusalem after eight years of quiet; by all accounts so far the bomb was hastily placed, and one can imagine the secret service organizing something a bit more impressive. But as usual, in the absence of information, conspiracy theories thrive. I suppose we'll have to stay tuned.

So: Innocent chldren are murdered in Itamar, which spurs other settlers to violence; they are protected by the IDF, which simultaneously knocks off innocents in Gaza; this lands a bomb in Jerusalem, which Hamas praises and Fatah condemns.

And the split between those two parties drives two boys in Bethlehem to threaten self-immolation if reconciliation does not occur.

But by the end of the day, their families talk them down, and the two boys leave the Mosque of Omar with sizzling hearts rather than smouldering skin. And the sun sets on another day in the Holy Land.

Walking up a particularly toilsome hill toward Manger Street, my sometimes-colleague Nathan turned to my editor Ghassan with a slight wheeze:

"I really do hate having to make it up this hill every day."

Ghassan, by all accounts a heftier specimen than Nathan, wasn't breaking a sweat. "Stop smoking, then."

"Yeah," Nathan hesitated as we advanced. "...I'd really rather the hill just went away, though."

After making it to the top we three kings caught a bus to a nearby Syriac Catholic church to cover a local story. This was some kind of procession put on by the church, featuring many of its younger elements dressed in red and white uniform; one troupe sported bagpipes and snare drums, the other tenor and bass drums. And one boy twirled a baton. When we arrived they were all warming up in the parking lot near the church. In the street, police cars lurched in front of the traffic to create space for the kids to march through Manger Street. There were at least five police cars, lights flashing, and four officers on motorbikes. I watched the preparations and held Ghassan's video equipment while he confiscated someone's bagpipe and had his go.

(Bagpipes, like tea, were left over by the British. Not sure for which contribution the Semites are more grateful. I have a memory from when I was very young and made to sit through some festive event that featured bagpipes—they scared the shit out of me. They were simply relentless against the ears. Today, while the kids tuned up for the procession, I saw one boy in the crowd, watching with his family, hand to his ear with a pained look on his face. He wasn't feeling the magic, either.)

Just before the parade began, two spotless black Mercedes pulled up to the curb. Out of one stepped a silver-haried priest wearing an equally spotless black cassock. He exchanged some words with the organizers of the event and then slipped back inside, his chauffeur clicking the door shut. Shortly after, the festivities began and the kids started to thump into the street.

Once underway, the parade looked quite odd. The police cars escorting the procession were blaring their sirens for some reason, which didn't exactly create a soothing polyphony with the shrieking bagpipes. The priests rode along slowly, with their police/aerophone escort. It was a thunderous, pious motorcade. I tagged along with Nathan and Ghassan for a while, but eventually the noisy spectacle spilled onto the curb and into a building where the priests were met with smiles and kisses from some public figures. My working day was over and I bid my boss farewell.

Something that is still happening.

Palestinians in Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Gaza City turned up in the thousands to reject the war for stewardship of Palestine, a war waged by Hamas and Fatah. Many in Palestine, particuarly young people, are evidently sick of having to deal with their nation's historic burden of piss-poor leadership that began with al-Husseini and continues today with Haniyeh and Abbas. On March 15, in the streets of these cities, protestors from GYBO and Palestine For Us repudiated that leadership and called for national unity via a Palestinian National Council.

In Gaza's central square, Hamas swiftly silenced that call.

On the day, members of Hamas shoved their way through the Unity demonstrators, who had been camped out for days, and hoisted the party's flag and chanted the party's slogans. They even went to the trouble of setting up louder speakers to drown out any attempt by the Unity people to carry out their demonstration.

Tell me that paragraph doesn't read like a dispatch from Ceaușescustan.

So the demonstrators moved to Kateebe square. Then, PNN reports, things got worse:

During the day, a strange phenomenon took place: journalists and cameramen working for local and international media outlets received text messages on their cell phones warning them to be careful about what they broadcast.

And worse:

As the sun started to set on Tuesday, the purpose behind the message became clear: security forces dressed like civilians and belonging to the Hamas-led government broke up the youth rally using batons and metal rods. Their tents were put on fire and the youth were chased all over Gaza streets. Journalists were also attacked, and their cameras and tapes were confiscated.

Sounds like another day in a one-party state.

Nothing quite so depressing went down here in the West Bank. In fact, in Ramallah and Bethlehem the demonstration hasn't ended: the protestors have stuck around under "unity tents." In Bethlehem's Manger Square, the head count has decupled from 9 to 100.

Joudat al-Sayah, one of the youths, told PNN, “We are staying until all our demands are met. We been here for three days so far and we are not leaving until our demands are reached.”

ليبتون. Leeptune. Or Lipton. However you prefer.

I won’t try to hide the fact that upon my arrival to Beit Sahour I purchased a box of the yellow label straight away. Call it a cushion; landing gear to settle me into Palestine. Spot of milk, and my first night in the Middle East felt like any other.

That said, you can’t drown a feeling of foreignness in tea while walking across the dusty roads of an unfamiliar city at 7am (unless you’ve got a thermos, which I don’t). Almost every citizen of Palestine whom I’ve met so far has been extremely friendly and approachable, but I can feel the eyes on me as I shamble through the neighborhoods near my apartment.

So I don’t yet “fit in.” But someone else I deeply respect didn't, either.

All the same, these protracted glances from my neighbors are far easier to take than the unending gaze of security and passport control back at Ben-Gurion. I don’t think my experience was all that abnormal, but with my lack of food and sleep I might’ve looked less than sincere while addressing the guards’ questions as to what I planned to do in Israel once we all parted company. And a story is harder to spin when you know your interlocutor is expecting the spin.

So of course I had a much easier time chatting to Jamil, the taxi driver who got me from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Early in the morning, passing through the checkpoint from Israeli to Palestinian territory, you can see the workers living in the latter shuffle across the border to work in the former. I saw them with Jamil.

Once we reached Bethlehem I stepped out of his flatcar, had a tour around the PNN office and went home to sleep for a number of hours that would be embarrassing to write down.

Tomorrow I go to work.

I believe this to be an imperishable contribution to the literature.

Simply viewing these gruesome images en masse lays bare the utter unseemliness of the duckface. As the site's mission statement warns: "stop doing it; it isn't sexy; you look stupid."

(Image: http://obtenebratio.deviantart.com/art/DUCKFACE-A-how-to-guide-176869136)

Tomorrow is Saudi Arabia's Day of Rage. Or, it's supposed to be. The Interior Ministry has thrown the security forces a carte blanche for their dealing with demonstrations, and many Saudis remain pessimistic about the chance for successful protests. Prince Saud Al-Faisal warns everyone that the regime is ready to "cut off the fingers of those who try to interfere in our internal matters," echoing just about every anxiety-ridden despot (or junior-despot) in modern history who's attempted to construe domestic uprisings as a foreign project.

Unsurprisingly, the royal family has obtained a fatwa to support its ban on any demonstrations. Couple the guns and religion—to which the Saudis unquestionably cling—with the recent $32b in benefits and we might expect to see a very quiet rage in the hearts of Abdullah's subjects tomorrow.

According to his inner circle, Qaddafi has no intention of cutting a deal to leave the country. Airstrikes and starvation will continue. Nic Robertson believes this is one of the many propaganda volleys we'll be seeing during Libya's civil war.

Who's gonna tell Qaddafi he has to do this? No one's even sure who could do that; perhaps one of his sons—there seems some distance from this kind of thing...

So the government says these reports are utter nonsense:

That's the government position, that they'll continue with [the airstrikes], they'll retake many of the towns and cities in the east before they, in their terms, force some talks on the rebels. They'll do it from a position of strength when they feel the country's close to being unified.

Yeah—good luck with that, chums.

Might Qaddafi be losing his nerve? Some reports are surfacing that he's willing to slip away with some money and a get-out-of-jail free card. He's supposed to have made this offer to the "interim council" governing the rebel-controlled eastern provinces:

A source close to the council told Reuters he had heard that "one formula being proposed by the other side would see Gaddafi hand power to the head of parliament and leave the country with a certain guaranteed sum of money."

Al Bayan quoted a source close to Gaddafi's inner circle as saying the Libyan leader had begun looking for a safe haven outside Libya.

 There is no creature loves him.

Due to increased viewing figures, I've become insecure about the blog's layout and am currently revamping it. Which explains some of the odd words/images currently floating around the page.

Archives and comments will be back eventually. So will a bit more of the right panel. But, so far I like this a lot better than the old set up, even with its flash player.