* * *Appeared in last week's Cherwell: * * *

As we tear down Highway 1 to Ben-Gurion International, the plastic cup that Jalal hands me is both flimsy and scorching. Somehow, his brother is brewing coffee in the backseat for everyone in the car. I struggle not to spill as the cup wilts in my hand. Barbed wire flies by my window as we drive alongside Israel’s “security fence,” or “apartheid wall,” depending on your politics. Taking advantage of the scenery, I ignite a brief fraternal argument over the appropriate name for the barrier. A few hours ago I didn’t know either of these men, but after spending the past six weeks at a news agency in the West Bank I’ve learned that in this place one can make fast friends so long as coffee or tea is provided.

One of the first people I shared a cup with was a protester in Bethlehem: I arrived in Palestine just as it joined the “Arab Spring”—the wave of youth-driven, democratic uprisings that began in Tunisia and is now blistering Syria. It is now referred to as the March 15 movement, to commemorate the first day of demonstrations. Rather than calling for the abdication of a dictator as in Egypt or Libya, the youth of Palestine demanded reconciliation between the secular Fatah party, which controls the West Bank and the recognized government, and the rogue Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip.

The young protester who treated me to a mug of Turkish syrup voiced his desperation in between sips: “This split between Hamas and Fatah has held back our struggle for a Palestinian state more than any Israeli policy could hope to do.” Having arrived at the movement’s beginning, I suppose it was only fitting that I left as its demands were finally reached. A few hours after I touched down at Heathrow, the two parties signed a unity deal in Cairo. Netanyahu is fuming, and my friends in Manara Square are celebrating.

Shopping for ceramics with a friend in Hebron, we ended up having tea with the shop’s owner, a man named Munir. Hebron is a city in the southern West Bank that provides the worst example of what Jewish settlements have done to the dynamic between Arabs and Israelis. The city has been partitioned into H1, governed by the Palestinian Authority, and H2, a section of town colonized by a small group of armed settlers and fully occupied by Israeli forces.




Shuffling around the streets of H2 I'm sure that my friend and I underwent the same bewilderment as any visitors to Hebron. It is known as the "sterile zone,” a euphemism that fails, since it fully conveys the numbness of one’s surroundings. 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.

In the middle of our tea break, a fight broke out in front of Munir’s shop, between some young settlers and a Palestinian boy; within seconds an IDF jeep rattled into view and the tussle was over. “That one, with the pink hat,” croaked Munir as he pointed, “he is around here often. He causes trouble.” As he spoke I watched the boy he identified, who was spitting at not only his Palestinian nemesis but the Israeli soldiers who had broken up their fight. Munir lowered his hand and went back to stirring his tea in silence.

Halfway through my stay actor and director Juliano Mer Khamis was murdered outside of his home in Jenin in the central West Bank and home to the most destitute refugee camp in Palestine. I had hoped to have a coffee with Juliano before I left. Having seen his film Arna’s Children a few days after arriving in Palestine, I made a plan to visit Jenin where he ran a theatre and drama school for Palestinian kids. Instead I ended up writing up a report of his assassination. On the evening of April 4 a masked gunman stepped in front of Juliano’s car, a few feet away from his home, and opened fire. While the wave of reports on his murder subsequently referred to him as “Arab-Isreali”—his mother was Jewish and his father Palestinian—Juliano once stressed that he was “one hundred percent Israeli, one hundred percent Arab.” Far be it from me to ignore his specification.

Juliano was much loved by younger people in the camp, where he erected a professional-grade theatre with all the trimmings for youths that knew only the poverty, violence and boredom of the refugee camp. But at the same time, among the godly and the literal-minded he was deeply hated for his productions at the Freedom Theatre, many of which empowered Palestinians children to reject religious and societal subjugation as well as Israeli occupation. In a recent interview, he candidly and humorously predicted his own assassination. He announced that he would die from a bullet fired by someone “very angry that we are here in Jenin,” then with a theatrical scowl and a forbidding voice, “to corrupt the youth of the Islam!” Though the investigation of his murder is not yet closed, that is most likely exactly what happened.

Not content with the demise only one innocent activist, a little more than a week later a Salafist group in Gaza kidnapped and hanged Italian peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni in an abandoned house in Gaza City. The group in question was considerably to the right of Hamas and among other things demanded that the government release its co-religionists from prison. By the time the police in Gaza reached Vittorio’s body, however, it had been lifeless for hours, long before the Salafists’ deadline.

A few days after Arrigoni’s death I attended a vigil at Bethlehem's unity tent. There were calls for perseverance and there were calls for blood. There were tears for both Vittorio and for Juliano, from those that knew them and those who did not. A colleague of mine delivered a eulogy in short bursts, as another speaker translated her words across the circle of mourners. I scribbled them on the back of a magazine for a story on the event due later that night.

Soon a doctor in the crowd, a native of Palestine who spoke to us all in English, ended his own tribute to Vittorio with a crackling voice as he began to talk about the recent murder of his friend Juliano. He suddenly spoke very slowly, and the candle in his hands started to quiver: “We will continue to do our best, to end all the violence here...to win ourselves a normal life,” until his features withered and he began to sob, “so we can finally stop things like this, from happening anymore.” With the doctor in tears, most everyone around me began to weep. He had touched a nerve connected not only of Vittorio’s death, or Juliano’s, but the entire tragedy of Palestine in all of its confusion and violence.

At that moment I nudged my friend and fellow intern Carlos, who raised his eyebrows and shook his head, before nodding in the direction of a coffee stand nearby. I nodded in turn and we started toward the cart. We had a lot to discuss.

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.

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.

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.”