Tear Gas is Just no Fun

Feb 24

Well its been a crazy few days. Friday I went to the demonstration in Bil’in. We got there around 1pm there were some speeches, but I don’t understand enough Arabic yet to know what they were talking about. Then there was a short march from the center of the village up to the gate where the soldiers are stationed. All along the road we marched on was the fence marking the intended path of the wall. We got up to the gate and were there for about 5-10 minutes when the soldiers started shooting tear gas canisters into the crowd. If you have never experienced this I would not recommend it. It burns your eyes, face and mouth. I was never in the thick of it, but some who were, were unable to breathe and fell to the ground. There were plenty of Red Crescent workers standing by and we heard sirens continuously through out the demonstration. After the first round of tear gas I stayed at a further distance from the gate. I tried to add pictures to this post but blogger is being mean right now, I am posting all my pictures on facebook though so feel free to check them out there.

We stayed for almost 3 hours until the press left which meant that the soldiers were going to come through the gate soon, so we headed out. This whole experience was rather upsetting. Considering the amount of Israeli’s ive known and know still it is entirely possible that someone I know was throwing tear gas at me or worse shooting rubber bullets. I cant help but to be a little envious of those here that have no connection to Israel. Its so easy for them to just be angry while I am just sad and confused most of the time.

To make matters worse today we went on a group tour of the wall. A guy from the campaign to stop the wall came and took us to different areas of the wall and different villages to show how it is affecting Palestinians. Its horrible Israel built the wall as close as possible to Palestinian properties and then tells them they are too close to the wall so they have to be demolished. It makes no sense, and I refuse to believe that the amount of land that was annexed because of this wall has anything to do with the security of Israel, even if it did. Collective punishment is illegal! It was all rather depressing. The bus dropped us off in Ramallah at the end of the tour. Elizabeth, Miriam and I attempted to find tickets to the DAM (Palestinian Rap group: http://www.dampalestine.com) concert on Thursday, but to no avail so we must try again tomorrow. On the plus side I ran into Miriam, who I worked with in OneVoice last year/semester, and I am meeting up with her again tomorrow, so that is exciting!

I know I skipped Saturday. It was not very exciting. I had class, went to dinner and Zans in Ramallah and fell in love….that’s all nothing special. And now I must do my Arabic homework and go to bed. I welcome any and all questions, comments, and even arguments. I realize that I often talk about people/places/things with out explaining anything about them, so yeah sorry I'm lazy you'll just have to ask me personally if you care that much. And as for the arguments someone’s got to keep me on my toes while I'm here.