clashes and confusion

emotions here have been running high.   a series of raids in the Al-Aqsa mosque (why Israel?) to more raids (come on Israel), to prohibiting palestinian muslims (anyone under age 50,  like the age group that is most likely to get really pissed off) 

from Friday prayer AT the Al-Aqsa mosque  (really? forcing people OUT of their place of worship while they are worshipping?  not letting people pray the most important prayer of the week AT the place they consider the 3rd holiest site in their religion? no thats not intentionally provoking anyyything at all) to blocking off the west bank entirely.  At first I woke up on Saturday hearing that the west bank is blocked off until Sunday, then it was Monday then it was Tuesday. The clashes have just been getting more and more intense, at the checkpoints especially.  Demonstrations and riots have been getting increasingly worse, and everyday its been a pattern of checking different websites to see which city was locked down that day, or which city reeeally had it bad.  The images running through BBC and CNN of the clashes in Qalandia checkpoint, the checkpoint that you need to cross to go to Jerusalem have been alarming for me, because though I have not physically witnessed them (since I am in school or tutoring until about 6 or 7pm daily) I know that those clashes are taking place 5 miles down the road from me every afternoon. Where I come from, that means I'm in the danger zone. 

The provocations have been getting irritatingly worse.  But as I’ve learned from sitting for hours pointlessly in a narrow corridor without any windows or objects for no reason other than the IDF just wanted me to sit there without my passport, soldiers do things just for the hell of it. These series of events in the recent past, like Israel confiscating the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and declaring it as an Israeli hertage site   (http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=263273),    

raiding Al-Aqsa, rebuilding a synagogue in East Jerusalem (honestly just to make people more mad and pissed off, almost as a testy move to convey that they can do whatever they want whenever they want no matter how inappropriate or pointless it may be, to show that palestinians can't do anything about it, and if they do, they'll be marked by the world as terrorists), declaring new construction plans for more settlements, has made many people say that this may be the start of another Intifada, the third Intifada.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8571399.stm


hold up.  the 3rd Intifada. 


this is the part when my feelings get really mushed up and muddled.  first of all, I didnt and still don't understand the Intifadas fully.  at school i keep on getting snippets and snapshots of what life was like during the Intifadas.  One teacher told me, "we were just locked in our house for 3 months at a time, we couldn't go out, we couldnt open our windows, have the shutters open, because if they (the soldiers) saw our face they'd shoot at us, snipers are ready to shoot, and about every 10 days we were allowed 2 hours to go out to get food, we were going crazy, my family played cards so many times that i thought my head was going to explode".  Israeli tanks surrounded everything, and people were imprisoned in their homes. stepping out meant rolling tanks shooting at them. the kids in school that are now in the 1st grade and 2nd grade, I think, were all born during the Intifada, and there's outrageously insane stories of how they were born, either in their houses, or en route dodging tanks to get to a hospital with no facilities or staff or better yet in their cars.

what i feel around me is stifling, it's as if everyone internally is under this pressure cooker machine, feeling narrowing walls about to crush them, but it never crushes them.  it perpetually inches inwards closer and closer but there doesn't seem to be a stopping point.  After a long week of school (it always feels like that on Thursdays), I stopped by a shop next to our school, and struck a very sweet conversation with the shop owner. A highly educated woman, native to Jerusalem, who can not leave Ramallah to get to Jerusalem to see any of her family because she married someone from the West Bank, she was telling me in her small shop that no matter what the world thinks, the truth is that "they" (Israel) just want the land without the people, they just want the land, she kept on repeating.  


I don't know what to think because extreme volatility is infused and mixed with extreme uncertainty.  One moment there's talks of a 3rd Intifada and the next people are like, O no, things suck but they're fine, we're not in a position to have an Intifada.  (http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=269138)  


I was told to stock up on food, because you never know what might happen.  My roommate and I looked at each other at one point to wonder wait is this the time to stock up on food or get rid of food? like is this a weekend stock up on food because some crazy shit might break loose or really get rid of stuff because we might have to pack up our bags soon?  


As comical as this is, when we did go to the grocery store, I stared at the shelves for a long time, wondering what the hell do you buy if you are preparing for a lockdown, and after 20 minutes of staring, I had a bag of pretzels and a toothbrush.   I don't even like pretzels.  On the way home, I was appalled at myself for not thinking about buying bottled water.  Clearly...I'm not cut out for this ( ? )


So at this point, in thinking about lockdowns, or Intifadas, I don't know if I feel really politically aware or really foolish because nothing might happen at all.


At the end of the week, I found out that the chances of an Intifada are slim because if there was one, it would be the Palestinian public revolting against their own government, not Israel.  The government doesn't want that.  So believe it or not, the government run channels here in Palestine are not showing that much about current clashes.   The internal strife in the country would butt heads for a raging civil unrest.


In light of all the Obama, Biden, Clinton talks about their embarrassment that Israel is continuing their plans of constructing 1600 new settlement homes, I'd like to end this post with this picture that I think says a lot.  For the first month that I was here, I saw this on my walk back from school, and all I recognized was Obama's signature silhouette without understanding the caption underneath.  It's funny, after the mainstream coverage of the Obama administrations's dismay about the settlement issue, then  Obama getting slapped with the label of being anti-semitic and then hearing how now the two parties are saying, of course there was never any tension, this poster makes more sense.

This was a giant billboard in Ramallah:

Roughly translates to : In the one year that Obama has been President, what has changed for us?

truly, people here really don't think anything is going to change.  a picture here, a meeting there and a handshake here appeases the outside world for a while, but people here know that nothing is going to change for them.  they have to continually deal with the obnoxious, unnecessary, inhumane treatment from a group of people who simply wants the land, no matter what the price may be.