My roommate, another friend from Nablus and I caught the 9 o'clock bus from the Ramallah bus station to head towards Jerusalem. The checkpoints supposedly earlier in the morning are not 'that bad' and as an international we had an alternative option of taking an alternative bus that goes around the checkpoint and not actually through it. This privilege is given to those with Israeli ID's and to those with international passports.
Qalandia checkpoint was eerily quiet in the morning, however, the remnants of the week long clashes were more than visible. Mounds of displaced dirt, evident of where the soldiers had chased down protesters, soot on the streets, evident of fires, and burning tires from earlier in the week.
This was my first time in the Old City of Jerusalem. Gated on all sides by ancient high walls, like a monstrous fort in the middle of a spacious western bustling city, the old city is like an intense mixture of the world's oldest structures, most sacred sites, meeting at the same spot. The proximity of things, how incredibly close together everything actually was, was something that I was completely unaware of and not only baffled by but completely perplexed by. I felt frozen. Standing in one spot, in front of me was the Dome of the Rock, the oldest Islamic building in the world, right in front of it was Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, and in between was the Wailing Wall, the holiest of sites for Jews, and behind me was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a spot venerated by Christians as the spot where Jesus Christ was crucified.
How about all that for a nice Friday morning? I couldn't take enough deep breaths to take it all in.
Around 11:30 we walked around the winding streets, covered with shops, weaving in and out of the Muslim, Jewish and the Armenian Quarter (all of which are so close they might as well be rooms in a big house) and the crowd kept on getting bigger and bigger. Why? Like I said this was the epicenter of where things are really going wrong. Last Friday, Israeli soldiers had prohibited Muslim men under the age of 50 to even enter the Old City, let alone pray the Jumaa prayer at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and this week they had done the same thing. The city streets were littered with soldiers. As prayer time crept up, so did the tension. Standing on the entrance to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, we saw the soldiers blocking and monitoring who is going in, turning away those who were under 50, and arguing over who actually looked 50 or not.
Outside of the old city, soldiers with masks, grenades, guns, tear gas stood around hundreds of Muslim men who stood on the streets to make their call to prayer. They pulled out their prayer rugs (laying them out horizontally so that more than one could pray on one), or grabbed pieces of cardboard from the shops and bazaars behind them to serve as prayer rugs for their obligatory weekly prayer, as soldiers stood firmly with their M16 rifles watching them intently. Photographers and journalists hovered around snapping away pictures from different angles of this event. You probably won't see this on any American mainstream news. The Israeli soldiers were also filming internationals who were watching, because they have a tendency to record those who shouldn't be seeing the 'wrong' things, they film internationals who attend protests so that at immigration they can be turned away.It was heartbreaking to stand there and watch. I kept on wondering what went through the soldiers' minds, what were they thinking, what were they defending, and if any part of them felt a glitch in their hearts for standing in the way of those who wanted to pray at their place of worship with guns and tear gas.
I made my way home a couple of hours after that, after walking around the city for a bit more. When I got to the Arab Bus Station to catch my bus number 18 to get back to Ramallah, the bus driver told me that he would only drive to the border. Normally, that bus goes straight through and drops everyone off at the center of town in Ramallah. I was too tiered from the day but aware enough to realize ok that must mean that Qalandia has been closed off, and there's probably problems at the checkpoint. About half an hour of driving, and seeing some protests on the way (protests about the new settlements that are being built), the bus stopped in front of Qalandia and everyone walked across the checkpoint, and on the other side I found a bus driver who asked me if I was trying to get to Ramallah. Once inside, a friendly man told me that yes I was on the right bus and this one would drop me off where I needed to go.
Again Qalandia was eerily quiet. However, as soon as it started driving off, I could see a crowd of men slowly emerging closer. it was funny because it was the typical, stereotypical scene that I've seen in news clips, young men with Keffiyahs wrapped all around their faces.
Suddenly there was a loud "POP! POP! POP!" and white smoke, I realized that it was a soldier shooting tear gas at the Palestinian boys and then a loud CLANK that made me jump out of my seat. It was a rock that was hurled at the bus.
I couldn't have been happier to walk back home when the bus dropped me off. It felt good to walk the same street that I took to and from school every day and turn the corner to walk in to the apartment thats been mine for the last two and a half months, it felt really nice after an emotionally draining day to feel like I got home safe and sound.
...with more questions on my mind, then I had woken up with in the morning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag1mArePD-M
Whats going on?
ReplyDeletei'll write about it soon, a lot of really messed up stuff
ReplyDelete"It was heartbreaking to stand there and watch. I kept on wondering what went through the soldiers' minds, what were they thinking, what were they defending, and if any part of them felt a glitch in their hearts for standing in the way of those who wanted to pray at their place of worship with guns and tear gas." It's the same thing I think.
ReplyDelete