Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun.

by Mark Thomas

  The clatter of massing marchers builds to a pitch, and with all the banners and flags, the chanting, chatting and singing, the steward shouting instructions through a megaphone, and the piercing sound of a lorry alarm as it reverses out of the crowd, I nearly miss the Boy Scout marching band getting into formation. They have snare drums, a bass drum and a drum major complete with twirling baton, and are all dressed in their best kit: shirts, berets, pressed red scarves and woggles. This Scout band is part of the protest and is about to be marched into tear gas along with the rest of us. If only Wilfred Owen could see this. Suddenly, a clown’s face pops out from behind the bass drum. A rather furtive clown in full make-up, a red nose and massive bright boots; then three more appear – clowns rarely work alone, particularly Israeli ones in the West Bank. Here, I suppose, to provide a bit of creative chaos and emphasise the non-violent nature of the event (or someone’s agent has made the worst children’s party booking ever), the clowns playfully dash through the crowd.

  As I move to watch them, a woman’s voice with an American accent says from behind me: ‘Have you got your onion?’

  Sitting on the cemetery wall is a young woman wearing pigtails, and round glasses that match her face.

  ‘Always carry an onion to a protest,’ she says precociously.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It eases the effects of tear gas. When they fire the gas smell your onion; shove it right under your nose and breathe. It helps.’

  She says this with total authority, yet it transpires she is only eighteen, a Jew from Brooklyn, and has never been to a demo before.

  ‘How do you know about this?’

  ‘I read about it on the internet. There’s lots of good advice on there about demonstrations. So I read up on it before I came.’

  Looking around, I start to spot the onions in the crowd. People are cutting them in half, putting them in their pockets, wrapping them in hankies and sharing them. It is as if I am on the trading floor of the onion exchange.

  ‘That sounds like an urban myth,’ I say with confidence, but when I nip into a nearby shop, I discover there has been a run on onions. Not a single one is to be found, not even the pickled variety.

  The sight of an ambulance on a demonstration like this has all the reassurance of a hearse at a care home. In fact, there are two, and I also notice that the Scouts have been sent back. The rest of the marchers, however, head unarmed towards the soldiers.

  One of the ambulances takes up pole position by the protest leaders in anticipation of the inevitable confrontation, while the other sits on the hilltop as most of the village files past on the narrow track: young and old, men and women; nearly the whole of Bil’in is out today. From the hillside it looks almost biblical, this tide flowing down the slope and up the other side. Families walk together, some still wearing their best from Friday prayers; others are in T-shirts and baseball hats, balancing their kids on their shoulders while mums in chadors and young women in their hijabs hold the smaller ones’ hands.

  The young men, the Palestinian youth alongside the Israeli anarchos and activists, are the first to the Barrier; the ambulance right alongside them. Camera crews in gas masks, helmets and flak jackets run among them, seeking the best frontline shots. Figures mass by the gates. Shouts are heard, the wire is gripped and the mesh pulled back and forth, back and forth, in a sudden mass effort. Each heave drags the wire lower until the protesters wrench the wretched iron from the earth and, before the army can react, the Barrier is down. Masked figures pour onto the other side of the Barrier, running through the gap. Palestinian flags wave in an almighty fluster as protestors hurl themselves across the hill with the army in full chase. The event is remarkable not so much for the fencing coming down, but for the sight of Palestinians running on their own land. The masked flag-wavers dodge the soldiers and a military tanker starts spraying jets of ‘skunk water’; a massive stream of stinking liquid that falls from the sky like a fountain of filth onto the crowd below. It smells like shit: gag-inducing, stinking chemical shit. Out of the corner of my eye I see a clown holding his red nose. Then, as the skunk water stops, the tear gas begins. The valley fills with the sound of thumps and cracks. Vapour trails of gas arc high then drop like rips in the sky and the air is now a stinging cloud. The ambulance disappears from view. The hillside is covered by gas mist, and half the protestors run as more gas bursts over them and descends. More vapour trails appear in the air, their trajectory moving rapidly towards us. The clown and I duck under the olive trees for shelter but in seconds, the canisters start to fall among the boughs. The gas rolls towards us, the dark fumes engulfing the branches, and we turn and scarper back up the hill, the clown’s boots flapping wildly as he retreats. The track is full of coughing, spluttering marchers returning to the village. A crying student takes the arm of an Israeli woman clutching a shawl over her face. Children and mums go by hand in hand. A man leans over, holding a finger against one nostril and expelling a stream of snot from the other. The air no longer carries the sound of exploding canisters but the hacking and hawking of a crowd of protesters making their way home.

  At first I’m convinced the gas missed me, which is really stupid. For that to have happened, the tear gas would need to be sentient, directional and programmed to avoid English dads of a certain girth. The thought is not only irrational but quickly dispelled by the first signs of pain. My eyes start to sting, making me blink. I twitch and shake my head, but the irritation intensifies. My nose starts to run, my throat rasps and rattles, my lungs are numb and heavy. I can’t feel myself breathe, I don’t even know if I am breathing. I want to gasp for air but am terrified of gulping down more of the stuff. A wave of fear washes over me. Head down, eyes streaming, I stumble and spit, concentrating on keeping up with the rest of the retching mass. We plod upwards, past the political officials and their retinue of security clasping clean white paper towels, and past a home with its washing left hanging out in the chemical breeze. In the middle of the phlegm and the gagging, a small woman in an old, oversized biker’s helmet, a pair of science-lab goggles and a scarf tied tightly around her face, approaches me.

  ‘Do you want some onion?’ she says in a broad Brooklyn accent.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Pressing it under my nostrils and inhaling with a freakish gusto, the raw acidic zing cuts up my nose and through my panic. It works, the onion works! I have no idea if there is a scientific reason behind it, or if it is just a relief to smell something other than gas, but the onion smells great and I feel I can breathe again.

  ‘That is better.’

  ‘See?’ she says, taking the onion back with a smile.

  ‘What made you come here today?’

  ‘Well, I actually came over as part of a Zionist teen camp thing.’ Playing, she looks around furtively and says, ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘How does that work?’

  ‘I’m eighteen, and I’ve never really been out of the States before, but the camp pays your airfare and takes you on a Zionist camp so you can “experience Israel”. But it’s an open return ticket, so when I finished the camp I thought I’d experience this, too.’

  ‘That is quite adventurous.’

  ‘I did my homework. On the internet.’ She smiles, holding up the onion.

  We join some of the Israeli anarchists, gas masks dangling, still in the throes of excitement and adrenalin. They gabble through the events: ‘That was amazing at the Wall.’

  ‘I know, I know … the fence coming down!’

  I venture a question: ‘Apart from the fence coming down, though, this is a bit of a routine, isn’t it?’

  The replies are short and blunt: ‘It is.’

  ‘We get to the Wall and they gas us.’

  ‘A ritual, almost,’ I suggest.

  ‘Look,’ a short chap with shorter hair and a crooked grin says. ‘The army know we are coming; the demo takes place every Friday. They know. We know they know. They know we know they know … It is a matter of showi
ng resistance.’

  ‘So is that your reason for coming?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, and then his smile drops. ‘And Bassem was my friend.’

  chapter 13

  MARK IN WONDERLAND

  One week later Phil and I are on the other side of the Barrier, opposite Bil’in. We are back on schedule and set to go past the village once again, also on Friday, but this time on the Israeli side.

  Our day’s route takes us around the city of Modi’in Illit, an ultra-religious city and the source of Bil’in’s problems. It is just about everything Bil’in is not: new, large and Israeli. It is also different from many places in Israel, too, as this city is for ultra-orthodox Jews: a religious city, built for religious folk – a bit like Utah but without the hedonistic underbelly.

  Though there might be an absence of drugs, rock ’n’ roll and, in many cases, television, there is a lot of sex in Modi’in Illit, as the yearly population growth of ten per cent will testify, making it the largest illegal settlement in the West Bank. It is this phenomenal growth rate that requires the settlement to expand; except the land it intends to use belongs to the Palestinian village of Bil’in, conveniently annexed by the Barrier.

  The Israeli city was started in 1982 but it feels like the builders were paid before they finished. Roads occasionally run out of pavement, piles of rubble appear in the street and roundabouts wait to be landscaped. I don’t know the correct architectural term for this place but I suspect it might be ‘urban sprawl’ or ‘urban sprawl … with a very long snagging list’. Palm trees sporadically line the roads or sit by bus shelters, but it is tower blocks that dominate the city, stacked side by side in pale brown and grey brick, block after block after block. Essentially, the settlement is a nice religious council estate.

  Our Hebrew translator is a wiry chap with a close-cut crop of ginger hair. He is an Israeli ex-soldier and a political activist involved in refugee rights. He is young, fit and in possession of a pair of waterproof trousers, detailed maps of the area and a lunch packed by his mum. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t envious of all of those things, especially the trousers.

  ‘Hi, I’m Zohar,’ he says.

  ‘Mark.’

  ‘Phil.’

  Hands are shaken, heads nodded and we set off through the settlement.

  ‘So, Zohar, how old are you then?’

  ‘Twenty-six.’

  ‘Twenty-six! Good Lord, you’re but a babe,’ I say in mock plummy tones.

  This casual remark was meant to highlight my age rather than his, but Zohar says, ‘A babe, am I?’

  ‘That sounded patronising.’

  ‘A babe,’ he repeats slowly.

  ‘So, what’s the route?’ Phil says, changing the subject, but my stupid remark will stay with Zohar.

  It is 9 a.m. and to celebrate the holiday of Purim, kids are wearing fancy dress to school. It is often the small differences that mark out uniformity, so the sight of a boy dressed as a policeman and another as an astronaut serves to highlight the fact that most kids are dressed as biblical characters complete with crowns, robes, sepulchres and scrolls. Mini-kings and half-pint prophets clutch their parents’ hands and hurry through the grey morning. It is clear we, too, are one of those small differences. Most people stare at us and when it comes to staring, these folk really do put the effort in. They have turned staring into a form of aerobic exercise. A car slows and comes to a stop right next to me while the driver burns a good few calories just looking me up and down. There is no sense of threat or malice in the interest shown, just intense curiosity; nonetheless, it is slightly unnerving.

  ‘At what point do we consider this rude?’ I ask Zohar.

  ‘No, no, it is not rudeness; they just want to know who you are.’

  And so, to the next car that slows I say: ‘Hi, I’m Mark.’

  The family in the car are very friendly: the driver smiles and natters while kids pile off the back seat in Purim party clothes. One girl is not wearing a costume: no robes, no tablets of stone, not even a staff of any description; just leggings, a dress and a floppy hat.

  ‘Have you not got a costume?’ I ask the child.

  ‘This is her costume,’ says her mother.

  ‘Yes,’ says the girl.

  ‘Tell him what you have come as.’

  ‘I’m a tourist.’

  ‘Well, you look fantastic,’ I say, noticing the sunglasses resting on her head.

  ‘Thank you.’ The young girl waves giddily, tilts her head like a starlet and giggles.

  A group of men has assembled by the now-vacated car and in time-honoured ritual have lifted up the bonnet and begun pointing at engine parts. The conversation is in Hebrew and I can barely speak a few words of the language but I am fluent in bullshit and know the car-engine ritual backwards. ‘Could be the distributor …’ I pipe up to the group.

  The settlers look round. Fortunately they speak bullshit too, recognise the word ‘distributor’ and nod wisely at my suggestion. This is a form of acceptance, so when the ritual finishes with the traditional conclusion of, ‘You’d best get that looked at,’ it is my cue to ask about the settlement. These are pleasant folk and our twenty-minute chat is full of the smiles, shrugs, beard tugging and hand gestures that make for a friendly conversation, but it boils down to this: ‘How do you feel about Bil’in and living here?’

  ‘We would rather not be so near the fence but what choice do we have?’

  ‘Might the settlement’s presence here be a cause of conflict?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you feel about the settlement being illegal under international law?’

  ‘There is a higher law: God’s law.’

  ‘Does it bother you that the settlement is over the Green Line?’

  ‘This is our land and we just need a home.’

  There is nothing to keep us here and we walk, moving from the kerbside to the countryside, through the stages of the city’s development, as it begins to rain once again. At the edge of the settlement the apartment blocks are in stasis, surrounded by scaffolding: concrete awaiting cladding, windows awaiting frames; all awaiting the settlement freeze to end and building to start again. Beyond this lies a series of builders’ yards full of supplies. The ones nearest the unfinished estate have Portakabins and barbed-wire compounds to guard the diggers, ’dozers and assorted mechanical machinery. Next comes a series of goods yards stacked with coils of plastic piping, pre-cast concrete beams and palettes full of tiles wrapped with straps. Then follows valleys of aggregate: huge mounds of building materials; sand and gravel hills three or four storeys high. They have their own geography: some are lined neatly in rows with cones and peaks, some form mountainous ranges. There are escarpments of sharp sand, ridgeways of gravel and you can walk under cliffs of ballast or climb mounds so tall they deserve to be named. There is no one but us in these impromptu chasms and it is easy to imagine we have wandered onto a 1970s Dr Who filming location.

  ‘We can climb this one,’ I call to Phil.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sort of …’

  The slope is steep and very high but it’s ballast, a mix of sand and stone, so it should be easy to dig my boots in and traverse across. I am halfway up when the entire edifice suddenly starts to slip from under me, every step crumbling as my foot lands. The side of the hill starts to shift away and instinctively I run and skip my way desperately upwards, across the collapsing sand, with all the grace and agility of a stilt-walking pig. I only just make the gallop to the firm ground of the peak and safety, and fall on my hands and knees, watching my breath steaming from me, listening to the white noise of the rain and the sound of Phil snorting his face off in laughter. On the far side of the builders’ supplies lie mountains of builders’ waste. Officially it’s landscaping, though some call it ‘infilling’ and a few might dare say it is ‘fly-tipping’; the differences being a matter of perception and permits.

  Wet and scuffed, we walk from the rubble to
arrive at the green pastures of Bil’in’s captured land. On the brow of the hill sits the Barrier and behind it sits the village of Bil’in. Exactly opposite us is the road we marched down just a week before, and we are in the spot where the soldiers tear-gassed us from.

  Zohar reminds us that today is Friday, the day of the weekly demonstration. ‘The army will be here soon to prepare for the protest.’

  The prospect of watching the army tear-gas the very people I marched alongside only a week ago is not an appealing one. But we agree that we should try and see the protest from where the army stand. With impeccable timing, an Israeli military transporter drives into view, winding along the Barrier. The transporter is big, armour-plated and deserves its own entrance music, preferably the ‘Imperial March’ from Star Wars. As it draws to a halt, the side doors open, though without a sci-fi hiss or a striding villain in a cloak. Instead, a handful of conscripts alight with a slouch born of institutional boredom.

  ‘Would you mind if I hand out some leaflets?’ Zohar suddenly asks me.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘To the soldiers … I have leaflets in my bag.’

  ‘Well, that depends on the leaflets. If it’s “2 for 1” pizza offers you want to give the soldiers that would be a little odd …’