My OperaQalandia
Thursday, September 22, 2011 7:03:50 AM
Hello friends,
Today I went to the Qalandia checkpoint, the largest and the most recognizable in the West Bank, the one that separates Ramallah and Jerusalem. I arrived just around 10:30 in the morning from a reporting trip to Nablus (which in light of today’s events does not yet deserve mention) and I left at 4:30. The six in-between hours did not comprise a “demonstration” or a “protest” by the standards I’ve known so far in Palestine, and it wasn’t a proper “battle” either. It was really just a mess.
Qalandia is one of the geographic focal points of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thousands of people pass through it every day (Ramallah and Jerusalem are two of the biggest cities in Palestine) using a system of security cameras, iron bars, locks and turnstiles. The whole complex is watched over by a large tower, which bears the burns of hundreds of Molotov cocktails and is manned every day by Israeli soldiers. Flanking Qalandia checkpoint is the Israeli wall, not as high as it is in Bethlehem, maybe 20 feet. Right down the street is Qalandia refugee camp, the source of the hundreds of eager under-25 males whose accuracy with stones and general persistence have won the camp and the checkpoint plenty of resistance cachet.
Israeli Special Forces were already at the checkpoint when I arrived. I’m not sure if it was closed at that point, but it must have been closed later. Stone-throwing commenced at 11, followed by the unveiling of the Israelis’ special new weapon “The Scream,” which is basically a loud beeping noise at a high frequency designed to disperse protestors non-violently and when that didn’t work, the soldiers took to the usual methods: high-velocity tear gas canisters, sound bombs, rubber-coated steel bullets, and live ammunition. At 11:30, I was holed up with some Palestinians in a closed storefront about 25 meters from the Israeli position next to the tower. My surroundings kinda looked like this…
…and the Israelis kinda looked like this:
The kids would throw a rock or a bottle and disappear behind the corner, then the soldiers would shoot tear gas back and depending on where the wind was blowing, the actors would shuffle accordingly. I’m pretty sure that’s been the Israel-Palestine battle plan for as long as anyone can remember. At one point, all the kids left except one. (EDIT: I later found out his name, Ahed Wahdan) He motioned to me not to take a picture of him (also standard protocol ever since the Israeli army started raiding camps armed with printed digital pictures) and I obliged as he got ready to throw a glass Coke bottle.
Then there was a bang, the bottle smashed, he clutched his face and dropped. I was about six feet away from him and I went over and shouted “Injured” or something, I don’t remember. I knew it was his eye. After the bullet, the Israelis shot a tear gas canister into the corner of the storefront. It landed within a few feet of us. (EDIT: Later figured out Ahed was shot with the tear gas canister, then it dropped to the ground and gas started coming out of it.) I started trying to pick the kid up, but between huge gulps of tear gas, I didn’t really get anywhere. There was not a lot of blood at this point, just a spurt or two, but I can’t remember. When you get tear gassed, experience sort of fragments between what you see for a half-second and what you see five seconds later when you dare open your eyes again, so for most of the next minute, I visually remember almost nothing. Somebody with a gas mask, another photojournalist, picked up the kid’s legs and I got his shoulders and we hoisted him toward wherever the ambulance was supposed to be. I was having a hard time lifting him and everyone was taking pictures. I found a couple of these later through Twitter and Facebook. Here is one:
I’m sorry if you’re squeamish. This happened. (EDIT: There is a larger and much more graphic photo album available here)
I couldn’t carry him any longer (and I still can’t figure out why). He got up under his own power and said, “Hospital,” and then a bunch of other people bundled him into the back of the ambulance. I didn’t get any pictures of the whole thing, which must have lasted under two minutes in total. Ahed Wahdan was 15 years old and a Reuters photographer confirmed for me later that he lost his eye.
A couple things stand out to me now:
1. Nobody helped me pick the kid up for something like ten seconds. There are three pictures (one is in this NYT slideshow) which show me trying to pick him up. Whoever had time for pictures is a brave and diligent soul I’m sure, but guilty of the most commonly cited sin of photojournalism. Nothing could have saved the eye—it more or less exploded on impact, I guess—and that’s not my problem. But when a 15-year-old is in shocking pain in front of you and you consider the frame, your priorities are wrong. Then again, probably they, like me, were confused (the NYT caption says I’m “tending” to him) and didn’t know what to do.
2. I’m not a law student but since “who was at fault” is constantly being brought up, this was pretty clear-cut. Any Israeli soldiers on the Palestinian side of the Green Line (and definitely on the Palestinian side of the wall, itself an illegal annexation of Palestinian land) are part of a military occupation. People under military occupation have a right to violent resistance according to the Geneva Conventions (specifically the 1977 “Protocol Additional”). I would say that means our bottle-throwing youth was within his rights. Even if you are a Zionist and point out that right is restricted to the political (and hilarious) designation of “alien occupation,” the Israeli army still has codes of conduct and open-fire regulations it is bound to obey. Rubber-coated steel bullets like these…
…are not to be shot at the upper body, much less the face. The tear gas canister that landed next to us was of the banned high-velocity variety. (EDIT: the fact that Ahed was actually shot with a high-velocity tear gas canister does not change the illegality of the shooting. Aiming that kind of projectile at someone's face is against the Israeli army's open-fire regulations.) And the decision to add the latter AFTER they had already shot the kid was way out of all principles of proportionality. Later in the demonstration the soldiers used illegal live fire. Luckily, only five others were injured and none of them as seriously as the kid next to me. You can also see clearly in this shot that soldiers were aiming tear gas canisters not in arcs, but directly at the crowd:
All this stuff is much more well-documented by human rights organizations like B'tselem (see this letter).
3. He was 15 years old and he’ll never have his right eye back. I still can’t get over that.
4. I wonder if his parents knew where he was. Most protests take place on Friday, part of the weekend, but Wednesday was an official day off from school in celebration of the UN statehood bid (I almost went this whole blog without mentioning it). It’s easy to shout parental neglect from the safety of an unoccupied Western country, but when soldiers regularly raid Qalandia camp and take sons literally out of their beds, is it still strange that mothers and fathers sanction this sort of danger? Being a West Bank Palestinian is already dangerous.
5. When it came down to the moment, I realized I didn’t know how to say “Everything’s going to be alright” in Palestinian Arabic, or indeed any words of comfort at all. I’ve learned how to prevaricate at length on politics, society, and the Fatah-Hamas split, but for a few awful seconds there, I was just lying in English and saying, “You’re okay.”
In any case, he was not okay and everything was not alright. Throughout the next four hours, I saw an international activist carted away on a stretcher after getting shot in the ear, one Palestinian get shot in the shin and remain standing (and throwing), two Israeli flags burned, one Palestinian flag stolen, three Palestinians arrested, and about twenty tires lit on fire. This was not a normal protest by the standards of what I’m used to, but seeing as nobody was killed, it could have been much worse. I don’t know how much of the credit for that can be given to the embedded media…
…for whose sake many of the most brutal Israeli tactics are momentarily forgotten, and how much of the credit is lost to luck. It took me a long time to simply walk away from the battle and go home to Bethlehem; by the time I left, it had still not ended. It will probably be continued on Friday, no matter what happens at the UN.
I’m sorry for the clunky list format of this post, it’s the only way I could force myself to write about it. I was in a daze for most of this evening. My good friend and roommate Beth insists I have to process what happened, and that makes sense in theory—you don’t just watch a teenage boy get his eye shot out in front of you and then go on as if nothing happened—but I just haven’t started doing that yet. I still have his blood on my shirt. I keep thinking about living with only one eye and what that must do to depth perception and aim. Will he keep throwing stones? I also wonder what he’ll be like in the future, when maybe there is peace in Palestine and he’s 50 and he still doesn’t have a right eye. Before everyone goes blind in Gandhi’s eye-for-an-eye aphorism, there must be a stage at which both parties have only one eye each, right? And nobody has any judgment at all? I wonder if we’re already there.
Brendan
Today I went to the Qalandia checkpoint, the largest and the most recognizable in the West Bank, the one that separates Ramallah and Jerusalem. I arrived just around 10:30 in the morning from a reporting trip to Nablus (which in light of today’s events does not yet deserve mention) and I left at 4:30. The six in-between hours did not comprise a “demonstration” or a “protest” by the standards I’ve known so far in Palestine, and it wasn’t a proper “battle” either. It was really just a mess.
Qalandia is one of the geographic focal points of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thousands of people pass through it every day (Ramallah and Jerusalem are two of the biggest cities in Palestine) using a system of security cameras, iron bars, locks and turnstiles. The whole complex is watched over by a large tower, which bears the burns of hundreds of Molotov cocktails and is manned every day by Israeli soldiers. Flanking Qalandia checkpoint is the Israeli wall, not as high as it is in Bethlehem, maybe 20 feet. Right down the street is Qalandia refugee camp, the source of the hundreds of eager under-25 males whose accuracy with stones and general persistence have won the camp and the checkpoint plenty of resistance cachet.
Israeli Special Forces were already at the checkpoint when I arrived. I’m not sure if it was closed at that point, but it must have been closed later. Stone-throwing commenced at 11, followed by the unveiling of the Israelis’ special new weapon “The Scream,” which is basically a loud beeping noise at a high frequency designed to disperse protestors non-violently and when that didn’t work, the soldiers took to the usual methods: high-velocity tear gas canisters, sound bombs, rubber-coated steel bullets, and live ammunition. At 11:30, I was holed up with some Palestinians in a closed storefront about 25 meters from the Israeli position next to the tower. My surroundings kinda looked like this…
…and the Israelis kinda looked like this:
The kids would throw a rock or a bottle and disappear behind the corner, then the soldiers would shoot tear gas back and depending on where the wind was blowing, the actors would shuffle accordingly. I’m pretty sure that’s been the Israel-Palestine battle plan for as long as anyone can remember. At one point, all the kids left except one. (EDIT: I later found out his name, Ahed Wahdan) He motioned to me not to take a picture of him (also standard protocol ever since the Israeli army started raiding camps armed with printed digital pictures) and I obliged as he got ready to throw a glass Coke bottle.
Then there was a bang, the bottle smashed, he clutched his face and dropped. I was about six feet away from him and I went over and shouted “Injured” or something, I don’t remember. I knew it was his eye. After the bullet, the Israelis shot a tear gas canister into the corner of the storefront. It landed within a few feet of us. (EDIT: Later figured out Ahed was shot with the tear gas canister, then it dropped to the ground and gas started coming out of it.) I started trying to pick the kid up, but between huge gulps of tear gas, I didn’t really get anywhere. There was not a lot of blood at this point, just a spurt or two, but I can’t remember. When you get tear gassed, experience sort of fragments between what you see for a half-second and what you see five seconds later when you dare open your eyes again, so for most of the next minute, I visually remember almost nothing. Somebody with a gas mask, another photojournalist, picked up the kid’s legs and I got his shoulders and we hoisted him toward wherever the ambulance was supposed to be. I was having a hard time lifting him and everyone was taking pictures. I found a couple of these later through Twitter and Facebook. Here is one:
I’m sorry if you’re squeamish. This happened. (EDIT: There is a larger and much more graphic photo album available here)
I couldn’t carry him any longer (and I still can’t figure out why). He got up under his own power and said, “Hospital,” and then a bunch of other people bundled him into the back of the ambulance. I didn’t get any pictures of the whole thing, which must have lasted under two minutes in total. Ahed Wahdan was 15 years old and a Reuters photographer confirmed for me later that he lost his eye.
A couple things stand out to me now:
1. Nobody helped me pick the kid up for something like ten seconds. There are three pictures (one is in this NYT slideshow) which show me trying to pick him up. Whoever had time for pictures is a brave and diligent soul I’m sure, but guilty of the most commonly cited sin of photojournalism. Nothing could have saved the eye—it more or less exploded on impact, I guess—and that’s not my problem. But when a 15-year-old is in shocking pain in front of you and you consider the frame, your priorities are wrong. Then again, probably they, like me, were confused (the NYT caption says I’m “tending” to him) and didn’t know what to do.
2. I’m not a law student but since “who was at fault” is constantly being brought up, this was pretty clear-cut. Any Israeli soldiers on the Palestinian side of the Green Line (and definitely on the Palestinian side of the wall, itself an illegal annexation of Palestinian land) are part of a military occupation. People under military occupation have a right to violent resistance according to the Geneva Conventions (specifically the 1977 “Protocol Additional”). I would say that means our bottle-throwing youth was within his rights. Even if you are a Zionist and point out that right is restricted to the political (and hilarious) designation of “alien occupation,” the Israeli army still has codes of conduct and open-fire regulations it is bound to obey. Rubber-coated steel bullets like these…
…are not to be shot at the upper body, much less the face. The tear gas canister that landed next to us was of the banned high-velocity variety. (EDIT: the fact that Ahed was actually shot with a high-velocity tear gas canister does not change the illegality of the shooting. Aiming that kind of projectile at someone's face is against the Israeli army's open-fire regulations.) And the decision to add the latter AFTER they had already shot the kid was way out of all principles of proportionality. Later in the demonstration the soldiers used illegal live fire. Luckily, only five others were injured and none of them as seriously as the kid next to me. You can also see clearly in this shot that soldiers were aiming tear gas canisters not in arcs, but directly at the crowd:
All this stuff is much more well-documented by human rights organizations like B'tselem (see this letter).
3. He was 15 years old and he’ll never have his right eye back. I still can’t get over that.
4. I wonder if his parents knew where he was. Most protests take place on Friday, part of the weekend, but Wednesday was an official day off from school in celebration of the UN statehood bid (I almost went this whole blog without mentioning it). It’s easy to shout parental neglect from the safety of an unoccupied Western country, but when soldiers regularly raid Qalandia camp and take sons literally out of their beds, is it still strange that mothers and fathers sanction this sort of danger? Being a West Bank Palestinian is already dangerous.
5. When it came down to the moment, I realized I didn’t know how to say “Everything’s going to be alright” in Palestinian Arabic, or indeed any words of comfort at all. I’ve learned how to prevaricate at length on politics, society, and the Fatah-Hamas split, but for a few awful seconds there, I was just lying in English and saying, “You’re okay.”
In any case, he was not okay and everything was not alright. Throughout the next four hours, I saw an international activist carted away on a stretcher after getting shot in the ear, one Palestinian get shot in the shin and remain standing (and throwing), two Israeli flags burned, one Palestinian flag stolen, three Palestinians arrested, and about twenty tires lit on fire. This was not a normal protest by the standards of what I’m used to, but seeing as nobody was killed, it could have been much worse. I don’t know how much of the credit for that can be given to the embedded media…
…for whose sake many of the most brutal Israeli tactics are momentarily forgotten, and how much of the credit is lost to luck. It took me a long time to simply walk away from the battle and go home to Bethlehem; by the time I left, it had still not ended. It will probably be continued on Friday, no matter what happens at the UN.
I’m sorry for the clunky list format of this post, it’s the only way I could force myself to write about it. I was in a daze for most of this evening. My good friend and roommate Beth insists I have to process what happened, and that makes sense in theory—you don’t just watch a teenage boy get his eye shot out in front of you and then go on as if nothing happened—but I just haven’t started doing that yet. I still have his blood on my shirt. I keep thinking about living with only one eye and what that must do to depth perception and aim. Will he keep throwing stones? I also wonder what he’ll be like in the future, when maybe there is peace in Palestine and he’s 50 and he still doesn’t have a right eye. Before everyone goes blind in Gandhi’s eye-for-an-eye aphorism, there must be a stage at which both parties have only one eye each, right? And nobody has any judgment at all? I wonder if we’re already there.
Brendan
Claire Nobleclairibou14 # Friday, September 23, 2011 9:29:40 PM
Josh Cohenjccohen1 # Monday, September 26, 2011 4:10:45 AM