The inevitable approaches...

Left: The column of marching students, as seen from half a mile away. Right: Public Relations photographer Yasser Darweesh speaks with Baghdad at the Surda checkpoint.

We had driven on ahead of the demonstration to see what lay along the road. Sure enough, there was a specially errected PNA checkpoint after Surda (just inside Palestinian Zone A) on the way to Ramallah. I asked First Lieutenant Nimr Baghdad, the Palestinian Police officer commanding the checkpoint, if the students would be let through the checkpoint. "Our authority," he replied, "is democratic, so we will let the students through. But," he added, "we are still waiting for orders." Oh, that's why the checkpoint is there, I thought, to allow people to move freely through it!

Approaching the checkpoint

The students arrived at the checkpoint at 11.30am (right), stopping to decide what to do, as the way was blocked by the police. Has anyone else noticed the remarkable resemblance of these policemen to soldiers? It's uncanny. The Israeli police and soldiers, who used to frequent Ramallah, were indistinguishable apart from a patch on their chest that said "POLICE" in Hebrew. Being armed to the teeth is a recipie for disaster when your beat is crowded city streets. A bullet from a Kalashnacov can pass through a foot of breeze block. After the last year and a half, I don't think I'd wouldn't blink twice if I saw a London Bobby carrying an M16. Anyway, as events transpired, it was obvious that the students were going to be prevented from moving through the checkpoint, so they began negotiations with the police.

After an hour of discussions, (left: student leader Khalid Bargoutti speaks to Mustafa Issa or "Abu Firaas", the governor of Ramallah), with the students continually demanding to see Arafat to present him with a letter of written demands, it seemed clear that there was going to be little movement and it was time to act. CNN and all the other camera teams had interviewed everyone in sight and things had been getting a little slow. Yet, what happened next took us all by surprise...

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