Let's go!

Basically, the students just decided to go to Ramallah anyway, joined hands and started walking. The police freaked out and didn't know what to do. Earlier, as the Birzeit students were approaching the checkpoint, First Lieutenant Nimr Baghdad ( his name means "the Tiger of Baghdad"), had told his men, "If anyone uses their weapon, I'll shoot you myself!" This had indeed promising. Those of you who remember the PA massacre of people outside the Mosque in Gaza in November 1994 - the result of a basic lack in training skills in crowd control and over-armed police more than anything - will appreciate the restraint. It is not true that the PA doesn't learn from its mistakes.

The sight that greeted us as we spead ahead of the students, pictured left, was a road block hastily put up by the PA as the students began to move. Simple mathematics will tell you that 5 police with no riot control equipment are not really going to have an impact on 1,000 determined students. As expected the students walked around them. At this point though, people began to run (below), as it was obvious that to give the police time to regroup would simply result in another checkpoint.

Things were crazy. The police were running along with the students, trying desperately to get in front of them. The students however ran faster. A second group of police formed another checkpoint ahead and began firing in the air with live ammunition (left). I had leaped on top of a passing police truck (I didn't have much chance of lasting the whole way to Ramallah at this pace) and was uncomfortably high up compared to their line of fire, all but 20 feet in front of me. I ducked. For those of you who have ever read references to "the sweet smell of cordite filling the air" in cheap detective novels, it's all true. I spotted one policeman who was fiddling with something on his gun while holding it almost horizontal to the ground, when it went off, fortunately missing any people. Mmmm. It hadn't escaped the notice of one of his superiors, who went over and rebuked him sharply.

This photo on the right, taken by visiting Public Relations volunteer Manon Westenbroek, captured the surreal feeling of the situation rather well I thought, taken from the same truck I mentioned above. Students running, a policeman huffing and puffing to keep up, and someone's hands (most likely mine!) hanging on for dear life as the driver weaved along potholed roads. Manon had one of those automatic cameras, which didn't have to be focused (involving taking one's hands off the railing) like mine and so "got the shot", a lesson to us all. Shortly after this image was taken, our driver took off down a road to the left, getting in front of the students and adding his vehicle to a barrier of them outside the Muqata', the former Israeli prison and now the head of PA activities in the Ramallah area as well as...a prison. As expected, things continued to get interesting...

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