Discovering Oslo 2 Diary
Wednesday 26 March 1997
Abu Ghnaim Diary: "Birzeit students join in", part 2
The soldiers move into action, getting out the jeeps and fixing rubber-coated bullet canisters onto the ends of their M-16s. Others load up tear gas launchers. The students and other demonstrators start throwing stones. Some have muqaleyya, the slings that are used to launch stones.
Some soldiers go up the opposite mountain and chase demonstrators back along the path to Ramallah. Both sides are yelling insults at each other. Palestinian students swearing in Hebrew and the soldiers swearing back in Arabic. They are making obscene gestures at each other, most pretty Freudian. They are laughing. It is a beautiful, sunny day and both sides actually seem to be enjoying themselves. 
Maybe reveling in their mutual hatred would be a better way to put it. Students who recognise me ask me how I am finding it. "Well, I guess Ramallah really doesn’t have a real cinema," I tell them. One student on my mountain (right) is giving a double baboos to the soldiers on the other side. He is shaking his ass in a strange dance and really getting into it. The soldiers tell him and the others to come over to their side, with accompanying gestures. The students repeat the invitation. No one moves.
Through my telephoto, I am confronted with a bizarre sight: Israeli soldiers throwing stones at Palestinian demonstrators. Three of them are standing on a cliff, their guns slung on their backs, lobbing rocks at people down below, while screaming insults at the students and other demonstrators. I get a close up of one of them. This is a little too weird to understand. They are later described by a friend as "The Three Stooges".
They move onto the roof of a building under construction (above) pointing their gun to intimidate, occasionally shooting (enlargement) and carrying on the stone throwing (enlargement). The soldier on the left is laughing. He throws a concrete slab at the people below. I get a great frozen moment through the lens (below), of a student throwing a rock up at the soldiers on the roof. They are being careful not to get hit from above.
I look through my telephoto lens at some point at the soldiers on the other mountain and see to my shock that one is pointing his gun at me. This is obviously a habit. I am not standing near any demonstrators. It is not clear whether he is able to see I have a camera or not. I turn around and start walking quickly backwards, holding the camera up in one hand. Hanan asks why I am going. "Because someone is pointing a gun at me!" I reply. "Oh," she says and starts walking quickly away as well.
I move down the side of the mountain and walk towards the Israelis on the road to photograph. It’s Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now all rolled into one down here, with soldiers moving in formation ready for anything. Although all they are likely to get is a couple of stones tossed at them. It all looks so unnecessary and theatrical. Macho posing.
Teargas starts to sting my eyes as I take the photos. The smoke has dissipated by this time but the gas remains, an invisible jellyfish in the air. After a while I return back up the mountain. Soldiers have moved up to one end of it and a series of exchanges, mostly verbal, is going on between them and the shabab. Down below, the Palestinian Police are having no luck stopping the latecomers who run past them. It's like that game that I remember from childhood playgrounds: British Bulldog.
