Entries this day: Tear_gas_in_Bil'in zzzz_archiving

Tear gas in Bil'in

15:01 IST Friday 14 October 2005

Now I know what a bit of tear gas smells like.

Came to Bil'in to see what all the fuss was about. But before we even arrived in Bil'in, we were stopped at a flying checkpoint. I took a few pics, then we pretended to leave and then we just walked around the checkpoint.

Before the thing started, I walked with Jason to where the conflicts usually occur. There was quite a lot of nothing there.

We walked back to where the crowd had been gathering, and were met by hundreds of people just chanting at first, with a peaceful mob of about 100 people marching from the mosque in Bil'in ("that's a mosque?") to the wall construction site, where there was not a wall in sight.

It was a standoff at first with some dialogue between leaders, and I slowly wound my way cautiously closer to the inactivity. I was pretty nervous, but the fact that so many media types were right there, completely ignored by the soldiers helped bolster my courage.

There was nothing going on, so I put my cameras away and sat on a rock, wondering when I could sneak a drink (impolite to eat or drink around Muslims around Ramadan). Also took a few snaps of this cute soldier.

Then the peaceful mob of 100 split into three groups: retreaters, separators (who walked off the main trail), and stayers.

The separatists were followed by the soldiers, and the stayers just stayed. Kinda boring, but I got several pics.

There was a bit of activity down the hill with the retreaters, but I didn't see what, but the jeeps sure zoomed the hell down there.

Then the remaining Palestinians were harassed by soldiers a bit.

I was unimpressed with one soldier bullying one Palestinian kid:

Especially when he seemed all proud with his own /\/\4d 5k!11z of intimidation.

Lots of words exchanged, and I was surprised when the most adamant stayer immediately got up when I cop wanted to talk to him. Maybe because the police have authority to arrest, but the soldiers do not.

Finally the soldiers left, and soon thereafter the stayers left as well.

I walked back with them - down the hill and back up the next one. I was quite surprised to see some soldiers holding the snakes (that represented the wall) and having a chat with the Palestinians. There's obviously far more to this than us -vs- them.

but then some of the retreaters became rock throwers, and the soldiers whizzed into action against them.

I climbed up onto an unfinished, slightly damaged house where I could see the soldiers shooting (rubber?) bullets and tear gas.

I'll be straight, dude - it was scary. And I was well visible on top of the house. Fortunately, I was no one's target.

I thought about ways to get a picture of Francois from that vantage point with the soldiers in the background, but I never got it.

(( in fact, it appears I got *no* pictures from that exchange, but I know I got a significant amount of video. I may get it imported and find some useable bits to put on here. ))

That action seemed to stop and basically the internationals were around that broken house area, and many young Palestinian men were having a bit of guerilla warfare with rocks against the soldiers with bullets and tear gas.

Several internationals were milling about for a while, watching and chatting with some Palestinians. We got a large but diluted waft of tear gas that blew up the hill toward us. (Amazingly, raw sliced onion smells *far* better than tear gas. Like, "oh yeah; that's gooood" practically shoving onions in our noses..) Later, some press interviewed a guy (why did they only have pen and paper, and not a tape recorder at least?) while a couple of people (including me) videoed parts of the interview.

Suddenly it was cut short (after my video camera battery cut out (dammit; I had left it on while not in use for at least 20 minutes)) as Palestinians came running away from the soldiers shooting tear gas.

Holy shit. I found myself in the middle of it, first near this Palestinian guy slinging rocks (I got a video of his shot), and then I got the hell away and ended up among soldiers with guns having rocks thrown at them (with slings) and I was a bit nervous about Hitomi's camera and my camera being hit with rocks. Also a bit worried about my head, but I actually felt a lot better being with the soliders than being on the receiving end of their bullets.

We retreated even farther and left the melee behind us and regrouped for a bit. Then <foom> <foom> two tear gas canisters were shot and came *right* near me, and I got a small but intense wiff of tear gas.

We started to run-retreat and the guy who had previously asked me for a copy of the interview I videoed was in a car and offered a ride out of there. I quickly accepted, but then hopped out after we got stuck at a rock roadblock put in place by the locals to stop the soldiers' jeeps.

zzzz archiving

12:05am IST Saturday 15 October 2005

tar cf /Volumes/pics_tarchive_oct_2005/pics.tar --tape-length 676592 /Users/rob/Pictures/iPhoto_Library/

I used this command to create a series of tar files that filled every bit of real estate on a blank CD. Nice.

Three CDs filled completely with images and the fourth mostly filled with movies from P/B.

My HD went from 6 gigs free to 15 gigs free. Awesome.