Thursday 12 February 2015

Another Friday in Bethany


For the last couple Fridays I have gone to Bethany for the protests with the purpose of finding something exceptional to share in the blog. Once again on the 7th the whole spectacle was remarkably similar, even cyclical, as is the life of people here.

Nothing changes with each wave of demonstrations; the wall hasn’t crept an inch forward or backward and nobody feels any differently on the Saturday than they did on the Thursday other than the unlucky couple boys who might have got shot.

Watching it again today (7/2) it felt like a poorly scripted play that I had already seen. There is no climax, no epic standoff where all is resolved and the tale ends. Instead over a period of two hours or so, the lads creep up to the wall, get up to their normal tricks and then drop quickly when the tear gas comes back from the other side, then over the course of the next half hour the lads creep up again, maybe have ago at a fire or something a bit adventurous before the tear gas comes back (and on another day some rubber bullets).

On this particular day I left during a détente but as I returned ran into a cloud of gas that had collected on the road. Mothers were rushing their children inside and I sat there weeping dispassionately.

Finally trudging back to Abu Dis I started thinking about my plan for the coming week and what I might do next Friday.

In the end I just decided to go back there for next the protest …

No comments:

Post a Comment