"We are not peace soldiers, we are real soldiers."

Late last week as my teammate and I were hanging laundry to dry on the roof of our apt (the sun is so intense here that everything dries very quickly), the soldier from the outpost on the roof across from ours shouted over to us to stop. His initial shouts were in Hebrew and he then asked if we spoke English and then switched over. He told us to take down our laundry. When I shouted back why? he answered that it was not allowed. My teammate shouted back that we've been doing this for 10 years and that we've never encountered a problem. The shouting back and forth continued and finally he said okay - we'd explained we weren't trying to harm anyone and that it would only be a few hours. Just as this exchange was over, we looked down into our blocked street below to see six soldiers around one of the 'chicken boys' (there are a couple of boys who help tend the chickens and turkeys that are housed two doors down from us). I went down to the office to fetch the team's camera and my cell phone and also alerted our third teammate to keep an eye on the situation. We were four floors up so shouting down to the soldiers would be difficult so we decided to just observe. The building they are standing in front of is abandoned and the boys in the neighbourhood have vandalized it numerous times, mostly scavenging for metal which they could sell. It was unclear what this particular situation was (soldiers had not come before when the boys were there) and so we called down to our third teammate to go out and ask what was going on. By the time she was outside, the boys had been allowed to leave and when she asked what was going on the commander said that they would not talk to her and he shouted up at me not to take any pictures or he'd come up to take the camera. This was when he told our teammate that "We are not peace soldiers, we are real soldiers" after which the group left the street.

The following day we saw the Muslim cemetery across Shuhada Street (the street which we are walled off from and which is an Israeli only street - limited to Israeli cars and pedestrians, and internationals) on fire. We have no way of knowing if the fire was set intentionally by Israeli settlers, which has happened in previous years, or if it was a brush fire. Everything is very dry right now. Regardless of how it began, we called the fire department, which is Palestinian, and they responded fairly quickly and put out the fire on the far side of the cemetery (accessible by Palestinian streets). When this part of the fire was out, one of the two trucks drove around to come down Shuhada Street to put out the fire that was still burning brightly on our side of the cemetery. However, to get onto an Israeli only street took some time. The truck was stopped at a checkpoint for over 20 minutes before Israeli police arrived and allowed access, and then followed, at first at a distance, before closely monitoring the firefighters until the fires were all out.

The lack of freedom of movement is clear and in cases like this seems absolutely absurd. Yet, keeping Palestinians limited in their ability to move freely within their own city, makes it safer for the Israeli settlers, so the settlers think.

More to come...

In peace,
Andrea