''SCENES FROM PALESTINIAN LIFE''

Gideon Lichfield reports on his travels among the Palestinians, this time to the village of Bil'in, which was celebrating a court victory obliging Israel to re-route the security barrier and restore access to nearby farmland ...

A colleague and I visited Bil’in, a Palestinian village that has become famous for its weekly protests against the anti-terror fence/separation barrier/apartheid wall. (NB: when I learn Javascript, I’ll add a “delete as appropriate” feature so you can read the version of this piece that corresponds to your politics.) The villagers were celebrating an Israeli High Court decision to reroute the barrier, restoring to the village about half the farmland that the existing route cuts off.

By the time we arrived the festivities had ended so the village could gear up for a wedding celebration, and handfuls of foreign sympathisers were loitering around trying to hitch rides back home. We drove out to the site of the protests next to the fence itself, where the ground is littered with the packaging from tear gas grenades.

As we stood taking pictures we heard a gunshot, and a minute later another. A group of boys in the distance had evidently strayed too near to another part of the fence, and the soldiers on the other side were firing warning shots and gunning the engine of their jeep. We decided not to make them any more jumpy by hanging around too close to the fence ourselves, and started driving back.

On the way I stopped the car to take a leak in an olive grove. From there I could hear the boys and the soldiers cursing each other in a fluid mix of Hebrew and Arabic. We walked closer, and it became clear that this was part of an established and mutually enjoyed tradition:

Boy: Fuck your sister!
Soldier: Your sister is a whore!
Boy: Your mother and your sister are whores!
Soldiers: [uproarious laughter]
Boy, mockingly: Where is Sharon? Sharon is dead!!
Soldier: [more laughter] You’re not a man!........