Words from Palestine

Friday we went to the demonstration at Nabi Salih. It began as usual with a march from the village center toward the fields of the village stolen by the settlement of Hallamish. Children led the march with a banner that read “threatening to demolish our homes will not stop our resistance to the occupation.” And as usual, the military stopped us before we even made it out of the village. However, the village had choreographed a great diversion. The smaller children of the village courageously, non-violently, confronted the soldiers with anti occupation chants, singing and playing games like dodge ball in front of them. The children were just too small for even the Zionist soldiers to react against them. The soldiers looked like fools standing en masse with their machine guns against little kids playing games. The kids kept the soldiers “detained” for most of the afternoon. The soldiers would try to move away from them but the children would follow them. The children demanded the soldiers leave their village, give them back their land, end the occupation… They formed circles around groups of soldiers, holding hands and singing, “NO, NO Israel, viva Palestinia!” This went on all afternoon.

While the children toyed with the soldiers at the entrance to the village, other soldiers who had entered the village via jeeps used tear gas against unarmed civilians and activists. Later in the day, when the young children had tired out, the IDF fired a considerable amount of tear gas into the village, seeping into the homes of people who had retired from the demonstration or who had not taken part in it. Cars were backed up when the military blocked off the road leading into and out of Nabi Salih.
My team mate and I stayed in the village late into the evening as we were concerned the military would exact fierce revenge on villagers for the humiliation they faced by the young children’s peaceful tactics.