Fear, Anger and an unforgettable day.

I have refused so far to keep track of my days chronologically. Today, however, must be frozen in this page from the beginning to the end because what I experienced thought me more about myself and about others than thousands reflections.

Friday: I spent the night in Jerusalem with my nablussian Roommates. In the morning me and D. left for Bilin with three other friends. Bilin is a small village right at the border of the apharteid Wall that Israel has been building since 2002. The Wall has been built for 'security reasons' and cuts into Palestinian land reducing significantly the already limited freedom of movement in the West Bank. The UN declared the wall illegal in 2004. Israel keeps building.

In Bilin ISM (International Solidarity Movement), is attempting to supervise the many human rights violation committed by the Israeli army. The village organizes a demonstration that is currently taking place once a week, on Friday. And here we go.

The demonstration receives large support from the international community because it is a mean of peaceful Resistance. Internationals are encouraged to goo because their presence, and international pressure, limits the Israeli's response to the protest and gives it an international audience. The Palestinian cannot win the war, but they can win the world supports, testing Israel military and political strength.

Having grown up going to demonstrations, I see them as the expression of a dynamic social dialogue and as an exercise of democracy. Welcome to Israel, many have told me today. Demonstrations here are a type of warfare and they are brutal.

We arrived to Bilin with a taxi and got dropped by a group of about 60 people standing around in a street. The demonstration had not started and we had an introductory chat with a friend of a friend working with ISM. He gave us tips with a calm, expert tone. They sounded like the safety talk given on planes but without the 'in the unlikely even of an emergency landing...'. Basically, we need to have something to cover our nose when (or if, I cannot remember) we get gassed. Keep control, run in the opposite direction of the wind, cover your head and pay attention to the trajectory of the gas bombs.

Still quite confused we begin marching ten minutes later. It is a small group of people and they are mostly international. People similar to us, young and older people from Europe and the US, some press and some Palestinians. I intend to stay at a safe distance and I spot two older ladies with funny hats holding a French flag. I see them as my safe island, I cannot imagine anybody hurting two old French Ladies with funny hats.

We start walking. We are not running, no screaming, we have no weapons, no stones, no nothing. In many we have cameras, a powerful weapon. I have never seen such a peaceful,almost passive, demonstration. We heard a few songs and a couple of people held Palestinian flags. As we were walking down I felt little anger and little adrenaline in the air, it was almost disappointing.

We are walking in a little street, around us an astonishing panorama and the Wall, in front of us, in the distance. We spot the Israeli soldiers that stand with jeeps and military guns behind the fence. Shortly the first gas bomb arrives. The air fills with a dense smoke. It hurts my lungs but it is still bearable. For 15 minutes gas bombs keep coming at a regular interval and they drop in the fields next to us, at a security distance. I think the worst is gone.

It is a matter of seconds. I am walking next to my friend when all the sudden the people in front of me start screaming. I see the sky full of smoke and instinctively I turn around. I am not thinking. What I see in front of me I will never forget: 5 gaz bombs touching the ground in front of my eyes. They are right on the street only few meters away from me and they keep coming down. I am terrified. I cannot breath and keep my kafia on my mouth. The air is just unbreathable and my skin is on fire, I am angry: why the fuck am I here-WHy_
All that comes out of my mouth for the few minutes following this is 'help me'. I look at my roommate and see myself saying 'help me' like an idiot, like a bad actor in a bad american movie. Why am I telling her help me?? Why on earth am I not helping her instead?
She is running next to me, she cannot breath. She looks at me with the most helpless look I have seen from her: I can't help you, she manages to say.

I see an olive tree and I go under it. There a bunch of Palestinian and an international girl I had talked to before the demonstration. I am still saying help me. They give me an onion and tell me to put it on my nose. At this point I lose my roommate and see other Friend. Her knee is bleeding and her eyes are full of tears. We put some water on the cut and I clean it with my kafia.

I stay under the tree watching people come and go screaming, crying. Some are normal and focused. They know what to expect and they know how to act. There are a couple of cars with 'press' written on them. I wonder what the hell they say about what happens: it is so absurd I cannot stop feeling angry, so angry. From the olive tree I can see the Israeli soldiers behind the wall, with military suits and helmet. I wonder what they orders have been. I wonder how they feel about this.

In the mess, children are the only one that really know what's up. They are helplessly trowing stone from the fields around the street. The soldiers' aim at them and they keep covering their mouths but they stay. Back in the mess, which I enter trying to locate my friends, I see a boy, must have been 8 or 9, coming out of the field in a cloud of smoke. He is like a surreal vision, like everything else.

The Israeli soldiers do not give us a fucking break. We got their point I think. They continue trowing gaz without interruption.

After 1 h or so the situations seems having calmed down. People are going back to the city center and I finally find all my friends again. They are fine. But their eyes are so out of it, I imagine my eyes must be too. I am in shock.

We talk with some international that have spent some time in Bilin helping out people. Their stories are dense, but they seem more comfortable with surreal. Seems something people get used to here.

We hop on a service and go back to Ramallah. We go seat in a European looking cafe, get a juice and try to calm down. It takes me an half hour to feel I can do anything at all. We share our prospectives- we would only be able to actually have a rational conversation about what happened 2 days later, in the balcony of our apartment in Nablus.

The day changes completely tone in its end. I went to the dead see and watched an amazingly red sunset why sipping beer with a bunch of people. Everything was calm and beautiful and when the sun went down it let space to a night sky packed with lights. I felt in connection with the people around me and with everything else and felt grateful for the beauty of what was around me...and thankful I surpassed the afternoon...

I could not help feeling guilty through out the day. I never thought I could be so sell-fish in a situation of emergency. I am not sure how high the possibility of getting seriously injured must have been in Bilin. What mattered for me is the fact that I felt I could dye and I have never been so terrified.

We thought a lot about what happened in Bilin. The reaction to the demonstration is without any doubs so extreme. We discussed whether we would go back... it is a form of terrorism at the edge between physical and psychological- actually both. This is exactly what Israel wants, right? They want us to get the point that it is not worthed going back. We thought about how frustrating it must be to feel that there are no options to resist. When Palestinian use violence they are terrorists. If they resort to non violence they are victims of terrorism...fucking security reasons are the secret word to Israeli's terrorism.

In all this mess I learned a lot today. I learned what it means to have fear and what it means to be angry, to the edge. Of course it is nothing compared to how Palestinians experience on a regular basis, but the picture that I took in my head about how I felt during the demonstration will help me understand others better- and this is to me priceless.