February 11, 2001

We have been talking for weeks with a friend of ours about the possibility of buying his car. Today, that conversation became a reality, as we made the trek down to Ramallah. After visiting the mechanic and our friend's family, we headed back to Zababdeh in our 1987 Citroen which is equipped with hydraulics for off-road driving (an Intifada car). That's the short version of our day. Naturally, of course, it was a bit more complicated than that...

Leaving Zababdeh at 7:00, we headed to Ramallah by taxi (direct this time - no changing in Tubas or Nablus). We traveled by way of the Jordan Valley, only to find that the main road has been completely bulldozed for "security measures." With the rest of the traffic, we headed down into the wadi (valley) to get around and continue our journey. Fortunately, the rain had stopped a few days ago, allowing us to make our way slowly through the mud and back around to the road.

One of the charred rooms of Al-Bireh’s Red Crescent/Red Cross hospital, a victim of Israeli military fire.

A small sample of Israeli artillery on display at the Palestinian hospital in al-Bireh.

While in Ramallah, we made a visit to the Palestinian Red Crescent/Red Cross hospital in Al-Bireh, opposite the settlement of Psagot. In the past months, gunmen have been shooting from the area toward the settlement. And as is so often the case (and denounced by human rights groups and the UN), the Israeli military's response to this shooting has been disproportionately violent. We visited the rooms in the Red Crescent/Red Cross hospital which burned after being hit by Israeli shelling; we also saw other damaged targets, including homes, a minibus owned by a school for deaf children, and a nearby newspaper office.

An Israeli bullet hole in the upholstery of a Palestinian school bus for deaf children.

We left and headed back for Zababdeh by way of Jerusalem. We indulged ourselves in a quick stop at a mall in a Tel Aviv suburb for a fix of "Westernicana" (a burger lunch, that is) before making our way belatedly to Zababdeh by way of Afula in the dark - not something we had hoped for. We missed the easy turn-off for the settlers' road (the easier and less-blocked of our options), and headed into Jenin. This gave us some pause, as we were in a yellow-plated (i.e. Israeli) car, but no one - not even the Palestinian soldiers - looked at us twice.

Making our way to Zababdeh should have been easy, but the road (of course) had been bulldozed for the benefit of the Israeli settlers (by preventing/discouraging Palestinians from using the main road, presumably settlers feel safer using it, and a message of Israeli sovereignty is sent to the Palestinian population). Fortunately, our new hydraulic system came in handy for some off-road adventures. That is going to come in handy more than we first expected. But we have a car!