Football Semifinal

Last night I went to the football semifinal between Germany and Brazil, not something I would normally do, having very little interest in football. But we were invited by some of our friends to go up to the university gardens late in the evening where there was a big screen.


On the way, something quite disturbing happened. Simone, Mirco and I were leaving our flat with our young Palestinian friend Nadeen. The road leading from our flat to the cross-roads at teh centre of Abu Dis is narrow and winding with no pavement, so you have to dodge the traffic coming either way. Suddenly a frightened-looking young Palestinian rushed towards us and then past us in the direction we had been coming from. It was just on 9.30. And then a few seconds later, an Israeli armoured jeep drove towards us fast in pursuit of the man. In a minute or so, they had overtaken him and stopped somewhere near the door of our flat. Mirco wanted to go back and take a picture, but Nadeen urged us on. He said that the soldiers saw foreigners involved, he would be stopped and questioned for associating with them. What had the man done to deserve the pursuit? We didn't know. He could have thrown a stone at the jeep, or somebody else could have, quite a frequent occurrence in Abu Dis. I have seen several jeeps this year and last year, but this is the first time I have seen an 'incident'. Mirco and Simone have already been stopped and questioned.


Later on, there was something else. On the way up the road leading to the university, another army jeep passed. Mirco, who has quite a good camera, tried to take a picture of it, managed to get a snap of the tail-end. Just then, two young men came up to us, demanding to know who we were, what photographs we were taking, and why. It turned out the Mirco's photograph was fairly inconclusive. But who were the young men? They were Palestinians but who were they, and why did they want to know about our photographing? Nadeen was vague about the point. A little bit later, at the entrance to the university gardens, we met an older man, who told us that some Palestinians work for the army, carry out low-level observation, intelligence for them. The road leading to the university runs along the separation wall, so maybe they are checking to see that no-one is trying to climb over. They do it in exchange for advantages, maybe money, maybe in response to threats, maybe in exchange for permit to go and visit Jerusalem, which most Palestinians here don't have. Either way, they are compromised. They can be blackmailed by the soldiers or the Israeli authorities into doing more, threatened with exposure, and then they are in danger from their own side. I have read about this happening in Gaza, and the kind of revenge taken by Hamas, but this was something I have observed personally.


Sometimes kids are thrown into jail, some under the age of 16, where they are easily frightened and subject to any kind of physical and psychological pressure. It is also a fact that in anysituation of occupation (think of France during the German occupation, or Northern Ireland) there will be people who will be forced, or induced or pressured out of self-interest or fear to work with the occupiers. This corrupts the occupied as well as the occupiers. Simone was upset. She said that she had not been told about this kind of complexity in the situation here. I told her I thought it was inevitable, given the occupation, the imbalance of power, the resources an occupier can use to pressurise the occupied. One of Nadeen's friends has been in jail twice. He showed us a certificate issued by the Red Cross confirming that he had been in prison for 13 months when he was 20.


The covered area where the screen had been placed, was full of young men. One have of the space was pro-Germany, a German flag hung from a beam. The other side was pro-Spain. Simone was the only woman there watching. There were other women with children outside in the open area of the gardens but they weren't watching the football. The excitement built up, Spain one, huge euphoria and then within a few minutes of the end of the match the whole space emptied.


Tomorrow the volunteer teaches are going to Hebron, which I have heard a lot about - a quarter of a million Palestinians live there, and in the centre, in the old city, a few hundred fanatical settlers protected by soldiers.