happy new year: young boy with toy gun shot dead near jenin

Eid is the muslim new year but it's rather like american christmas. people get new clothes for the holiday, shops are open late on Eid eve for last minute shopping, people travel to see their families. on Eid morning it's custom for men to go about throughout their neighborhoods bringing money and gifts to the women and children in their families. the children, i was told, often buy toy guns with their Eid money. i wondered aloud whether this was a smart practice, what with israeli soldiers' quick trigger-fingers and their fear of palestinians, whom they usually refer to as 'arabs' and sometimes, the mean or religious ones, 'dogs'.

my friend mika assured me that the soldiers are well aware of the toy gun purchases around Eid, and that the guns don't actually look real. they are plastic, they have orange plastic on the tips of their barrels; little boys couldn't hold M-16s and flail them about, i am told, and the soldiers know this.

unfortunately Eid money this year led to one little boy's untimely demise in the village of tubas near jenin. a thirteen year old and his friends were playing around, taunting the soldiers and pointing their new, plastic guns at a patrolling jeep. soldiers fired into the group of boys, hitting salah ikhab. he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
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last night i had a genuinely beautiful evening. it was my last night in the west bank and some friends invited me to a dinner party to celebrate Eid in ramallah. i'd never spent more than a few minutes in the city before, so i gladly accepted the offer and met them in a coffee shop in the center of town.

the party was great: everyone there was either a gazan or an international. any west bank palestinians were with their families celebrating the holiday, but these gazans, all students at bir zeit university outside the city, couldn't go home. in fact, not one of the four men has been home in over 5 years. they can't go because if they did, they wouldn't be allowed back out. gaza is essentially an open air prison, and though they desperately miss their families and the sea, they aren't interested in a life sentence in the tiny beach-front strip, divided by settlements, watched from all angles by soldiers in towers, locked in by gates, fences and the expansive mediterranean.

we cooked guacamole, hummos, a ful, a palestinian bean dish. we drank wine and ate by candlelight. we smoked. we talked. and then the drums and came out; the table was then moved into the other room and a rug was brought in to replace it. off came the shoes and we began to dance.

i finally slept at about 4 am, only to be woken up intermittantly by various cell phones and the howling wind outside the small apartment.

now i am back in jerusalem, waiting for dinner time when i will go and share a 30 shekel (6 dollar) ethiopian meal with a friend. it's my last night; i can justify spending more than 5 shekels on a meal. in the morning i will head off to the airport. i hope they let me pass without too much trouble. inshallah i will make it home without having unpacked and repacked all of my loads of crap. inshallah i will be allowed to return...