Police, Soldiers, Guns, Explosion

Well perhaps after all the TV footage that gets churned out in the West about Palestine and the West Bank it is easy to imagine that this is part of daily life. Part of that is true, that somewhere there will be hassles of the sort entitled above.

During my four weeks spent here in the Holy Land the worst I'd come across was some fairly stiff questioning at a couple of border crossings. Working with an Israeli-Arab cameraman changes the stakes though. Yesterday, when the guy, who is superb, was challenged by Israeli police for filming in the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre he confidently argued back, told the people who were being rude to him to shut-up, got me involved and carried on filming.

Today we were going through a checkpoint, waiting over twenty minutes to watch seven cars go through ahead of us -- then the soldier shouts at the cameraman, who is doing the driving,
'move the fuck back':
unsuprisingly this didn't go down too well
'less of the fuck if you don't mind' was his reply.
'Just move the fuck back!'
'There's no fuck involved in moving back, why do you say this?'
'You want me to arrest you, I'll arrest you, you know.'
'Go on then arrest me, take me now, just take me.'
'I will, I will arrest you, want me to do that.'
'Go on, I'm an Israeli, take me and then see what happens.'
'Hey, so cool it then, take it easy, if you're an Israeli, just move back.'
'Oh so now you know I'm an Israeli, it's "just move back"!'
'I'll make you wait here hours if you carry on with this.'
'That's fine I've got ALL night, you just take your time.'
'OK get out of the car.'
'No, there's something wrong with my leg.'
'show me your medical papers, prove there's something wrong.'
'I'm not showing you, and I'm not moving.'

...

The soldier backed down, not us, and we were gone up the motorway to another part of the West Bank. 10 minutes later, we're at Kalandia checkpoint, both cameraman and the soundman leap from the car, I'm left there, with solidiers and guns everywhere, lots of shouting, bright lights, and then suddenly an Italian journalist leaps into the car to move it 'out of the way of the suspicious vehicle' and then BANG
'controlled explosion?' I ask, as if I was checking a direction,
'yes', the answer.

Shit.

10 minutes after that, back at the film studios, fantastic shot of the vehicle being blown up by the Israeli Defence Force -- the timing of the zoom in, just 2 seconds before the bang leads me to offer an involuntary 'mabrouskh' -- 'congratulations' -- what else to say?