Qalandiya, Sun 25.9.11, Afternoon

Translating: Ruth Fleishman

While a massive demonstration was held in Ramallah in honor of Abu-Mazen's return from the UN general assembly, and while he was declaring the "Palestinian Spring", a group of young boys protested in front of the pillbox observing the refugee camp.

Boys and teenagers- "revolution cubs", some covered their faces for fear of the camera, others had the Palestinian flag around their heads, they were shouting slogans for the liberation of Palestine and throwing stones.

The tower dwellers did not react.

They were not despaired by the indifference of the tower, they kept arming themselves and attacking with stones, blackened from the fires that had erupted during the past days. They moved like waves, proceeding and attacking the indifferent and silent concrete walls.

We stood by them equipped with masks that only slightly protected against the sting of the gas fumes. We promised not to expose their faces in the photos and they took our word on that and didn't protest even as we observed how they improvised Molotov Cocktails, they light them up and cheered with joy when the flams took to the tower and hovered round it like tongues of fire.  

Once the fire was out two groups of soldiers came down and stood at the entrance to the site, across from the teenagers, they were armed with rifles for shooting tear gas ("Ringo" is the IDF name for it). One of them was on the radio and as this conversation ended the six soldiers turned around and walked towards the checkpoint.

The teenagers resumed attacking the tower, where from time to time the metal shutters on the top floor would be lifted, exposing for several seconds the faces of the soldiers fortified in side.

An hour later the teenagers began to shout: "Mistaravim, Mistaravim are coming…"and they fled as a man would flee from a wild animal.

The checkpoint was like a parallel universe, the gray reality continued to sluggishly exist and did not go out of its way to greet the new state, people were not festive, their faces did not indicate any sort of thrill or hope, they proceeded, as they do every day, to submissively and quietly stand in front of the metal bars, waiting with endless patience for the path to open before them.

A white balloon with a camera on it has been hovering above this area ever since the beginning of September.