Surda

Surda: A quiet crowd of about 30 or 40, many of them seeming to be
students, waited -- for what?-- at the top of the hill nearest to
Ramallah. A hundred metres down the hill, two IDF jeeps stood just
below two yellow taxis that were parked head to head across the
width of the road so that they blocked it to the passage of any car
in either direction. No one comes or goes, closure has been in
force since last Thursday. There are no exceptions at all, the
soldiers say. The drivers of the two taxis come to complain that
the soldiers have confiscated their car keys and their papers and
that they had been stuck since three o'clock. It was the second day
running that this had happened, they said. A third jeep appeared,
circled the other two, the soldiers held a mini-conference in the
road. The third jeep sped off. Two minutes later, the other two
turned about and head down the hill and out of sight around the
bend. A cry of jubilation went up from the waiting crowd and they
were all off, running, walking, hobbling, in a stream that seemed
not to let up as word got round that the road was open -- for how
long? It was the pedestrians' hour, for almost no vehicles, or
almost no vehicles could take advantage of the sudden and totally
inexplicable lifting of the closure. By immobilizing the two taxis
the army had ensured that whether or not the road block was manned,
it remained in place -- a genuinely home-made Palestinian road
block! An hour later, the drivers reported that the army had
returned and had thrown tear gas into the crowd of pedestrians. At
8pm one of the taxi drivers called to say that keys and papers had
just been returned.