George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a close friend of Yasser Arafat, and basically the head of the leftist movement in Palestine, died in exile in Jordan last night from heart failure. Funerals and memorials are being staged all over Palestine, and especially in Beit Jala, where the leftist movement is very strong.
So around 2:30 today, while I was walking back from picking a few things up at my house, I saw three or four armoured Israeli jeeps roll into town, with a large personnel carrier. I asked my friend Mike (a shopkeeper in Madbasseh Square) what was going on -- he was closing the metal shutters on his store because he was concerned that local kids would be throwing rocks at the jeeps. I got inside the ICB and told the guys at the reception desk what I'd seen, and one of them went off to investigate.
For the last hour and a half, there have been spurts of shooting and explosions, mostly of sound bombs, but a few real ones too. The Israelis are moving around the Bethlehem neighbourhoods -- doing what, I'm not sure. The kids in the street are out in full force to investigate. "Bullets, cool, let's go see!" is what my office mate says they were saying. She also says she thinks the Israelis inside the tanks are more scared than the kids running in the streets -- I guess the kids have been through this before.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment