An elderly Hajji (people call people Haj (man) and Hajji (woman)a lot here, it just means someone who's off to Mecca to make Al Haj - the compulsory pilgrimage for all the Muslims on earth to visit the sacred stone which is said to have fallen from Paradise/God)anyway, she commented to me, 'Why? why do they do it?' gesturing at all the young boys lamely tossing rocks and ducking behind mangled oil drums, shrinking at the blasts of lead over their heads) She makes a casual screw-y gesture with a long, wrinked finger to her head - No brain'. But the soldiers have to hear the sound, they have to hear the sound of rocks - later that afternoon, enormous blocks of concrete were dropped from the top of a building by brave shebab which were later having duck laser-guided sniper bullets - smashing down, continually raining down on their tank/jeep/bulldozer. I heard of soldiers listening to their walkmans in their tanks which kind of undermines the Palestinian 'strategy of tension', i.e when is that rock maybe not a rock but a molotov or a grenade or when does the sound just infuriate the hell out of you; the sound of defiance, made by sheer courage, the fact of picking up anything to hand and throwing it at your enemy just to show them resistance, and rage, just for the honour of fighting back.

Anyway, at one point, after set-piece clashes between shebab peering, yelling and luzzing from round alley-corners and some from behind the huge bulldozed roadblock, now serving as a large trench and barricade to throw from, two soldiers exit the jeep and begin to make their way, commando style, stopping behind stone arcade pillars and then stepping out, guns forward. An international volunteer then made her way to apprehend them and confronted the larger, live-ammo carrying (the other was desperately but failingly trying to load his gun up with teargas and baton rounds)soldier, a commander, who said he was from Holland, was fat and miserable looking but wry, his face not unlike that of Comedian John Goodman. He kept muttering to his contact in Hebrew through a helmet attached mouthpiece. The volunteer kept putting herself infront of his gun and taking his arm and pushing the gun down, moving with him, infront of him at all times as he made his way to get closer to the kids behind the alley walls, the Mosque corner. At one point she tripped up backwards over a rock and fell full on backwards, leading to a big Balatta-wide rumour of the soldier having grabbed her by the hair and thrown her to the ground (Not true!!). At one point the soldier spun around, laughing slightly to himself, gun out, in a mock-giddy where-would-he-shoot-where-would-he-shoot? way. The other soldier never managed to make his gas-rubber-bullet gun work but he pretended to try to shoot the volunteer. Eventually, the fat Dutch commander receded, followed by the volunteer, all the way until both soldiers entered their jeep and vroomed off.

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