Demonstration at Kafr Qaddum

The village of Kafr Qaddum is not very far from our home in Huwarra. While being shown around I asked one of the village leaders, “How old is your village?” He replied, “You have heard of Abraham?” He then went on to current issues so I never really found out what was the connection to Abraham . Kafr Qaddum is about 3km from the village of Jit and then on another 10km to the city of Nablus. The road between Kafr Qaddum and Jit has been blocked because the Israelis judge it to be too close to their settlements. Residents now have to drive 26km to get to Nablus instead of 13km. In July they began a regular Friday afternoon protest saying basically, “We want our road back.” Many villages have similar concerns. My teammate and I attended the demonstration on October 21.

We arrived very early and got a guided tour of the area including a walk down the road as far as we dared. When the demo started, we discovered that the Israeli Occupational Forces had blockaded the road very close to the edge of the village. We approached, young men started to throw rocks. Tear gas was fired. One young man was injured when a canister hit him in the leg. (They are fired from rifles and often aimed directly at demonstrators.) The wind, road, and building lay out was such that the tear gas just followed us down the road as we all ran to escape. It is nasty stuff; eyes sting terribly and breathing is rough. Things settled down again and the process started all over again. Some young men were throwing rocks to the side so we assumed there was another group of soldiers out of our field of vision. I am still not sure what happened but the front lines of the Palestinians turned quickly and ran toward us. We started to move quickly; my teammate turned down a side street to get out of the tear gas and out of sight. We are committed to staying together so I turned also. In very short order – 10 seconds maybe - we were isolated from the group. A Palestinian man also fleeing waved us toward his house. We went around back and thus out of sight. We peeked around the edge – through some bushes to see the soldiers advancing into town. We heard shots (not sure if live ammunition was used), tear gas and sound bombs. We sat on the porch enjoyed some refreshments and “watched” the soldiers leave, advance and leave again. About an hour later we thanked our new friends and walked back through the village.

An exciting, long to be remembered experience for us; business as usual for the village residents. Fathers and sons were playing soccer in the street very shortly after the soldiers left. Folks gathered for tea and discussion. Of course, life has changed radically for the six young men from the village who have been sent to prison since the start of the demonstrations.

(Note on Photo: I am standing at the edge of the Palestinian village and the buildings behind the soldiers are in the Israeli settlement. The telephoto makes in appear closer; the real distance is probably 400-500 yards.)