Infront of My Home

At 7am sharp I was awoken by the words "wake up, wake up," but this time it wasn't my mom it was the Israeli soldiers that came into the city. I looked out my window and saw about 4 hummers infront of my house. I ran into the kitchen where my mom was preparing safiyha (arabic pizza) for breakfast, she said that the Jews have entered the city since 4am this morning. We never know why they entered until later, but we can only guess they came to take down a radical Palestinian. Anyway, I took out my camera to get some shots for you guys, this was the first one, taken directly out my window.
The untold rule is when the soldiers enter, no one leaves there home. So ofcourse life didn't begin until they left about half an hour ago. I live on a main street and it was obviously far from where the person was killed but I heard too many sound bombs and shooting today. Its amazing the first couple minutes you see the soldiers infront of your home you feel scared and anxious and after a couple minutes you can't help but feel hate and anger, but that didn't stop me from drinking my mint tea and eatting my safiyha. And thats one point of the problem with occupation, it starts to feel normal... SCARY!

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge but when the soldiers enter the city with a mission to kill a militant they surround the place that they are hiding to force him to surrender. If he doesn't surrender they usually fire to kill him then destroy the resident or commercial building in which he was hiding. Here is one of the bull dozers I caught a photo of and a hummer in the background.

So today was "exciting" nonetheless, it was like watching a movie, I haven't seen this in a while, since they don't usually come to the part of the city I live in, they usually go downtown, but today, I was where all the action was at.

I still don't know the total news, but from gossip, since WE ALL PHONE EACHOTHER to see if one has any news, the rumor is that they came to kill an El-Islami Jihad leader and to destroy his home. In the process two Israeli soldiers were severly wounded.


And here is a photo of some of our intelligent youth throwing stones and watching the hummers do there thing. At one point, one hummer zoomed up the road and all the kids went running as fast as they can. After the hummer disappeared they came out again to watch them and annoy them with stones this is when I got the photo. My brother was kidding with me today that I am a photo journalist... Anyway, this whole scene with the kids and the hummer reminded me of Tom & Jerry, a cat and mouse chase.

For those of you who are not lucky enough to see what tear gas looks like, my brother ran into the street to grab this for your viewing pleasure. Yeah, my mom freaked out that he is going outside but this was in the name of photo journalism! Anyway, the streets were cloudy and sound bombs going off here and there and ofcourse there is the random shooting. And you ask how do I know the difference between sound bombs and real missiles? After years and years of experience living in Palestine, you just can tell the difference. Missiles are like 100x louder, although I have had a sound bomb thrown between my legs by soldier and I almost shit my pants because I didn't know it was only a sound bomb.

But which West Bank or Gaza Palestinian hasn't experienced that?