Bethlehem, Part 1

For one day out of many, the rocks stayed on the ground. The masses did not assemble, and the police stayed restless at their posts.

A tiny blue Arab bus bounced over every pothole on the Bethlehem Road as it winded its way south outside of "international" Jerusalem, into "municipal" Jerusalem, and out into the rolling Judean Hills of the West Bank. From the outside you could have seen our noses pressed to the glass, our eyes scanning every square inch of landscape.

We searched for clues as to the dynamics of this conflict. Black water tanks belong to Arab villages, and white ones cover the homes in Israeli settlements. As if to keep you from getting lost in the scenery, the gray wall snaked into our view every other moment, just when we started to forget that the white tanks must be separated from the black tanks.

More of the same passed our windows until a large concrete section of the security wall rose out of the sandy dirt like a giant gray monolith. Checkpoint Bethlehem.