There's something beautifully surreal about pissing next to an olive tree, looking onto an encroaching settlement under a starry West Bank sky. The experience had an element of absurdity to it as just hours before I had been drinking and smoking joints with a friend, talking through the finer points of Marxist Palestinian liberation theory in a hip Tel Aviv café off King George Street.

At 10pm last Sunday, as we discussed whether Tel Aviv radical circles are a connecting point between Western Anarchist and Third World liberation currents, ‘Yossi' - a radical Israeli activist - called suggesting I go with him to the Bil'in ‘outpost.' Unlike traditional land grabs by Jewish settlers, the Bil'in outpost is a Palestinian claim to land cut off by Israel's vaunted separation wall around the expanding settlement of Modi'in Illit.

Established in 2005 and recognized as Palestinian farm land by the Israeli High Court, settlers and soldiers have still attacked the outpost numerous times. Yossi said on the phone that the previous week an army unit sevearly beat and hospitalized Farajn Burnat, one of the two Palestinians living on the land. He added that the same unit was on duty again, there were two places left in the car and it would be useful to have a journalist present to deter or document another beating.

Turning to ‘Mailyse,' I asked if she was interested in some impromptu direct action. We contemplated for a moment whether we should continue drinking, smoking and theorizing about the revolution or actually do something. Twenty minutes later we were slouched in the back of Yossi's car with two other Israeli radicals, driving east at 100km/h.

Soon after, we arrived at the ultra-orthodox-populated Modi'in Illit, parking at the edge of the settlement, near the fence that looks onto the outpost. We grabbed our stuff from the car, and in plain view of a yeshiva in full session, ducked under the gate, scurrying up to the encampment.

Under private Palestinian deed, the farmland is generally tended to by two Bi'lin residents who live in a one-room concrete structure with an outdoor porch and roof. There used to be a large working water tank, but Burnat explained that the soldiers broke it during the attack.

Surrounded by olive groves with severed branches and large mounds of earth from Israeli construction sites, the landscape tells a story of a conquest being fought and halted at every inch. As we arrived, Burnat came out greeting us warmly, offering tea and coffee. We all sat on the porch lighting cigarettes, introducing ourselves and chatting in a mix of Arabic, English and Hebrew. The recent attack at the outpost came at a time of increased crackdown on Palestinian popular protest around Bi'lin.

The town of Bi'lin, which has been running weekly protests against the wall for three years, has recently faced another spike in violent military response, with an increase in demonstrators injured by teargas canisters and rubber bullets. Last Friday a Palestinian activist was shot in the arm with live rounds. On March 14, two protestors were taken to hospital after being shot in the head and leg with rubber bullets, while International Solidarity Movement activist Blake Murphy was pepper sprayed and beaten by a military snatch squad. He was later deported.

After a few cups of tea and a full bladder, I wandered off into the grove. Looking on the settlement, cigarette in lip, I saw the high beams of two SUV's, sirens flashing, driving from the settlement towards the outpost. Zipping up and hurrying back to the porch, I grabbed my camera just as Yossi and the settlement security officer got into an argument.

The officer, who refused to identify himself by name, accused us of breaking the fence and entering the outpost illegally. Taking our passports and IDs, he told us we were detained until the police arrived to arrest us. Seeing as we had no intention of leaving anyway, we lit more smokes and switched from tea to coffee.

As I snapped photos of the exchanges between Yossi, the settlement pseudo-cop and his two silent deputies with Uzis, one of the officers threatened in impolite Hebrew to smash my camera if I didn't stop taking pictures. In the back of the SUVs sat several local settlers. Maybe they came along for the ride, interested to see what was going down or perhaps they were brought as loyal citizens, ready to help out in the event of a beat down.

After a bit more arguing, Israeli police showed up and also demanded our passports, and our coffee and cigarette saga repeated itself. Exercising slightly more de-escalating politesse, the real cops took no notice of my photo taking while the settlers looked on with malice. The cops also told us we were under arrest and that the army was on their way - Israeli police don't have jurisdiction over the outpost.

It wasn't until nearly 1am that the army showed up. Just before they entered the porch we pored more rounds of coffee for ourselves and lit up more tobacco. To our amused surprise, the soldiers also entered with freshly lit smokes as if to say, "it's cool, we're chill."

Walking with Yossi to the point we entered the outpost from, he explained to the soldiers what the activists were doing - and informed them that an international journalist was present. According to Yossi, the soldiers were wary of getting caught up in a mess with media and Tel Aviv Israelis around. They told him they didn't care what the issue with the fence was, just to understand that the settlers were on edge.

As they got back to the outpost, one of the soldiers, who was Druze, started to speak with Burnat in Arabic. Yossi interjected in Arabic to the soldiers' surprise, and the surprise turned to shock when Yossi said he was not Palestinian but "Yehudi" - Jewish.

Disappearing to converse with the police and settlement security, we heard a loud argument erupt between the two factions about what to do with us. Minutes later the army came back with our passports, bade us goodnight and took off, followed by the police and settlement security.

Preparing for bed under the stars while worrying that settlers or soldiers would come back to beat us as we slept, I joked with Mailyse that this was the ideal Anarchist date. Even with the mattress, the ground was as hard as a paving stone.

Waking up at 6am to leave the outpost, we had to sneak around another side of the settlement to crawl under the fence and get the car. Again there was the same saga of early rising, bewildered orthodox settlers looking on aghast at the secular kids traipsing though their parking lots.

Jokingly, I asked whether people thought anything might have been done to the car. I'd barely finished my sentence as we turned the corner and found that the car had been flipped on its side.

Using our collective strength we flipped it back onto its wheels, and poured our water bottles into the engine to compensate for the water that had leaked out. I spent the ride to Tel Aviv in an exhausted haze, wondering whether it was the overturned car or the joint I was going to smoke when I got back that embodied the perfect end to an Anarchist date.