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.

 "Expel the Arab enemy" read bright yellow and black signs in English and Hebrew, carried by sweet looking Jewish grandmotherly women at Sunday's settler demonstration. The Jerusalem protest was called with the intention of marching through the neighborhood of Ala Abu Dhaim's, Merkaz Harav yeshiva attacker, and demolishing his family's home.

With chants like "Death to Arabs," the settlers tied to the religious Zionist movement fostered at Merkaz Harav, massed within blocks of Abu Dhiam's neighborhood.  Rounding police lines with some ease, a branch of the demonstration rushed into the neighborhood, stoning cars and smashing windows of the Palestinian residents. Those who couldn't get around the lines threw stones by from a ridge above the road at Palestinian cars driving by.

Over 500 settlers and their supporters, danced, prayed, clashed with reluctant Jerusalem police and army, all the time fuming with the rhetoric of ethnic cleansing. "If they can't live peacefully here, [Expel the Arab enemy] 100%," says Aryeh Rosenberg - an Israeli settler at the demonstration who's originally from Toronto, Canada.

 "At the begging I might have been against ethnic cleansing, but at this point, yes. They just can't live here," contends the bearded twenty-something frontiersman in front of several hundred dancing protestors. "I'm happy with them in Canada, I don't care as longs as they are not killing me over there," he adds, attempting to appear moderate. 

This was the scene that Israel wanted the world to see: cops chasing settlers to ostensibly protect the Palestinian population. Stationing several hundred police offers and soldiers to manage a restrained confrontation - creating a media image of a moderate Israel doing all it can to contain a violent fringe group - exemplified the shift in discourse the Israeli government has so desperately tried to generate. Through the almost choreographed playing out of events, Israel's desired identity, as a complex democracy where the security establishment walks a tough line between public security and individual rights, was reinforced. 

However, it's what wasn't internationally displayed on Sunday that creates a contextual body of information that dispels this myth. Israeli and international radio said nothing about the weeks of Knesset calls by rightwing members to expel Palestinian Israeli parliamentarians and their constituents from Israel. The newspapers neglected the past two months escalation of rhetoric from Kadima ministers calling to flatten Gaza neighborhoods, to Labour's Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai announcing his intention to bring a bring a Shoah, or holocaust, on the Strip.

While camera's roamed freely around the Armon Hanatziv promenade, the army kept media out of the Palestinian neighborhood just blocks away. Approaching the Palestinian neighborhood, I saw at least 200 people in the street ready to defend their community from invasion. At the top of the street, in a formation similar to a Qalandia checkpoint clash, two army jeeps stood with doors open and soldiers clutching their guns and tear gas canisters, crouched behind their motorized metal forts.

Looking at my press pass, even the commanding officers refused to identify themselves before screaming at me in Hebrew to leave the area. It was clear that the possibility of Palestinians throwing stones in Jerusalem, against an advancing occupying army and its settler cadre, was not intended to be the message of the day.

Jerusalem's tension has thickened in the days following, with yet again another increase of Border Police in the Old City. Behind it's walls,  the state seeks to hide from its centrality in generating a racially charged atmosphere of dominance. Press officers were on hand to lead the media through the tail of anti-Semitism at the core of the stabbing of a settler Rabbi at Damascus gate on Tuesday, but the Border Police's response went unmentioned.

According to a friend who lives near the Damascus gate, after the stabbing, the security forces sealed off the old city, flooding it with soldiers. "The Army arrested hundreds of people, based on being Arab and wearing a black sweater," he said highlighting that they were only released once cleared by video footage. "They beat and kicked people through the streets," he added.

Posters around Jerusalem appeared on March 13 by rightwing settlers announcing a Sunday protest march to destroy the family home of Merkaz Harav yeshiva attacker, Ala Abu Dhaim's. However, with Israeli nationalists mobilizing both in the Knesset and at the grassroots, Palestinians aren't the only people being threatened.

According to refugee solidarity activists, nearly 1000 refugees - mostly from Africa, especially Sudan - have been arrested in police roundups since the beginning of March. While many of the asylum seekers have UN papers declaring their status, "Immigration police have been arresting people off the street," says ‘Nawal' a women from southern Sudan who was arrested on March 14. "They are telling us to leave city, fingerprinting people and forcing them to sign papers in Hebrew. When I asked the officer why this was happening, he said it was a government policy."

Most of the refugees entered Israel through Egypt, fleeing harsh conditions and abuse from authorities. Sudanese refugees have faced a consistent crackdown from authorities in Cairo for years. Referring to a letter between the Israeli immigration police and the UN commission on refugees in Tel Aviv, obtained by the activists, Karen Shayo says that police are planning to arrest 2100 people.

"It's a way of controlling the refugees," she says. "They're doing this to register people. They want to make a database of all the countries that the people are from, contact the countries embassy's and try to send them back," contends Shayo, who provides refugee support in Tel Aviv.

Two weeks ago, Tel Aviv immigration police tried to raid a refugee shelter despite the resident's possession of UN recognition papers. The raid was only halted when people blocked the door and activist Nadav Franckovich was arrested while preventing police from entering. Shayo says that according to the letter, the police intend on arresting 300 people a day.

Recently Israel has been trying to make a case for itself as a humanitarian state, opening its borders to welcome the people from Africa fleeing persecution and genocide. Most notably, Israel made a big announcement out of granting 500 asylum seekers from Darfur refugee and permanent residence status.

Although, according to ‘Tarig,' who fled Darfur after he says his father and sister were burned to death, 3000 Darfurians have not received Israeli recognition. He was arrested by immigration police in Tel Aviv on March 14.

Walking with Franckovich and Nawal through Tel Aviv's immigrant neighborhood of Neve Shaanan, the atmosphere is tense as police raids and arrests have been increasing in the area. Nawal notes that the reason we're receiving glances and strange looks is because I'm wearing aviator sunglasses and both us are wearing hoodies, so people think we are undercover cops. She says that there are a lot less people on the streets or in the park because many residents are afraid to leave there homes. "People are living in fear these days," she explains, standing on the corner of Tel Aviv's central bus station.

Condemning the genocide in Darfur, Israel has invoked its self-proclaimed status of a so-called Jewish state, trying to tie its image to humanist opposition to genocide. None-the-less, there appears to be at least a little cynicism in state that declares an existential policy of "never again" to the world, while rounding up Darfurians in Tel Aviv.

Dateline: March 11 2008, the Ramallah Stars and Bucks bureau, 4:35 p.m.

"Never believe anything until it's been officially denied," said famous radical British journalist Francis Claude Cockburn.

Since Thursday's attack on Jerusalem's Mercaz Herav yeshiva the ideological home of Israel's religious settlers, there's been enough denials issued by Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to indicate the existence of a commonly-held belief. In the days following the attack, first Jerusalem's police chief, Aharon Franco, and then Avi Dichter, the head of Shin Bet came out denying the likelihood of new Intifada. At the same time, Hamas claimed and then denied responsibility for the Jerusalem shooting, while the PA denied, in response to the killings, that the Annapolis peace process is dead.

If these denials were indeed ironic admissions, then the statements form the parties involved might actually reflect what the feeling on the ground is.

First hearing about the shooting on Thursday night at vernissage for street artists and culture jammers in a Florinten café, I couldn't have felt further from the events of Gaza or Jerusalem. It wasn't until preparing to head back to Ramallah the next day, realizing I had to pass through Jerusalem to get home, when my Tel Aviv bubble burst and I saw the news of the military imposed closures of the West Bank.

The ride back to Ramallah is always a strange journey as you feel the realities of occupation that make the Tel Aviv bubble possible start to wash over you. However, this time's the ‘Serveece' - a shared taxi - ride heading to Jerusalem didn't only carry the tension of approaching a front line city, but also a city on the edge of erupting from the stress of foreign military rule.

By the time I arrived in West Jerusalem, the morning's funeral processions, with chants of "Death to Arabs" had ended, and the streets were nearly empty apart from Israeli soldiers remaining on every corner. By the time I reached the Old City's Damascus Gate, the frustration and atmosphere of repression was so thick it could have cracked a diamond. Outside the Old City, busloads of police with riot gear were unloading, engaged in briefings on their assignments, with the Palestinian population that live and work there steering clear. Walking through the gate, there were soldiers on patrol everywhere, engaging in overt, yet random searches of Arab passersby.

Speaking to a friend the next day who's lived in the old city for ages and is used to the usual tension and military presence, he said "I didn't leave my house all day." While he was skeptical about a new Intifada, my friend acknowledged that the situation was being pushed in the direction as Israel's post-yeshiva assault's security crackdown intensifies with no end in sight.

It's a situation that the PA doesn't want to recognize out of fear and real possibility of an uprising sweeping them away. So they press on with the rhetoric of negotiations while streets of Ramallah and Jerusalem carry a quiet but pronounced electric air of anticipation, with people just waiting for the spark.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has no interest in acknowledging that it has created the foundation for a whole new Intifada through its repression and abuse of the Palestinian population, and its inability to allow Palestinians self-determination. Yet, while denying that the context is ripe for an uprising, the attack on the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva provided ample opportunity for Israeli conservatives to incite against Palestinians and Palestinian Israeli's along racial lines.

"Yesterday's attack can not be disconnected from the Arab MKs incitement, which we hear daily in the Knesset," said Yisrael Beiteinu chairman MK Avigdor Lieberman last Friday.
Last month, Meir Sheetrit, Israel's Interior Minister grabbed headlines with his statement that the Israeli Military should evacuate and flatten neighborhoods in Gaza. A few weeks later, Matan Vilnai the Deputy Defense Minister threatened to bring a worse holocaust upon Gaza. Naturally Israel then denied that the use of "Shoah" - the Israeli word for Holocaust, was meant to be perceived as a noun, but instead an adjective - in Hebrew, it also means ‘catastrophe' in that context. With the Deputy Defense Minister - a Labour party parliamentarian- dispensing with such explosive rhetoric, Israel is now witnessing the mainstreaming of ethnic cleansing-language in public discourse. During the height of the Gaza invasion, the Defense Minister, Ehud Barak asked Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann to look into the international legality of targeting civilian areas in Gaza, while rightwing MK's called for the expulsion of Palestinians Israeli's opposed to Israel's Gaza actions.

This shift was clearly seen last Friday night, according to my Old City friend, as settlers held a loud and boysterous march through the Palestinian part of the city, singing songs about their entitlement to the place while Israeli police and soldiers protected them. With announcements of new settlement expansion taking place in East Jerusalem and today's end to the short lived informal ceasefire over Gaza - which all parties had denied negotiating, what's becoming clear is that it might just take one admission to get this party started.

Dateline: Florentin, March 6, 9:00 a.m.
The occupied territories are teetering on the verge of a new uprising (Intifada, as it is referred to), as a result of increases in internal repression within the PA, and Israel's ongoing military activities in Gaza. But, sitting in my Tel Aviv bureau-cum-hip café in the city's Florentin neighborhood, it feels like I'm a lot closer to Montreal than nearby Tulkarem, or my present home in Ramallah.
I arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday after Qalandia's checkpoint was closed off and on for two days, courtesy of Palestinian youth confronting the Israeli army with stones. The West Bank has been in a frenzy of activity since Israel's massive assault on Gaza that left more than 120 Palestinians dead. The outrage the assault produced injected Ramallah's atmosphere of exhausted frustration with a kinetic street energy.
While Ramallah and the rest of the West Bank saw two general strike days - where almost all shops closed, numerous street protests and checkpoint confrontations, Tel Aviv has mostly stayed in its Western political and cultural bubble. It's true that there have been a few protests and several arrests at the Ministry of Defense, and anti-siege critical mass bikes rides, however Israel's Gaza campaign has gone largely unnoticed in a city that's used to turning off the news when it get hot.
Although Tel Aviv is much closer to Gaza than Ramallah, Ramallah's connection to the Strip has brought it to the edge of a third Intifada. In Tel Aviv however, apart from some shameless street art in the hip neighborhood of Florentin that ties personal liberation to occupation resistance, opposition has yet to leave a deeply felt mark.
Walking in a large Ramallah demonstration on Monday that denounced a settler's killing of a Palestinian student at a checkpoint, I was surrounded by flags from almost all the political factions, including Hamas and Fatah. At the back of the march, the once nervous group of PA security had joined the protest, chanting in unison with their guns in the air. A friend in the crowd who's lived through two Intifadas and has a healthy dose of cynicism turned to me saying "we've got all the beginnings of an Intifada going on, but it seems people are just waiting for someone to call it."
It's the "someone to call it" where the gulf begins. While the PA pulled from negotiations on Saturday, agreeing to go back with no demands met on Wednesday, Abbas's pre-state regime suppresses the energy and anger. It's true that Monday's demonstration hit a new level of national unity, being the first West Bank protest I've been at where PA cops haven't attacked people with Hamas flags, yet that more speaks the PA's scrambling to keep control.
Last Sunday, Ramallah saw three demonstrations in response to the fighting in Gaza, all receiving different responses from the PA. The first demo was officially unaligned and saw hundreds of furious people pour into the city center unobstructed by police. Two hours later, a woman's demonstration of Hamas supporters tried to stage a march to Al-Manara -the city's central square, but before getting there they were confronted by hundreds of riot police and PA Special Forces, pepper sprayed and attacked.
The police targeted journalists, barring filming and photos. After being forcibly cut off from the march by a police line waving Kalashnikovs, a good friend and colleague, Arthur Neslen, was attacked and beaten to the ground by 4 cops kicking him and trying to grab his camera.
This time however, the public outcry was too much. By the time Sunday evening's demonstration, organized jointly by Palestinians and Ramallah internationals, marched through streets banging pots and pans, the PA had changed tract - focusing on co-optation. The march doubled in size as it went through the Amari refugee camp and there was feeling of people's willingness to completely break loose. Nonetheless, as the march peaked approaching the Presidential compound, the guards opened the gates and invited the protestors in on condition that they remained quiet.
These paternalistic PA attempts at reconciliation with a Palestinian public are common when the Authority feels threatened, but even this may be too little to late. Abbas is now scrambling to get back to the negotiating table at all costs, forgoing the most basic demands of an Israeli ceasefire. Al Jazeera and Vanity Fair's breaking story of a failed conspiracy plot between parts of the PA - especially head of Fatah security Mohammed Dahlan - to overthrow Hamas just after they won the 2006 elections has only added to the feelings of defiance on the street.
Israel's bloody attack on Gaza has seemingly resurrected a popular feeling and energy of the necessity to resist across the West Bank and the word Intifada is a buzz across Ramallah. The question is; when the uprising happens, will it target the PA as well as Israel, and who will call it?