Over the past few weeks Israel has become a sea of emblems to mark the 60th anniversary of its creation, with blue and white flags cloaking the state's cities, towns and settlements. The celebrations are patriotic bravado, making America's fourth of July celebrations seem like a few weenies snugly subdued in their buns, but it's the insecurity behind them that's clearly exposed.

Ceremonies commemorating the 1948 war not only intend to reassure Israeli Jews that the land they've taken is firmly in their control, but also convince Palestinians of the unshakable authority of the self-proclaimed Jewish state. It is Israel's front lines - whether they be the West Bank settlements, Jerusalem or Palestinian Israeli centers - that have become most visibly consumed by the Magen David.

On April 24, as part of the build-up of events to Israel's independence celebrations, Jaffa's old port area appeared more visually Israeli than Tel Aviv's King George Street , with flags clinging to every lamppost and street corner. Veterans of the Irgun in collaboration with the Irgun Memorial museum in Mansheeah held walking tours and commemoration ceremonies for the "liberation of Jaffa." During the 1948 war, the Zionist militia founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who looked to Italian fascism as a model for a Jewish state, conquered the city, forcing most of its over 70,000 Palestinian residents to flea on boats to Gaza. The museum is located in the former house of Mansheeah's sheik, and was the only building left standing in the town after the invasion.

The tours were intended as war walks, marking historical battle sites and listening to veterans anecdotes of the struggle, while teenagers in military uniforms reenacted events from the time. For many of the mostly West Bank settlers who came in to participate in the events, the tours may have seemed like a victory promenade. While most of Jaffa's Palestinian residents attempted to ignore the Israeli flags smothering their main streets, police and boarder police vehicles patrolled at top speed on the lookout for Arabs that might break from their daily routines.

However it was in the final proclamation of victory in front of the sheik's house later that day - veterans gathered in the front row - that exposed both the anniversaries' vulnerability and violence. Next to the beach in a seated outdoor theater, the museum hosted speeches about the sacrifice of former Irgun soldier and Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, while Tel Aviv anarchists, social justice activists and Jaffa Palestinians attempted to drown out the event with pots and pans.

"We all knew there would be a lot of celebrations around the anniversary, but they've just gone too far," said Kim Yuval from Anarchists Against the Wall. "To celebrate this kind of conquest is too much."

The demonstration of about 100 people, originally a hundred meters from the ceremony, was quickly and aggressively pushed back by police in motorcycle helmets and border police. Police started attacking demonstrators when the noise began to disrupt the event and arrests commenced as activists started cat calling. "Begin was terrorist" shouted one activist next to the theater, just before he was grabbed and dragged away by police and soldiers.

Police then charged the crowds grabbing signs, pots and pans while hurling and beating protestors backwards. Later, more activists were arrested for similarly disruptive chanting. The police and event organizers attempt at breaking up the protest sends a clear message about the fragility and need for forced acquiescence to the official line, silencing the threat of an interruption from the Jaffa narrative.

In a similar vein, settlements and settlers claimed territory in East Jerusalem are oozing with a boisterous nationalism, covering the Palestinians presence with big flags on big patrolling army jeeps. At the same time, settler cars fly Israel's national symbol on every window as they speed down Palestinian streets. The slogan "Israel lives," covers the concrete settlement bus stops, which double as fortified cover in case of a shoot out. Behind the message of 60 years of strength and unity, the Israeli festivities expose the sensitivity of a society trying violently and desperately to claim authority over what's not theirs.

Barreling towards the desert from Ramallah at 10p.m is not the traditional way that Jews commemorate their biblical freedom from bondage on Passover seder night. However, the full moon lighting over the Negev crater, Maktesh Ramon, and my hazy state of recovery from the previous night's festivities on my rooftop, celebrating my attorney's forty years of service to liberation, made the adventure irresistible.

Starting to burn out and crash at 8:00 p.m., after a post-festivity legal consultation with ‘Burney, my attorney and his partner Sabina, I got a text messaged by Mailyse, suggesting a road trip. Most of the ragtag bunch of Israelis from the party having shamelessly departed for their matzah ball soup and brisket hours before, my attorney and Sabina closed the case and left just as Mailyse arrived to divulge a strategy for marking 40 years of bitterness.

"It's a gorgeous night, How about we go to the coast near the Lebanon border." I said somewhat seriously. "I know some great caves around there."
But my eyes were already being pulled south on the Lonely Planet map of historic Palestinian hotspots, towards the desert. "It's a full moon and apparently Maktesh Ramon looks like the moon. Why don't we go there?" I suggested to Mailyse as Burney frantically searched for his passport. "Sure," she said not lifting an eyebrow.

Twenty-five minutes later we were passing though the Hizma settler checkpoint, hoping to avoid the hassles of Qalandia during a full West Bank closure. The army routinely imposes full checkpoint closures for Palestinians during Jewish holidays, overriding travel permits Palestinians may have, preventing them from West Bank travel and trips to Jerusalem or Israel alike.

So we took a dialectical approach to Passover's call of "next year in Jerusalem," forgoing the downtown in search of the road to Be'ersheva and the Negev. Naturally enough, Moses' mission combined itself with Murphy's Law and we got lost in the city center, only finding the right road after our music-producing laptops had run out of juice - there was no car stereo.

As we headed down the highway into sandy, rocky obis, North American Pesach traditions found a way of surfacing, as Burney began instructing Mailyse on the finer points of driving from his back seat. "We don't have to go anywhere, you guys don't have to be here and I can turn this car around," Mailyse replied to backseat Burney with restrained frustration.

The unlit roads were empty and after we passed Be'ersheva at 1am we could only make out the shadows of desert hills, military bases and the tents of numerous unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin villages. With Burney listening to an mp3 player and Mailyse focused on the road, I began thinking about the previous week's visit to a site near Rahat - one of Israel's seven recognized Bedouin villages - to see a play on the ancestral land of community leader Nouri Al-Ukbi.

The Hebrew production by Tel Aviv University theater students fused interview and testimony transcripts with satirical songs to tell the story of Al-Ukbi and his clan's displacement, depopulation and forced relocation just after Israel's creation. With a stage next to Al-Ukbi's tent, which has been knocked down by the army several times, the cast eschewed the exotifying approach of elaborate traditional Bedouin tribal dress, opting for western clothes with small Bedouin patterns signifying their character.

It was a powerful use of cultural familiarity and a debate between the stage and mostly Israeli audience that ensued. The actors had subverted the traditional Zionist narrative of blooming the desert, synching lyrics about eviction and conquest to old Israeli folk and military songs. But the struggle for historical narrative maintained the spotlight as during Al-Ukbi's post-performance speech about his experience and struggle with the state, he was interrupted and heckled by an elderly local kibbutz activist.

"How about the positive things Israel and the army have done for Bedouins," he shouted from behind Al-Ukbi, seemingly offended by the satirizing of Israel's founding mythology. "How about how I used to bring you water?" he added. "I didn't want you to bring water," Al-Ukbi shot back. "I wanted help to secure our rights to water infrastructure and get our own water."

We stopped for a brief walk and exploration of the desert around us, and my mind was pulled back to the immediate surroundings. Back on the road, I began noticing how different the unrecognized villages were from Rahat. After the play we had stayed in Rahat - the largest of the Israeli-recognized villages. Its civil infrastructure was comparable to Johannesburg's Soweto, but these villages didn't even compare.

More military bases approached and then receded and gradually, the distant floodlights of what turned out to be Nafha Prison loomed. One of the major detention centers for Palestinian involved in liberation activity, holding over 800 prisoners, we slowed to pass its guard towers as watchmen stared at our lone car. The barbed wire, multiple gates and watch towers resembled a miniature Guantanamo Bay facility.

Finally, deep in the quiet of the desert, we arrived at the lookout sight for Maktesh Ramon. Our only lighting came from the moon, stars and the occasional passing car. The cavern of rock and valleys below made it look as though deep rivers ran through the center of the crater. We walked along the cliffy ridges, Arak and smokes in hand and sat on a ridge overlooking the vast sky above and shadowy darkness below, at 3am we lit up.

Eight kilometers squared and hundreds of meters below, Mailyse suggested we climb down and explore, while Burney had the foresight to wait in the car. We angled our way down the cliffs trying to find a path, but anything that resembled a walkway turned out to be loose sand, resulting in several 15 second ass slides. About half way down the first steep part, I realized I had to pee and ended up climbing over two boulders along one of the gorge's steeper faces to simply find an unzipping spot. Peeing in a gorge is neither as easy nor as gratifying as aiming at a settlement, especially when the ridge is so steep that one needs to kneel in order to go. While I tried to make a quip to Mailyse about blooming the desert, the symbolism didn't have nearly the same poignancy as similar comments made during our first anarchist date.

We soon came to the conclusion that it was far too deep to descend by foot , and drove to a lower point in the crater. Getting out by the side of the road, we descended to the bottom of the valley, discovering that what looked like water was actually hard white stone, creating a moonwalk experience. We hoisted ourselves onto two big boulders in the crater's center and watched our smoke rings twirl into the sky around the uninterrupted deadening stillness of the desert night.

As the moon disappeared behind the ridge, we clambered out of the crater's base to catch the sun rising over it. The moon left a back shadow that shaded over everything, including our huddled silhouettes on the cliff's edge. Then in a matter of minutes, the desert's dark cloak was split by a bolt of orange, illuminating a vast pit of sand and rock and revealing the crater's natural colors. As our smoke burned slowly towards the sky, like an unattended dwindling campfire, the approaching daylight washed over us, and spread on to the expansive desert beyond.

On the long drive back we saw in full light the villages and military bases that were only shadows the night before. Both Burney and I had to stayed awake to make sure Mailyse didn't fall asleep, and our attention kept turning to the surrounding highway signs.

"Hey, the sign just said, don't veer off the road as both sides are army shooting ranges," Burney said. A minute later we saw another sign with the same message in Hebrew, Arabic and English, and then another and another. Starting to nod off in the front seat I reflected that while we may not have found the Passover message in the Israeli desert, we could at least be sure that the army was setting many bushes ablaze.

Keeping it real with ‘my attorney' during twilight hours in Ramallah last week, watching Youtube clips of Britpop icons on Top of the Pops, I got buzzed by an old Montreal homie, now living in the midst of the Palestinian national liberation movement. Oldskool allies in Palestinian solidarity from Uni, we always laughed at how, despite being a Palestinian-Canadian, she actually had Zionists in her posse, and how I didn't.

Amidst the Pulp music video chorus, "you wanna live like common people," my friend told me that a mutual buddy, originally from her North American social circle, now beach parked in Tel Aviv, was coming to visit. Evidently I was "Janice's" culturally sensitive tour guide of choice, and being a freelancer on the edge of developing a new batch of stories, I was also the most available option.

There are some unspoken rules about the obligations of internationals living in Ramallah who seek to show their understanding of the place and commitment to "the struggle."

First off, when a curious, non-political western Jew comes to town, you have an obligation to introduce them to the Occupation. Secondly, while you only show them the international community and bar scene, you and your friends must compensate by spending all your time illustrating the inescapable visibility of apartheid. Finally, as you reinforce the recent calm of ‘normalcy' in Ramallah, you must intersperse it with explanations of the various markers to Palestinian resistance fighters on Ramallah's main streets, where Israel gunned them down.

Rising to the call of duty, I ended the conversation to engage in a rigorous consultation session with my attorney. Still hazy the next afternoon, I jumped a Jerusalem bound bus under the cover of aviators and a blue brimmed hat to bring Janice through the other side of Jerusalem to the other side of the Wall.

Meeting up in an alternative West Jerusalem café with the self-styled image of ‘the other Israel,' we chatted about Tel Aviv work life, learning Hebrew and how all her Israeli friends and colleagues had warned her against coming to Ramallah. "A nice blond Jewish girl like you, you'll be kidnapped for sure," Janice recalled several people saying, who - chances are - if having been to Ramallah, only did so during their military service.

Beneath a solid layer of upper middle class North American Jewish cultural direction and self professed apolitics, Janice's instinctive belief in equality for all highlighted her latent anarchist or communist ethics. As we talked about the basis of American support for Israel being to produce a destabilizing power in the region, she blurted out "it seems like the whole mess is just being created for the benefit of rich people."

However, the conversation eventually shifted to Janice's turn-ons including flirtatious uniformed Israeli soldiers and how - if she moved here- she felt it would be important to join the army. Janice defended the choice on the grounds of participating in the collective identity, however couldn't reconcile it with the army and government's institutionalization of an unequal and unjust society. "I always thought of the army as a personal experience and didn't think of it as taking a side like that that," she said.

Mindset tuned to the off-kilter surrealism often required to deal with Jerusalem, we took a wander through the ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Ma'er Sherim on way to the Green Line and beyond. After having group of pint-size Hassidim hurl insults and stones at Janice for evidently not being Yenta-able enough, we left our 17th-century shtetl and crossed into occupied Palestine circa 2008, marked only by a group of bored flirting soldiers on a street corner. After seeing the usual settler speed race through the Damascus gate - where small groups of Jewish settlers hurry their way through crowded Palestinian streets as the army looks on - we jumped the bus to Ramallah.

Getting on the small cramped green bus that operates as the main West Bank transportation source, I took on the role of informal sightseeing guide. "If you look just ahead of you you'll see a settler bus stop. You can tell by all of the white people in a Palestinian neighborhood that are being guarded by an army post," I contended as a brand new city bus pulled up at the stop. "On your left you'll see an army jeep keeping an informal checkpoint as we approach the wall," I pointed out as we passed a border guard unit.

Crossing the wall, Janice had a blank but receptive look on her face, appearing somewhat shocked while attempting to contextualize the experience into something familiar. Arriving into Ramallah during the early hours of the evening, a fresh pizza and us headed towards my apartment roof, which looks over the valley below the city. Along the way we passed several ‘martyr memorials' - flower pots surrounded by Palestinian flags and posters of the Palestinian resistance fighters. Janice was quiet and fairly unresponsive; seemingly half taking it in while half listening.

Darkness fully descended, the settlements formulaic lights and radio antennas were dotting the surrounding the hilltops. "They seem so close," Janice expressed in surprise as I blew smoke towards the most visible one. Finishing up, we headed out to the only bar that's open until 3:00 a.m. for my Montreal friend's birthday celebration. Although Palestinian-owned, it has an overbearing international presence that is in part due to its discriminating against most young Palestinian men arriving by themselves.

On the way, just as I felt like I was reciting a monologue rather than chatting, Janice jumped in. "It seems like all people talk about here is the situation," she contended in frustration. I responded that because the occupation influences so many aspects of daily Palestinian life, it inevitably forms the core of many conversations in Ramallah. Approaching the bar I added that apartheid is often discussed quite differently between Internationals and Palestinians. "Internationals incessant talk about the conflict derives from the reason they're here or a desire to feel apart of Palestinian society, while for Palestinians it comes up in explanations of being late for dinner," I explained.

Arriving into the crowded, smoky bar, top 40 pumping and most of my friends well on their way to being shit-faced, Janice soon found herself in many in-depth explanations of the daily realities Israel creates. After knocking back pints for several hours, we wandered into the quiet empty streets, and after a brief stop at the birthday girl's place, we stumbled into a taxi and home. The streets were completely empty apart from the occasional armed patrol of PA security driving past us at breakneck speeds, and the calm was quiet enough to make you feel guilty or strange for still being out.

As usual, rising later than intended the next morning, we were left with little time before needing to get Janice back to Jerusalem so she could make it to Tel Aviv for work. Naturally combining last ditch sightseeing with severe need for caffeine, we ended up in the kitschy, partly subversive postcolonial and partly American knock-off, "Stars and Bucks." However, without even enough time to show Janice the nearby refugee camp, we soon left the popular upper class Palestinian American hangout to take the bus through the checkpoint.

During the ride, Janice talked about how comfortable she felt here and how safe things seemed. "I never felt uncomfortable or unsafe on the streets," she said as we got off the bus, forgoing the international privilege for a minute to walk through the Qalandia crossing. However, after the shorter than usual 15 minute wait, passport presentation and metal detector gauntlet that's a longer daily routine for many, Janice became more reflective and defensive. "The soldiers don't want to be here or do what they do," she told herself as much as me. "They've got to keep security."

Talking stock of the last day didn't seem like it was going to be easy for Janice upon returning to Tel Aviv, and as we got closer to West Jerusalem, the conversations became tense. We rehashed many of the previous day's arguments and saying goodbye, Janice made promises of return.

On the bus back I kicked myself repeatedly for not breaking Ramallah's international bubble. Ten hours later I found my attorney, two friends and myself running up Rukab Street to watch a sizable Israeli raid of the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce in full swing.

As a wave of settlement expansion continues to wash over the Occupied Territories, the increasingly militant Palestinian-Israeli counter-response was evident at this year's week of Land Day demonstrations.

Identifying gentrification as a form of slow-motion ethnic cleansing, demonstrations in Jaffa targeted the 497 demolition notices issued against Palestinian homes. According to the Jaffa Popular Committee Against House Demolitions, the families evicted in this process will make room for upper class Jewish ones. It may have been no coincidence that in the same week, both Palestinian and Israeli activists took action against the mushrooming settlement and outpost boom.

Land Day commemorates the killing of six Palestinian-Israeli's during a general strike and mass protest against Israeli seizure of Arab land in the Galilee on March 30, 1976. Since the ‘October events' at the start of the Second Intifada when 13 Arabs were killed by Israeli forces in the area around Um al-Fahem, the traditionally Palestinian-Israeli event also taken root in the West Bank and Gaza. It marks both resistance to occupation and a shift in attitude towards Arabs who live on Israeli territory. In the years after 1948, Palestinian-Israelis were often viewed ambivalently by Palestinians across the green Line, while being distrusted by Israelis.

Yet both suffered from similar processes of ghettoisation and clearance. Since the large scale ethnic cleansing of 1948, Jaffa's Palestinian-Israelis have faced house demolitions, municipal discrimination and - since the 1970s - an express attempt to ‘Judaize' their neighbourhood. In the name of creating a ‘mixed city', Tel Aviv's mayor Shlomo Cheech Lahat took steps that engineered a Jewish majority in most of Jaffa's districts. According to activists from The Popular Committee, the process has recently become bound up with gentrification, especially in Palestinian neighborhood of Ajami.

"Gentrification here is not the same as in the rest of Tel Aviv," says Popular Committee activist Sami Bukhari, who's involved in a wider coalition fighting the developers across South Tel Aviv. "It's about the demolition of my history, my identity. It's stopping the development of the Jaffa community while transferring the population," he adds sipping a beer among the Hebrew-speaking, mostly Jewish Israelis of a Jaffa market café. Sitting on the second floor of the old Jaffa home-cum-café, Bukhari highlights the significance of mass organized community action coming back to the streets of Jaffa.

The March 28th, Land Day commemorations in the port city saw over 1000 people, mostly local residents along with a smattering of Tel Aviv solidarity activists take to the streets. As they marched past the proposed construction sites for Jaffa's new condos and high-rises, people chanted "We are here to stay."

It was Jaffa's first major demonstration since 2000, when hundreds of Palestinian-Israelis burned tyres and threw rocks in support of the uprising in the occupied territories. Afterwards, Palestinian Israeli towns and businesses became the target of an unofficial Jewish boycott.

"Our struggle is the struggle of today, it's not about nationalist memorials, it's about recognizing history and acting on it with social and economic justice," Popular Committee activist Fadi Shabita's told me in his office on Yeffet street in the heart of Palestinian Jaffa.

As the protest wound into a park just a block from Shbita's office, speeches from community organizations and solidarity activists focused on the racialized nature of Jaffa's real estate boom.

Significantly, Israeli-Jewish activists from Israel's Mizrahi (or Arab-Jewish) community were also present."This process is bringing in white people to force out black people. The state is acting on law without justice, so we have to take justice into our own hands," the former Israeli Black Panther Ruven Abarjil asserted, in a fiery speech in Hebrew.

Residents, many of whom were carrying Palestinian flags and keffiahs, appeared to be tying their struggle for housing with the wider issue of their Palestinian identity and its connection to Jaffa. "More than 90% of the Palestinians living in Jaffa are living in houses that they don't own," Shbita explained. Israel's Absentee Property Act of 1950 gave the state possession of Palestinian homes which had been emptied of residents during the 1948 war.

In the years that followed, Shbita says that the Tel Aviv municipality refused to grant building permits to Palestinians in Jaffa to even fix their homes. The 497 familiescurrently experiencing legal problems have been living in their homes for decades, many since 1948. Their Ottoman-era title deeds have frequently not been recognized by the municipal authorities.

Many Jaffa residents cite their historic ties to the land in challenging Israel's policy as a national, racial and class-based form of domination. As a result many see the gentrification as a form of colonialism. Yet on the surface, the struggle seems worlds away from West Bank challenges to settler expansion. While police in Jaffa held back, soldiers at Nabulus' Huwara checkpoint responded to demonstrations with teargas and stun grenades.

According to activist emails, Youtube footage and Israeli activist testimony, on April 2nd Israelis trying to help protect the the land of Badria Amar in the northern West Bank village of Qaddum were attacked by settlers and forced from the land. The army had been instructed to remove the settlers, but appeared to do nothing when settlers returned.

The land is recognized by Israel as being Palestinian-owned. However, according to one activist email about the settler attack, "this little [eviction] game has been played out some 10 times already." It's this sentiment of frustration that the Jaffa community has also seized on.

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.