Just went up on the roof after hearing two large explosions.  I didn't see any smoke, so it's probably not teargas--and I can usually smell the teargas ever from a long distance/  And the soldiers in the camp next to our apartment (formerly the central bus station) did not seem particularly agitated.  We have heard Palestinians in the street telling us that a Third Intifada is on the move--such as happened in Egypt and Tunisia.  I guess I'm hoping that it is Egypt and Tunisia that are being modeled and not Libya or Bahrein.

Yesterday I accompanied my teammate, Paulette (known as "Bullet" by the local children and now us), to track down a boy whom soldiers had detained on Tuesday.  Some younger children had been throwing stones at a soldiers outpost, and he and his friends had decided to leave their soccer game and depart for safer quarters, but the soldiers nabbed him and kept him blindfolded and handcuffed for six hours, barking at him to admit he had thrown stones. One of the soldiers who applied the most pressure getting him to confess kicked him.  ("I don't want to say he was an asshole," he began.)  Then a kinder officer who spoke good Arabic arrived, talked to him for a few minutes and brought him to the Palestinian police at 3:00 a.m., where he slept until his mother retrieved him in the morning. 

I was impressed by the boy's English and later his brother's.  Even though Palestinian students start studying English in 5th grade, the boys attributed their language skills to watching American movies.  When they learned that we were interested in other cases of young people being detained, they told us they could give us many more examples, so we will probably go over tomorrow and do some interviews.

We heard sound bombs today in the direction of Bab izawiye and then rhythmic shooting.  We realized at some point that the shooting was part of traditional wedding celebrations.  The sound bombs were from clashes, i.e., young men throwing rocks at soldiers outposts.  We don't really have a role to play other than witnessing in these cases.  Most of our work goes into supporting nonviolent demonstrations--of which there are at least two this weekend.

That's all for now.  My eyes hurt.

Oh, BTW, my new twitter account is @KathleenKern