As I write this from Jerusalem, I still have no idea how he's doing: the 13-year-old-boy from Qalandia who Israeli soldiers shot in the face. Nor do I even know his name. We kneeled, shoulder to shoulder behind a parked car, while windows exploded like water balloons all around us. We had nowhere to go, and the instant he looked through the passenger side window it happened. The blast and his blood splattering on the ground with shards of glass.

And I've no idea how he's doing. Nor do I even know his name.

Just seconds earlier, as I stood completely alone and pinched between a car and a family bric-a-brac shop, one soldier trained his rifle on me. I ducked down behind this car and bullets whizzed past, dinging light poles and car doors and everything in their way. I picked a couple of them up and pocketed them--one rubber peg and one solid steel pellet.

Bullets are bullets. Whether rubber or rubber-coated steel or steel or "live."

When I raised my head and peered through the windshield I saw these soldiers bumble down the rocky hillside, straight for me. They hurled a teargas grenade at me, and as I stumbled away, onto the naked walkway I knew full-well how exposed I was. I knew the soldiers were having their way with me--"smoking me out," like a rat or some other nuisance. That's all I was to them. Just something to be rid of. And as I stumbled through the poison gas he took my hand, this 13-year-old boy from Qalandia, and led me to the sanctuary of another parked car.

I don't want to talk

I went to Qalandia to gather interviews from Palestinians (and Israeli soldiers) for a radio project I'm working on, and to observe and document the abuses heaped on the West Bank residents by the Occupation Forces. Soldiers let no man with a West Bank ID into or out of Qalandia. Period. Regardless of who they are or where they work. Numerous men from the Palestinian National Authority Ministry of Education, armed with official Israeli permits granting them the freedom to leave the West Bank, were forced to wait in the holding area with all the other men. For hours. Of course, this individual and collective detention of people violates quite directly the IV Geneva Convention and the UN Declaration of Human Rights, but when I asked the soldiers to explain their actions, their response mirrors that of the international community: silence. "I don't want to talk," the only soldier who deigned to speak to me said. And neither do his words matter, for my concern is not his opinion, but whether or not he will let these men through.

Clearly this soldier wasn't moved by my presence, but a few Palestinian teenagers strolled up and were able to occupy his time, joking with him in Arabic. They diverted his attention long enough so that a few of the men from the Ministry of Education could slip through, the soldier more interested in returning insults than manning his post. And it was just when I started to think about this whole operation--how arbitrary the soldiers' attitudes are; how their point is not to stem would-be "terrorists" from entering Israel (the only people allowed into and out of the West Bank are men with Israeli ID), but to beat and humiliate the Palestinians into submitting to Israeli authority--that I noticed the three soldiers climbing toward the boys.

How do I navigate my way through this?

Moments of safety or sanctuary come infrequently in the West Bank. Near the checkpoints, you can be shot at any time by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers. I don't mean to erase or downplay the reality of suicide bombings by focusing so much on Israeli Occupation Forces, but the fact is that bullets and grenades and rockets and missiles are fired with incredibly greater frequency by Israelis than by Palestinians. Of this there is no question. And so it is within this context that I decided to walk into Qalandia--I could observe the three Israeli soldiers more closely than I could at the checkpoint. By the time I'd reached the string of shops (just a few hundred yards), the soldiers had already fired numerous shots, forcing the boys into the residential area.

Women and children hid behind cars and piles of rubble and scrap metal--whatever could provide them with some protection against the shooting--and traffic was in a confounded standstill. The shopkeepers began closing their metal doors--and none too soon, as rubber bullets slammed all around. It was in the midst of this chaos that I found myself absolutely alone.

And the soldiers bumbled down the rocky hillside.

And they hurled a tear gas grenade at me.

And they shot the boy kneeling down beside me.

And I still have no idea how he's doing.

Nor do I even know his name.

He staggered off, his hand over his bleeding face, falling into a cinder-block wall before a group of his friends scuttled him into a nearby van, at the frantic urgings of the driver. I just wanted to leave. To pretend I didn't just see all that. To pretend that this place called Palestine didn't exist. To pretend that war and bullets didn't live here. To pretend I didn't care.

I just wanted to leave.

But it hit me straight in my heart.

I am my mother's son.

And I filled myself with the courage she nursed me with and walked through the blood and across the street and up the rocky hillside straight in front of the soldiers. I stood there in between the guns and the grenades and the hailing stones. I stood there because there is no other place to stand here. There is no place for indecision or for the indecisive. So I stood there and I belted out with all the strength of my mother:

"IN THE FACE YOU SHOT HIM IN THE FACE IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO GO IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO GET OFF THEIR LAND YOU SHOT HIM IN THE FACE!"

One soldier looked at me and said, "Where? In the face? Yes!" and gave me the thumbs up. And another soldier grabbed my arm and crouched down behind me. Was this really happening? Didn't this soldier, not even five minutes earlier, heave a teargas grenade at me? And now he would use me as his human shield. The stones were getting closer, and I pushed the soldier off of me and called him a coward and told them all that they were about to have an international incident on their hands if they didn't get out of Qalandia.

They expected me to go and tell the boys to stop throwing stones. The boys who just watched these same three men shoot their friend in the face? Those boys? Stop throwing stones? Sure. I'll tell them. Just get off their land.

And the soldiers crawled over the fence and tried to make their way to their jeep, which was just getting pelted by stones. I walked off, stones falling all around me, back across the street. And by the time I made it, the soldiers, unable to reach their jeep, were back and the whole scene just kept deteriorating.

And where am I, anyway? Where am I that grown men are given guns to shoot at children? Where is this place called Palestine?

I left Qalandia, and by the time I reached Jerusalem my throat had swollen so badly that I couldn't swallow without much pain. And my stomach roiled in revolt of what it was seeing. And I thought, "I should be sick, here. I shouldn't be able to swallow this." And I sat down to write out all that I just felt. And here it is.

--Trevor Baumgartner, from Jerusalem. He is writing and sending dispatches to ETS! and other publications during his stay in the Middle East.