Time to get away. Escapism. We're riding up North for three days. Beach, mountains, old stones, and a blissful absence of checkpoints.

A day earlier I go to Jerusalem, get us a yellow-plate car. No use for the green-and-white. Makes me chuckle sometimes to see a green-plate Mercedes SUV in Ramallah. Where you gonna drive that thing? All the way to Beitunia and back, ey?

Anywayz, I'm at Rentals-R-Us, looking at a minivan. "Can I take it into the Territories? Like, say, Bethlehem?" I inquire.

"Why, sure," says the guy. "No problem at all."

A minute later we're going over the forms, and he turns pensive of a sudden. "Oh, by the way, the insurance only covers you to where the army goes."

The IDF admits to using "agents provocateurs" at the weekly anti-wall demonstrations in Bil'in. "But they only start throwing rocks after the regular demonstrators do so." Which begs the question; what's the point of using infiltrators then? Once more, logic is that most scarce of commodities, snuffed out in the fog of tugging.
 
Then again, what's the point of a lot of things? We so often fold into our designated ruts, each to his role, unthinkingly. Ever thus at Bil'in. Left-wing, self-hating Israelis and internationals fold arms with the downtrodden, the people whose land is nibbled at, cement-trucked, ground into facts. To each his task. The army's welcoming committee, on the Palestinian side of what's supposed to be a separation fence, cross-armed, wide-legged megaphones along the script; "This is a closed military zone. Leave now or face the consequences."