Post-9/11, Americans have learned of the United States’ credibility gap on the storied “Arab street.” That is certainly true in Egypt, where the credibility problem has reached a boiling point in recent days. In the past week alone, protesters have taken to the streets, furious at Israel’s response to Palestinian terrorism and what it views as the United States’ uncritical support of Israel. And on Tuesday, Egypt — which in 1979 became the first Arab country ever to enter a peace agreement with Israel, a plan largely brokered by then-President Jimmy Carter — announced it would suspend diplomatic relations with Israel.

The most populous Arab country and one of the United States’ most cherished allies in the Arab world seems more estranged than ever. As recently as early March, while visiting President Bush, President Hosni Mubarak claimed to “fully agree” with American values such as freedom and integrity — and not without some reason: Egypt receives nearly $3 billion in U.S. aid every year. But while U.S. officials have spurred Egypt to work as the mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Egypt’s role in the Middle East conflict is often to fuel the fire in the region rather than quell it.

That role is nowhere more apparent than in Egypt’s eight daily newspapers. It’s not a free press; it operates largely under government control, and government restrictions hinder other competing newspapers from starting. And it feeds its reading public a steady stream of the sort of bias that has taken root in the Arab world and may be the biggest obstacle to any lasting peace.

The newspapers aren’t always filled with anti-American and anti-Israel conspiracies. Some coverage of the Flight 990 fiasco, for example, while defensive, at least tried to argue with facts.

In its final report, the NTSB never uses the word “suicide,” but the NTSB does use phrases like “as a result of the relief first officer’s flight control inputs” and “manipulation of controls,” clearly implicating the copilot, Al-Batouti. It’s not a surprising claim; media reports have used transcripts of the plane’s flight data recorder, or “black box,” to point the finger at Al-Batouti, who said the phrase “tawalkat ala Allah” (“I rely on God”) at least 10 times in the flight’s final minute and a half, words interpreted by the NTSB — and an American audience — to be those of a man with the darkest intentions.

But Yehia Al-Agati, the owner and chairman of National Aviation, a private charter, cargo and air taxi carrier, was quoted in the March 7, 2002, issue of the independent English weekly Cairo Times, saying, “A missing tail section could cause the plane to nose dive.” Al-Agati went on to attack the conclusions of the NTSB, adding that the Arabic phrase repeated over and over by Al-Batouti, “I rely on God,” was not something a man would say before committing suicide.

And in the Nov. 23, 1999, issue of Al-Ahram, arguably the most popular of Egypt’s Arabic dailies, and one of four officially owned by the government, Salaah Muntaser writes how the translation of the phrase “tawalkatala Allah” was incorrectly translated by some as meaning “I made my decision now. I put my faith in God’s hands.” He states that it is a common phrase used in everyday conversations, rather than words used specifically before one decides to take his own life.

In another article in the same paper, Nabil Fahmi, Egypt’s ambassador to the United States, reiterated this idea, saying that one of the main problems in the NTSB investigation has been “errors in translating [the black box].”

Despite these entirely reasonable arguments, many other Egyptian news sources have offered much more elaborate explanations for the plane’s crash that belie a clear agenda.

According to a front-page Al-Ahram article, in the same issue, “the Egyptian man on the streets” thinks that the true culprit behind the crash was “the Israeli Mossad.”

Another article in the same paper cites Amin Hammad, an Egyptian Parliament member from Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), as repeating this claim, adding details of his own to the claim. “The Israeli Mossad infiltrated the American control tower and shifted the airplane from its course so that it would be hit [by a missile].”

In the same article, Omar Barakat, another Parliament member, representing the opposition Al-Wafd party, was quoted as saying, “There was an American-Zionist conspiracy. I blame the CIA and the Mossad, because 33 Egyptian officers were on board the airplane.”

The peculiar fact that there were 33 Egyptian army officers on board the flight has been used as the concrete foundation that the crash was part of a conspiracy. But the arguments supporting such a conspiracy, while reported seriously, all lack evidence.

In the November 25, 1999, issue of the English-written Al-Ahram weekly, also owned by the government, Hammad is quoted as saying, “The plane was deliberately obliged by Kennedy airport traffic control to take an air route that is different from the usual course. [This is] because the traffic control is operated by Jews who deliberately pushed the plane to take a different course.”

Numerous other Egyptian dailies reported this same conspiracy, each adding various twists. In an article published on November 12, 1999, in the weekly government-owned magazine Akher Saah, Ibrahim Qaud reported that the Jewish lobby “which controls the American media” was responsible for the negative reaction of the American media toward Egypt in regard to the EgyptAir crash.

Another government-owned weekly magazine, Al-Musawar, cited a senior EgyptAir pilot who criticized the American investigative team, claiming it relied on Jewish translators of the flight recorder.

But while the EgyptAir crash provides an example of how the Egyptian news promulgates conspiracies, it’s hardly the only one. As has been reported elsewhere already, many Egyptians have also claimed that the Mossad was the true culprit behind the Sept. 11 bombings.

In the Nov. 5, 2001, issue of the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al-Usbua, an article titled “True Perpetrators of the Sept. 11 Attacks Arrested — Zionists with maps of the WTC … ” reports that directly following the attacks, seven Israelis were arrested in Florida, with anthrax microbes as well as maps of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House found in their house.

Other theories, however outrageous, were at least somewhat more polished. In an editorial published in the Oct. 7, 2001, issue of Al-Ahram, Dr. Zahran of Suez Canal University wrote, “The scope and nature of the attacks attest to planning and execution by an intelligence apparatus close to the CIA. No intelligence apparatus is as close to the CIA as the Israeli Mossad.” Dr. Zahran’s piece seems to lose its luster thereafter, as he states that “there were many rumors, and open publicly, that the Jews, who were huge stockholders in the airlines and insurance companies, sold their stocks at the highest possible prices in Europe some 10 days before the attacks on America.” Suddenly Mossad and these alleged stockholding Jews are one and the same.

In an article published in Al-Ahram on October 29, 2001, titled “The Jews are behind the Explosions in America,” author Abu Zayid cites 14 pieces of alleged evidence to make his claim. His “facts” include that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was warned by his security services not to travel to New York City during the month of September, no Arabs were actually on board the four airplanes seized by the hijackers, and many Jews sold their stock in the Manhattan stock exchange two days before the attack, in addition to the now-infamous myth that 4,000 Israelis employed in the World Trade Center did not go to work the morning of Sept. 11. As ludicrous as that story seems, the press repeats it frequently and easily here, with no reader ever confronted with, for example, the New York Times “Portraits of Grief” section that memorializes the victims in the tragedy, listing their numerous Jewish surnames as well as Israeli nationalities.

Interestingly enough, though guilty for spreading numerous Egyptian conspiracies in its own right, the Sept. 27, 2001, issue of Al-Ahram Weekly cited an unknown Canadian organization, Intel-Stern, as the source of the infamous e-mail that cited how 4,000 Israelis were warned not to go to work in the World Trade Center the day of the attack. This article goes on to censure those who created the e-mail as well as those who sent it on to others. As reporter Omayma Abdel-Latif writes, these conspiracies play on “people’s fears, hopes and appetite for extravagant hidden horrors, invisible enemies and future threats.”

No better example may exist than one that appeared in the November 2001 issue of Al-Ilm, a scientific journal published by the government-run Al-Gumhuriya, which is edited by Samir Ragab, a ubiquitous presence who also edits the government-run English daily Egyptian Gazette. It includes an article on the history of biological and chemical warfare that blames Jews for purposely spreading the AIDS virus in an evil plot. According to the study’s author, Dr. Husniya Hassan Moussa, a lecturer at the National Research Center of Egypt, “Jewish tourists infected with AIDS are traveling around Asian and African countries with the aim of spreading the disease.”

What makes these wild conspiracy theories particularly insidious is the lack of a strong, reliable Egyptian media voice that will set the record straight. The most recent of such tales to take hold in downtown Cairo has no connection to the Mossad or Jews at all, but involves the claim that there is a taxi-driver serial killer on the loose, referred to as As-Safah (the killer), in two of Cairo’s neighborhoods, Nasser City and Heliopolis, targeting young female Cairenes. Like the WTC conspiracy theory before it, according to the March 7 issue of the Cairo Times, this rumor was also started by various e-mails, one of which was titled “Warning: Serial Killer on the Loose!” and cites a nonexistent Reuters story as its source.

Perhaps because this e-mail was the cause of a sweeping wave of fear among many Cairenes, the Egyptian government decided to conduct its own investigation into the writers of the e-mail, soon finding the young men who spread this dangerous notion. But not before media sources such as Sawt Al-Ummah, a weekly newspaper, had already done their own part in spreading the tale. An article published on February 25, 2002, titled “The Slaughter of Women: A Ghost Threatens the Young Women of Heliopolis,” details murders of numerous young women in Cairo, with vivid descriptions of their gory deaths.

In this case, at least, the Egyptian government shot down the conspiracy. But it was a rare effort to chain a beast it largely controls. Due to government restrictions on the licensing of newspapers, only eight daily papers are published in Egypt. Four of these are officially owned by the government itself, and the other four, though technically owned by other organizations, including some opposition parties, are dependent upon direct government subsidies to continue their operations. Furthermore, according to a Cairo Times article, each of these other four dailies prints its copy at government-owned printing presses.

Egypt’s censorship laws, which in various forms began under the late President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, produces a system of “shabby journalism,” in the words of Cairo Times Publisher Hisham Qassem. Qassem adds that “[Egyptian] reporters are not properly trained, and subsequently their articles are often based upon mere speculation.” Additionally, because the government essentially supports the press, there is no competition among the papers and thus no motivation to improve. “The Egyptian government has created a system of disinformation,” which in turn has encouraged “a lack of political and economic development for the last 50 years.”

Why the Egyptian government uses its right hand to publish these conspiracy theories in its newspapers as it uses its left hand to accept a U.S. aid package is a legitimate question. As is why the U.S. government continues to give aid without publicly condemning the government-run media’s pernicious anti-American, anti-Jewish, and anti-Israel conspiracy tales, all of which only help incite the Egyptian public against the U.S. and Israel.

Then again, pre-9/11, no one seemed to take the rumor mill too seriously. Last year, the region was gripped by stories about the Japanese children’s game Pokimon, during the first year Nintendo decided to market the children’s game to those in the Arab world. Those smiling neon characters, newspaper readers soon learned, were hiding a dark agenda.

Saudi Arabian Sheikh Abd Al-Monim publicly declared that the game was atheistic and meant to convince children that there is no God. In March 2001, Saudi Arabia’s Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law banned Pokimon for promoting Zionism and “possess[ing] the minds” of Saudi children. Numerous Egyptian clerics followed suit, as did the media. In a late March issue of the Egyptian weekly Al-Midan, Sheikh Abu Bakr was quoted as saying, “Pokimon figures encourage Western thought, animal worship, and the theory of evolution.”

That was followed by an article in the April 12 issue of the Egyptian Gazette (edited by Samir Ragab), which stated that “Pokimons are a tool in the hands of the Jews to incite Egyptian youth to licentious behavior.” The rumor might have reached its reductio ad absurdum when it was speculated that the name of the main Pokimon character, Pikachu, actually was meant to sound like “be a Jew.”

At the time, these reports were repeated humorously stateside. An April 2001 blurb in Newsweek’s “Periscope” section repeated the outrageous claims with a tone of sunny bemusement: “None of this is likely to dent Nintendo’s sales, according to company spokesmen. But the credibility of these so-called clerics may take a long time to recover.”

Maybe their credibility was hurt in the eyes of Newsweek readers. But in Egypt, their ideas were repeated without skepticism and delivered to an audience ready and willing to believe them. And unfortunately, as Israel-Palestinian relations spiral further and further out of control, Egypt’s press will only exacerbate the situation in the region.

The same day, a front-page article in Al-Ayaam, one of the three main Palestinian newspapers (along with Al-Quds and Al-Hayaat Al-Jadeeda), reported that “the Occupation forces assassinated yesterday a student in Al-Quds University who was a member in Islamic Jihad, next to one of [the] university branches … in front of dozens of student and citizen eyewitnesses.” The article further described Himran as “married and the father of three children” who had “left the [university] bookstore around 1 p.m., and when he approached the road soldiers opened fire … Dozens of people saw what happened, including some children who were playing near the scene.”

The newspaper diligently quotes an unnamed IDF spokesman, who alleges, “Soldiers opened fire when [Himran] was shooting at our base.” But the story then dutifully refutes this charge, with four different reasons: the “base is hidden from the place Himran was assassinated … [and] is a kilometer away,” and “the place of the assassination is lower than the mountain” where the base is located, and “dozens of eyewitnesses said that [Himran] was unarmed.”

In Ha’aretz, Himran is described as a terrorist the IDF was justified — perhaps even happy — to have killed. Al-Ayaam, meanwhile, did mention that Himran belonged to the Islamic Jihad, but chose to characterize him as a student assassinated on his way from class, a family man who now leaves behind three children and an unarmed Palestinian shot dead by the “Occupation forces.”

One event. Two versions. Since violence broke out in this region on Sept. 29, more than 360 people have been killed and more than 10,000 have been injured, most of them Palestinians. Played out in the respective media, the “Rashomon”-style retelling of the deaths seems to lack any objective reality. Often, the spin is obvious, depending on whether the victim is described as “terrorist” or a “martyr,” or whether the victim was “killed” or “assassinated.” There’s also the difference, of course, in the lexicon: calling the Israeli army the “IDF” or the “occupying forces” conveys two extremely different ideas.

But as the beleaguered peace talks continue in the Middle East, what’s at stake is not only the immediate political future for the Palestinians and Israelis but a defense of each side’s version of recent history. The New York Times reported last fall that Palestinian textbooks don’t even recognize the current state of Israel, using pre-1948 maps of Palestine to teach children geography; Israeli textbooks, meanwhile, stick closely to heroic Zionist narratives and avoid any Palestinian perspective. Newspapers, the textbooks of the adult world, only continue the work begun by grade school teachers.

This can be seen as well in the coverage of a Palestinian man killed Nov. 9 in Beit Sahour, a Palestinian village southeast of Bethlehem.

Ha’aretz reported that the 37-year-old man, Hussein Abayat, was killed by the IDF in a helicopter raid. The article quotes an IDF official who explained that Abayat, a senior Fatah official, “masterminded and carried out gunfire attacks in the Bethlehem area in recent weeks.” The Jerusalem Post, another leading Israeli newspaper, added that Abayat had been “responsible for a series of bloody operations against Israelis over the past six months.” In addition, the Post quotes Eitan as saying that “the attack was launched after the IDF received intelligence that Abayat was on his way to carry out an attack on [Israeli] soldiers.” Both Israeli newspaper articles also mention that two Palestinian women were “killed” in the helicopter raid.

The story according to the Israeli papers: A terrorist was justifiably killed.

Al-Quds, meanwhile, runs with a headline that reads: “Israel Assassinates the Head of the Military Team of Fatah, Two Women were Martyred in the Attack.” However, its article did not connect Abayat in any way to criminal activity committed against Israeli citizens. Instead, its article reported the particulars of Abayat’s “political assassination,” in addition to describing the lives of the two Palestinian women “martyrs” who were also killed by the “occupying forces.”

The story according to Al-Quds: Martyrs all the way around.

Still, at other times, the strongest spin is silence. On the morning of Nov. 8, at approximately 8:15 a.m., an Israeli woman was shot and killed on the border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

The next day’s lead article in Ha’aretz, headlined “Woman Killed in Gaza Ambush,” reported that the 25-year-old Noa Dahan was the victim of a “terrorist attack” on her way to work. The article quoted two co-workers of Dahan at a customs terminal describing her as someone who “believed her work was a bridge to peace,” and that she “had done her best to help Palestinian merchants.”

Dahan’s death, meanwhile, was not mentioned in Al-Quds, Al-Hayyat or Al-Jadeeda. These newspapers instead ran articles on Palestinians who had been killed the previous day, describing the particulars of each “martyr” who had been killed at the hands of the “occupying forces.” In addition, each paper also reported that one of the wings of Alia Hospital, a major Palestinian hospital located in the West Bank city of Hebron, had been “attacked” in “barbaric bombings” by the IDF.

The damage caused to Alia Hospital, meanwhile, was not mentioned in Ha’aretz.

The two events most widely publicized since the violence began are the death of the 12-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Al-Dura and the killing of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah.

Al-Dura was killed on Sept. 30 in crossfire between the IDF and the Palestinian police, in the Netzarim junction section of the Gaza Strip.

Ha’aretz did not publish a paper on the following day because it fell on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when Israeli publications cease operations altogether. Still, Al-Dura’s death did not merit a mention in Ha’aretz’s next issue, on Oct. 2, save for a brief front-page article listing Palestinians who had died over the same weekend.

Furthermore, Ha’aretz did not attribute the boy’s death to either the IDF or the Palestinian police. In fact, a recent article in Ha’aretz cited an IDF spokesman, Gen. Yom Tov Samia, saying the IDF’s own investigation into Al-Dura’s death showed that due to the angle of the shooting it was “more probable” that the youth was killed by shots from the Palestinian police than by shots from the IDF.

In contrast, the young boy’s death received a maelstrom of Palestinian media coverage. The coverage in Al-Ayaam, for example, makes it clear who the newspaper thinks is responsible for Al-Dura’s death. The front page of the paper’s Oct. 1 edition shows a picture of Al-Dura nestled under his father’s arm moments before the young boy was killed. The text of the article was taken from Reuters, but the title — “They Killed Mohammed Between His Father’s Hands” — clearly was not. Although the “they” of the article’s title is left unsaid, the continuation of the article, on Page 10, made it clear who was guilty. Underneath a sequence of eight second-by-second photographs of Al-Dura’s death is the caption “televised pictures of the deadly moments showing the brutally barbaric crime of the Israeli occupation forces.” The article continued, “as if the human fear tempted an Israeli beast or more [Israeli beasts] to continue the crime on the father’s child so that he would die.”

“Afterwards,” it went on, “[the IDF] killed the ambulance driver, Basam Balbisee, age 45, because he dared carry the child’s body.”

Pictures of Al-Dura are still posted on walls of Palestinian-owned shops and buildings throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as in the Old City of Jerusalem. Al-Dura has become the poster boy for the Palestinian community in the current fighting; he has become the Palestinian Elián González, decades of victimhood summed up in one innocent, tragic young face.

To Palestinians it is clear that the IDF shot Al-Dura, but to many Israelis it is not. Some Israelis, such as Yosef Duriel, an engineer who was part of the initial Israeli investigative team looking into Al-Dura’s death, subscribe to the theory that the Palestinian police shot Al-Dura themselves in order to shed a negative light upon the IDF and gain greater sympathy from the international public. (Duriel was dismissed from the investigative team after making this accusation.)

Similarly, the Oct. 12 deaths of two IDF soldiers by a Palestinian mob at the Palestinian Authority police headquarters in Ramallah caused two dramatically different accounts. According to an article published in Ha’aretz on the day after the killing, titled “A Fatal Wrong Turn,” the two soldiers “made the mistake of their lives, taking a wrong turn as they drove to their military base at Beit-El, near Ramallah.” Upon reaching a Palestinian Authority roadblock the “Palestinian [police] arrested the Israelis at gunpoint and ordered them to drive to the Ramallah police station.” Soon thereafter, “about a dozen [Palestinian] men climbed into the police station through a window and a few minutes later, gunshots were heard. Two men then opened up the window, sticking their bloody hands out. The crowd roared with approval.”

The text of the Al-Quds article was taken from Reuters, and was not significantly different than that of Ha’aretz. However, the end of it reports, “The Palestinians said that the two soldiers were under cover,” despite the IDF’s claims to the contrary. The theory that the soldiers had not made a wrong turn but were undercover IDF agents on assignment in Ramallah only received minimal mention in the article, but it has been circulated widely among Palestinians and within Arab media in general.

It was expanded upon further in the Oct. 19-25 weekly English edition of Al-Ahram, the daily Arabic edition of which is the oldest newspaper in the Arab world. It reads, “The two soldiers, disguised as Palestinians and reportedly carrying explosives, sub-machine guns and guns with silencers, were apprehended in downtown Ramallah while attempting to enter the funeral procession for a Palestinian youth killed by Israeli snipers. Nobody knows for sure what the two musta’arabin” — Israeli army commandos disguised as Arabs – “were planning to do. But most Palestinians, including two PA officials, seemed absolutely convinced the two soldiers were planning a killing spree.”

Ironically, perhaps the only thing both sides can agree upon is the unfairness of CNN’s coverage of the current crisis. On Nov. 14, the Jerusalem Post quoted a senior Barak official saying, “Israel feels that the coverage [by CNN] has not been objective.” In an op-ed in the Oct. 23 issue of Al-Quds, a prominent political analyst at a Palestinian think tank writes: “Since the first day of the Aqsa Intifada CNN’s top priority was to conceal or divert the attention of viewers from the massacres of the occupation … CNN [has] played with figures and statistics … concealing the hard facts.”

So regardless of what form of peace agreement may eventually be reached, the next generation of Israeli and Palestinian children will be learning two different lessons, especially concerning who can claim to be the real victims of the violence. The difference can be traced back to May 14, 1948, when the state of Israel was established. To Israelis, May 14, the Day of Independence, is a national holiday and is celebrated by many Jews around the world with music and family barbecues. Palestinians, however, engage in intense mourning on this day they call Al-Nakba, commonly translated as the catastrophe, or the uprooting. They raise black flags, protest against Israeli soldiers and most recently observed a communal, mournful moment of silence.

Regardless of how the violence is covered in the newspapers, the mourning will no doubt continue. And the media, knowingly or not, will continue to fuel the hatred that provides each day’s banner headlines.

“So there you go,” I thought to myself, “back to school tomorrow morning.” Larry, a classmate of mine, confirmed that getting from Jerusalem to class was no longer a problem. Things were finally returning to normal.

And I was grateful. As of Thursday morning, I once again considered myself a student at Bir Zeit, the Harvard of the Palestinian Authority. Though I’m Jewish, and have lived in Jerusalem off and on for close to two years, this year I decided to explore a “new” part of Israel — Palestinian society.

I enjoyed telling Jews, whether Americans or Israelis, that I was studying at Bir Zeit. The look on their faces when I told them was always amusing, especially after I’d heard some of them spew for half an hour about how Arabs were all terrorists. But my decision to study in the P.A. rather than in Israel was rooted in something deeper than the shock value or being counterintuitive. I was interested in pursuing a career in education, specifically the education that needs to take place between Jews and Arabs. This experience, I hoped, would help me begin to understand the “other side of the coin.”

After that Thursday, I’m not sure that I ever will.

8:37 a.m., Oct. 12

I begin my usual trek to class, leaving my Muslim Quarter pad in the Old City of Jerusalem for Damascus Gate, walking across Sultan Suleiman Street and hopping into a “service taxi” — kind of a cross between a bus and a cab. Though it seems a bit strange that the taxi takes longer to fill up than usual (10 minutes instead of two), I’m grateful that we leave after only a relatively short wait. Palestinian service taxis, like many modes of communal travel in the developing world, wait until the entire taxi is filled to the brim before departing. The concept of a set departure time is unknown in the region, especially on this side of the Green Line.

Things have been tense, but my 85-cent, 30-minute ride goes without a hitch. About 40 minutes later, I arrive in the West Bank town of Ramallah, walk across the bustling city’s main traffic circle, Al-Manara, and head over to the taxis that go to the university. I hop in a cab, I pay my 60 cents and off we go to BZU.

10:01 a.m.

Arabic class starts as usual. I say “Hi” to many of the international students from my program, whom I haven’t seen in two weeks, and I breathe a sigh of relief that the region is back to normal. Most of my classmates — needless to say, almost all of them non-Jews — live either in the town of Bir Zeit, where the university is located, or in Ramallah.

11:17 a.m.

Two coordinators from the international students program enter the class to tell us, “Three soldiers were just killed in Ramallah. Class is canceled. Everyone go home. The university is closed.”

As a precaution, I scribble down the phone number of two Norwegian classmates who live in Bir Zeit, Meryam and Nor, and then rush off to the taxi stand, hoping to grab a quick ride to Ramallah and then back to “Al-Quds,” or “Uds,” as most Palestinians call Jerusalem.

Although part of me feels it’s a gamble to go back through Ramallah to get home, if something actually happened to some Israeli soldiers, my gut tells me, Israel will not retaliate until the rumors are confirmed. I also quickly surmise that when push comes to shove I’m safer in Israel than in the West Bank.

I find Larry along the way, and ask him if he’s going back to Jerusalem. Caught in his own world as much as I’m caught up in mine, he tells me he isn’t sure and walks away from me abruptly.

“I guess it’s every man for himself,” I think, and pick up my pace, continuing my race to the taxi stand.

11:32 a.m.

As I wait for taxis going to Ramallah along with 400 other BZU students, 99 percent of whom are Palestinian, I realize I might not be sleeping in Jerusalem that night.

A cab pulls up right next to me, and a student cuts in front of me to ask the driver about the situation. After the two finish talking, the cab quickly rushes off. I ask the student, in my half-assed Arabic, what the driver said, hoping that he’ll answer in English. He does, and I get much more than I bargained for.

After telling me that the cabbie said no taxis are going into Ramallah, he proceeds to give me a lecture about how Americans don’t understand what is truly happening in the region. He opens his briefcase, eager to show me his Arabic newspaper that has photos of high-impact explosive bullets, apparently used on some of the Palestinian demonstrators during the past few weeks.

As I nod to each of his claims, deciding this is not the time or place to defend my people or the nation of Israel, I realize he is truly interested in pleading his case to me.

But after five minutes of listening to him call Israeli soldiers “the scum of the earth,” who only see Palestinian Arabs as “dogs, the lowest of the animals in the animal kingdom,” it’s clear to me that he is dehumanizing Israelis exactly in the way he accuses them of dehumanizing him and his people.

Normally I’d talk to this guy for hours, trying to understand his point of view and maybe even offer another way of looking at things. But right now I don’t have time for this. Getting to Jerusalem seems impossible, so I decide to look for my Norwegian friends and stay with them for the day, and maybe the night.

I say goodbye as politely as I can and rush off.

11:56 a.m.

Although I don’t find Meryam and Nor, I run into some other students from my class, and glom onto the group like a sucker fish to a whale.

It’s weird. I’ve only talked with these guys a few times — Dan from Toronto, Mark from Minnesota — but I realize that I have no other choice. Although they seem like pretty cool guys, you never imagine that your last few minutes on this earth might be spent with complete strangers.

Anyway, we hop in a taxi to Bir Zeit, and within minutes of arriving at their home I’m sitting back, sipping tea with them, watching Israeli news. Living like true students abroad, Dan and Mark declined to pay for cable, choosing to pass on watching much television.

Unfortunately, such idealism has its downside in the age of CNN. So their television, probably made sometime before my Grampie was born, picks up one station, two on a “good day.” I attempt to make out what the Israeli newscasters are saying, having studied Hebrew for many years in high school and college. I figure out that something has indeed happened to some Israeli soldiers at the Palestinian Authority’s police headquarters in Ramallah.

12:12 p.m.

Dan gets a call from the Canadian representative to the Palestinian Authority, located in Ramallah, who tells him that the Canadians are evacuating the West Bank. He offers Dan a spot in a convoy leaving at 3:30 p.m., but Dan declines. I start to get even more nervous than I was before.

I promptly call the American Consulate in East Jerusalem and reach Chris, some guy who works there. I tell Chris that I’m stuck in Bir Zeit and want to know if my country can help me get out. Chris proceeds to tell me that I’m shit out of luck and that I should “stay put.”

I wonder to myself how, unlike Canada, the most powerful country on the planet is unable to get me out of the West Bank.

12:49 p.m.

It turns out that Meryam and Nor live downstairs from Dan and Mark. They come upstairs after speaking with the Norwegian representative to the P.A., who tells them that arrangements have been made for them to leave with the Canadian convoy — if they can get to Ramallah.

At this point, as far as I can tell, the violence has been limited to the mob murders of the Israeli soldiers, but knowing what I do about this region, I suspect the Israeli Defense Forces may soon respond, at which point I will be stuck in the West Bank for who knows how long.

I call the American Consulate again, and ask Chris to call the Canadians and give them permission to take me along on the convoy.

He tells me that he’s pretty busy, but will try if he can. (Thanks for the concern, Chris.)

1:45 p.m.

I decide to go with Meryam and Nor to Ramallah. I can’t imagine the Canadians will turn me away, and I plan on reciting my family’s history: My mom and grandparents were originally Canadian; Grampie served with the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II; his little brother lost his life as a tail gunner for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Meryam and Nor frantically pack up some of their things and we walk to the middle of Bir Zeit, hoping to catch a taxi to Ramallah. As soon as we find one, the driver tells us that Israel is bombing Ramallah.

I’m stunned. We haven’t heard a thing about this — no news, no sounds.

Meryam wigs out and she and Nor decide to stay put.

I tell them goodbye and proceed to go with my cabbie — along with two other Palestinians in their 20s who incongruously seem to be along just for the ride — into town.

I have a quick conversation with myself in which I conclude the following: In these events, A) rumors must spread like wildfire, and B) I haven’t heard any bombs. Hell, if Israel was bombing the next town over, wouldn’t I hear it? I go with my gut and off we go.

Along the way we stop three times to check with cabdrivers going in the opposite direction (i.e., back to Bir Zeit) about what’s going on in Ramallah. My cabbie then decides that he’s not going to Ramallah after all, so I switch to a second cab right behind us.

We’re about three minutes from the edge of Ramallah when the driver stops a cab coming toward us and asks for an update; he tells us we can’t get to Ramallah. I decide to call it a day and return to Bir Zeit.

2:03 p.m.

I am quickly driven back to Bir Zeit, where I find Meryam and Nor — along with Dan, Mark and half a dozen other international students — standing in the middle of town. I tell them what happened and they tell me to join them at Inga’s house. Inga, one of the Americans in charge of our program, also lives in town. We arrive at her house and find 10 other students waiting there as well.

2:59 p.m.

I call my brother in America to give him the phone number of where I am and tell him that I’m all right. I can’t reach him, so I leave a message. I also tell him to call Mom and Dad and let them know what’s up. Knowing the standard response in times of violence — like cutting off electricity to certain Palestinian cities — I turn off my cellphone, hoping to save what little battery power I have left in case of an emergency. It’s a mix of millennial high tech and ancient survival instincts.

3:42 p.m.

Inga’s porch has a bird’s-eye view of Ramallah, far enough away that we don’t feel any reverberations from the bombing when it begins.

Along with the other students, I watch Israeli Defense Force helicopters fly repeatedly over Ramallah, and assume they’re getting ready to attack the city. For the next few hours, we watch two IDF helicopters bomb Ramallah.

Each chopper drops three or four bombs before flying away and returning 10 minutes later.

From our vantage point the helicopters are about the size of those green plastic Army toys you played with as a kid. And the bombs, which seem to drop in slow motion, are about the size of the nail on my pinkie.

I observe Palestinian families watching the attack from their porches and rooftops, wondering how people can live in such conditions and knowing that I will never fully understand this conflict because this is not my life — I can leave any time I want. Just not right now, unfortunately.

4:31 p.m.

In the midst of the bombing, I look down on the street and see 10 or so Palestinian males with machine guns. They come out of a building about five houses from ours, walk down the slope from the road and hide in the bushes, for what purpose I don’t know.

I ask a Palestinian student from Bir Zeit who is hanging out with us, Mohammed, what they’re doing. He tells me that they are called the “Shbab,” part of the P.A.’s Fatah party, and are protecting the village. I go back inside the house and try to process what’s going on.

5:20 p.m.

Meryam and Nor tell me that their Norwegian representative is coming to pick them up and ask me if I want to come with them. “Yes!” I say, knowing that while there is some danger in leaving this house — probably the safest house in the area (in my mind at least) because it is full of students from all over the world — the West Bank will soon be closed off for an indeterminate amount of time.

And even though Yasser Arafat let out a number of Hamas and Islamic jihad prisoners from P.A. jails in the last week and I know their targets will be areas in Israel and not those controlled by the P.A., I’ll still feel safer under Israeli control.

5:43 p.m.

The Norwegian representative, in his late 30s, arrives at the house with an aide, a Palestinian named Issa who has lived most of his life in Kuwait. I thank them for the lift and hop in the back seat, along with Meryam, Nor and another Norwegian student who has decided to flee.

Issa, who’s driving, tells us that the car is bulletproof and that we will be taking roads that don’t go through Ramallah at all, although they do go toward Nablus for a bit. Nablus is where much violence has occurred in the past week, but no matter: We are focused purely on the immediate events.

6:07 p.m.

The Norwegian representative is concerned that we might get held up at a checkpoint because of me, the lone American. He wants to tell the people at the checkpoint that the car is a diplomatic car evacuating Norwegians from the area, but my presence kind of messes up that plan.

For this reason, Issa decides to take a shortcut through a small Palestinian village north of Jerusalem called Hizma (the actual name, I looked it up). As soon as we make the right turn into this town — if one can even call it a town, it’s so small — we are stopped by a makeshift roadblock set up by 20 or so Palestinian teenagers, each holding rocks the size of softballs.

After a long 10 seconds, Issa gets out of his car and talks to the apparent leader of the gang, a kid wearing a sky cap that reveals only his angry eyes. We wait in the car quietly as the teenagers swarm around the car.

Issa says that we aren’t Israeli Jews but are Norwegians.

They let us pass.

Two minutes later we go through a checkpoint without even having to stop. So much for checkpoints, even in these circumstances. We finally arrive in the Sheik Jarrah area of East Jerusalem.

6:42 p.m.

I am dropped off in the Meah Shaarim district of West Jerusalem. I quickly buy a sandwich, realizing I haven’t eaten all day. I then walk toward Ben Yehudah Street, the center of town, and watch as Israelis go through the motions of business as usual.

Modern Israelis don’t know what it’s like to be stuck in Bir Zeit, wanting to get home to Ramallah and be with one’s family, yet knowing that in Ramallah one might die. They don’t know what it’s like to be bombed by their next-door neighbor without the ability to retaliate in kind, to do anything other than watch or join the makeshift violence (which for the most part consists just of throwing rocks at an army they have no chance of defeating).

And Palestinians don’t know what it’s like to always fear that the bus one gets on might be one’s last, knowing Arab terrorists plan to bomb central areas of the town in an attempt to kill civilians. They don’t know what it’s like to not even be able to go to school in the morning without fearing that the trash can you touch in the schoolyard might be filled with enough explosives to send nails sprawling in a 20-foot radius, killing not only you but every kid you grew up with.

But whether they identify themselves as Israeli Jews or Palestinian Arabs, they live in this situation and they cannot or will not move away. Some Israelis have left over the years, but many more stay than leave; though Israelis may be able to emigrate to other countries, many cannot sever emotional or psychological ties to their homeland. As for the Palestinians, they have absolutely no choice at all. They are stuck here because most simply don’t have the means to leave. Winning the green card lottery is a long shot.

Now, as CNN reports that Israel has sealed off the West Bank and Gaza, I am grateful to only one entity: the Norwegian government. Because of it, I have escaped the violence that has only just begun in Ramallah. And though a representative from the American Consulate calls me on my cellphone to tell me that the consulate is attempting to get permission from the Israeli government for American citizens to pass through their checkpoints, I merely respond that I’m already in West Jerusalem. Saying “Thank you” for her call would have been a bit too insincere.