Epilogue

Aware that my Passport would now be flagged and informed that I was under surveillance, I was grateful for the fact I had slipped them the wrong phone number and given the wrong street address. I was supposed to meet contacts in Hebron before visiting Jenin, but deciding it unwise to cross through checkpoints, I felt it was best to lay low in Tel-Aviv. I hurriedly mailed home my files and evidence from the West Bank and headed for the British Consulate. I explained to the assistant the literal account of events, to which she gave me a look that said “Yeah, Right”. Nonetheless she took my passport and headed out to the office. Five Minuets later she returned looking nervous, “Take a seat, someone will be right out.”

Bringing forward my date of departure, I made a dash for the Egyptian border, preferring to be out of the country than awaiting the Shin Bet. As the Border Control women uttered the words “Sorry Sir, theirs a problem with your passport” I had already turned to see the plain clothes officials moving in. Having mailed out all incriminating evidence, sanitised my laptop and aware the likely hood of a stringent security presence on a soft border was low, the three hours I spent (again in a holding cell) were not as intimidating as my first encounter. Showing the investigators photos I had downloaded off Google of Israeli tourist sites, my documentation of the West Bank evaded detection. Passing through to Egypt, it is almost certain I will never be allowed to return to Israel.

“Did you want to kill him, buck?”

“Well, I bet I did.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Him? He never done nothing to me.”

“Well, Then, what did you kill him for?”

“Why, Nothing – its only on account of the feud.”

“What’s a feud?”

“Why, where was you raised? Ain’t you ever heard of a feud before?”

“Never heard of it before – tell me about it.”

“Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way: when a man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other mans brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in – and by and by everybody’s killed off, and there aint no more feud. But its kind of slow, and it takes a long time.”

“Has this one been going on long, Buck?”

“well, I should reckon! It started thirty years ago or som’ers along there. There was trouble ‘bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that one the suit-which he naturally would do of course. Anybody would.”

“What was the trouble about, Buck? – Land?”

“I reckon maybe.”

- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn