Soldiers, the militants are all crowding around
in front of the stage.
They’re marching around, holding banners of
people who had died in the past.
The whole group was being defiant because they knew
the Israelis could come at any moment and attack them, you know?
And he was very proud. He must have been 22, 23 years old.
[Developing News]
My name is Antonio Olmos. I’m a photographer, photojournalist.
And today I’m going to be talking about my work in Palestine
between 2000 and 2004.
I was born in Mexico, on the US-Mexican border.
So I get to Tel Aviv, and I am a brown-skinned person.
And the first thing that happened to me was a woman at the border gate,
before she looked at my passport,
she just assumed I was Palestinian
and she started shouting at me in Arabic.
And even though I didn’t know a word of Arabic,
I knew what she was saying was offensive.
And then she finally looked at my passport,
and then she saw that I was born in Mexico.
And then she went completely from hating my guts to,
“Oh, I love Mexico. I spent so much time in Cancun, blah, blah, blah.”
The turnaround was amazing. That was really informative
and it happened every step of the way.
This photograph was taken in Balata refugee camp,
which is the big main refugee camp
outside the city of Nablus in the West Bank.
Of all the Palestinian camps, refugee camps I visited,
that was the one I liked the most.
People were just so friendly
and I had the best hummus and falafel I ever had in my life.
Balata refugee camp was the stronghold of
the Fatah organization.
And Fatah is secular,
as opposed to Hamas, who are very religious.
I photographed this young man because most of the members of
the brigade were wearing masks, and he wasn’t.
And he allowed me to take his picture.
He had this kind of defiant stance, which I kind of like, you know?
These are real bullets and this is a real gun.
And yes, he has his finger on the trigger.
I mean, he might have shot a few bullets into the air,
but he wasn’t threatening anybody.
I mean, I was kind of worried.
All these militants were walking around with guns,
and I thought, “What if the Israelis just show up
to try to arrest them or shoot them or kill them?”
They had these posters of, they’re called “martyrs,”
people who have been killed fighting the Israelis,
he’s standing in front of.
And I just like the way the eye’s sort of looking at me,
looking at the viewer, you know?
He’s the past, he’s dead.
This man is very much alive.
So he’s continuing the struggle of this man.
They're wearing T-shirts with photographs of people who were
members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade,
I think three leaders who had been killed by the Israelis.
They were hunted down by the Israeli army.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me this young man,
whose name I never got,
is dead now or likelihood he’s in jail.
This photograph was taken at a place called Qalandiya Checkpoint.
It is the main checkpoint between East Jerusalem and Ramallah.
The Palestinians have to queue up from both directions
and get permission from the Israelis to cross.
So this photograph illustrates
the futility of what everyday Palestinians have to go through.
These Israeli soldiers tend to be very young men,
even teenagers, 18, 19, 20 years old.
And this woman who’s in her... maybe middle-aged, 40s or 50s,
has to talk to these young kids to get permission to go home
or to go to work or to visit her family.
But you see the expression on the men,
there’s a kind of an angry look.
One, they’re angry that they have to do this checkpoint.
Two, they’re angry
because these two Israeli soldiers were very condescending to the woman.
They’re being very rude to her.
And she was pleading with them, pleading, pleading with them,
“Please let me go.”
And these young soldiers
had the power of God to let this woman go through.
At a whim, they could say-- They didn’t have to give a reason
why they said “no” or why they said “yes,”
it was just like if they felt like it, you know?
Palestinian culture, Arab culture
is very deferential to people who are older than you,
so you don’t talk really to people older than you.
You just don’t, you know?
And I think they’re just tired of the humiliation
because they have to go through this every day.
So here’s a photograph from the shoot that day.
It was taken in Ramallah, on the road to North West Bank.
There was a checkpoint, an Israeli checkpoint.
This camera was, I think, my Leica.
And I only had one lens on, a 35 millimeter lens,
so I had to get close to photograph the action.
As you can see from the angle of the dirt,
you can see that I'm crouched down
because I'm afraid of getting hit by an Israeli rubber bullet.
So this young man is throwing rocks at the Israeli soldiers.
And he’s using a sling because a sling, if used properly,
will get a rock much further than throwing it with your arm.
I like the balletic movement to what he’s doing.
I like his physical position.
There’s a few kids behind him.
You can see they’re behind this destroyed car.
I like the barren landscape, the desolation of it.
It’s very simple.
But it also kind of expresses to me that
even though it’s a futile act to throw rocks at a modern army,
it also kind of symbolizes
the determination they are to keep fighting, you know?
Never giving up.