If you look back at the photo of IDF soldiers launching tear gas at stone-throwers in Abu Dis (see April 16th post), you’ll see that they had taken up a position downhill from the University and against the Wall running across the street from the campus.  What you can’t see in the photo is the campus side of the street, which is used during the day as a parking area by students and faculty.  One of my colleagues, a Chilean professor of international law, had parked his car there and was walking uphill to school when he was caught in the exchange.  He expected to experience the tear gas; what he didn’t expect was that a canister would be aimed directly at his car shortly after he left it.  It smashed through a window and filled the car with gas and traces of the explosive powder that had carried it across the street.  A week later, he is still dabbing his eyes as he drives back and forth to work, and dealing with residual fragments of broken glass. Moreover, he fears that the lingering smell of tear gas and of whatever explosive powder may still adhere to the car’s upholstery will trigger responses, at check-points, from the bomb-sniffing dogs that periodically are brought into searches of cars with Palestinian plates.  He imagines himself vainly explaining, to a different set of soldiers, how his car came to be in this condition.  And as for seeking recompense….forget it!

The rules of engagement for soldiers using tear gas are specific:  you point your gun up, so that the canister can be lobbed in a high arc to where you want the gas to take its effect.  But my colleague found the emptied canister on the floor of his car:  it had clearly been directed at the car window on a low trajectory from across the street.  It is unlikely that the soldiers knew whose car it was. They could assume it belonged to someone connected with Al Quds University, and that seems to have been enough reason to trash it.  Sheer vandalism, either approved by their officers or overseen with a blind eye.  And speaking of blind eyes, cars are not the only objects of direct hits by tear gas canisters: some Palestinians at protests have been hit–in the body, in the face–by such fire.