First we take their land, then we take their food.

I'm hosting a friend, Sarah, who has been on Birthright and so has seen the big sights in Israel. I was thinking of what we should do when I saw the e-mail I get each week regarding Friday protests in the West Bank.

"As in previous weeks you are invited to register to the organized transportation to the week end demonstrations. Point of meeting is in the East of the central buss station near service taxi 4/5 at 10:15 Friday 11th for the demonstration in Bilin; For Bethlehem region Friday 11th (Um Salmuna) and Saturday 12th (Beit Umar) demonstrations details will be known later; (Village style cloths are recommended.)"

So I called up the organizer and said we wanted to go. I didn't know where Bil'in is, or really why there was a protest. Sarah started to get nervous, so I called the organizer again and asked for detail on what exactly we were doing. "Don't worry," he said. "It's very calm, nothing serious happens."

After staying out until 4 the night before, we woke up bleary-eyed at 9.30 and caught a ride with three Israelis to Bil'in. They told us why we were protesting - the Israeli security barrier runs on the village's land, and even though the Israeli Supreme Court has said the barrier must be moved, it hasn't yet. Along the way they gave us tips about how the protests work. "If you are tear gassed, make sure you don't touch your eyes...when the kids start throwing stones, don't stand by them or you'll get hit by rubber bullets...don't run fast away from the soldiers, just walk quickly."

What the hell are we doing, we thought.

We got to Bil'in and walked over to a front lawn where around 20 Israelis and internationals were lounging around on the grass, reading Haaretz and eating felafel, which an enterprising guy was selling a few yards away for 3 shekels. We sat there, brushing off Palestinian kids trying to sell us cheap bracelets with the Palestinian flag on them. We were waiting for the Friday morning prayers to let out, after which each week the men unload from the mosque and walk to the security fence to demonstrate. The demonstrations have been going on for the last three years, and the Israeli army expects them.

The final prayer sounded and a group of men holding Palestine and Fatah flags began marching down the street, singing and shouting. We joined the group towards the back and walked down a paved road to the security fence, where a line of soldiers stood on the road and more stood stationed a few meters apart spread in a line in either direction. Eventually our group reached the soldiers. Sarah and I hung back and watched the action from a distance, figuring it would be better to see clouds of tear gas than breathe them in.

After a short while, the army threw a canister of tear gas in the direction of the crowd. The boom it made was jarring. Most of the gas flowed away from the crowd and towards the soldiers because it was windy. There were a few more tear gas canisters. An old man was evacuated on a stretcher by Red Crescent workers - he apparently was ill and had to be taken home. We saw the soldiers talking with the demonstrators for a while, more tear gas was fired, and then adolescent boys began slingshotting stones toward the soldiers. We heard some rubber bullets being fired. The crowd began walking away from the soldiers, who fired more tear gas in the direction of the boys throwing stones. Little by little we all returned from where we came. Once we breathed in a very small amount of tear gas, which burned my throat and nose. I put my scarf over my face and kept walking, and I could soon breathe normally.

Apparently the role of Israelis and internationals is to document the protests and to give the soldiers a sense that they are being watched - people at the protest said before foreigners came to the demonstrations, the army used live ammunition and there were a lot more deaths.

After the demonstration we went with the people who drove us to drink tea at one of the villager's houses. After tea came coffee. After coffee our host started asking us if we eat chicken. Before we knew it, he was in his car, driving to the grocery store. We debated if we wanted to stay, weighed how rude it would be to leave versus how guilty we felt about taking from an obviously poor family. "First we take their land, then we take their food," quipped Nili, one of the Israelis we came with.

While the wife cooked, a group of about 8 of us stood around a makeshift heater. It was a campfire inside a repurposed giant olive oil container, which was on top of a grill and filled with hunks of wood from around the house. Eventually we went inside a small chilly room and sat on plastic chairs and stools around a plastic table. We each got a spoon (no plate) to dig into a massive tray loaded with maqlube - rice cooked with carrots, onions, tomatoes, chicken and potatoes. Our hosts insisted that we eat more time and again. We spoke in a mix of Arabic, Hebrew and English.

At 5.30 pm we managed to inch our way out of the house as our host pushed deep-fried dough balls on us while we stood on his front porch. We drove through the hilly and poorly lit terrain of the West Bank until we reached the check point leading back into Israel. The soldier waved us back into Israel proper without checking any of our papers. The land quickly flattened, streetlamps lit up the highway, and we were back in Israel within 25 minutes. We drove around Tel Aviv looking for the turn to the Beit Daniel synagogue (Sarah and I went straight to Friday night prayers smelling of burning wood and with alcohol-soaked pads for tear gas in our pockets).

We came to the junction of Jabotinsky and Zionism Streets. "Hmm, you can't turn left onto Zionism street," Nili observed, reading the street signs. "You can only turn right, and it leads to a dead end."