In the world's oldest town are the world's youngest political activists. The West Bank town of Jericho boasts that it is 10,000 years old but most of the Palestinian children protesting in the main square yesterday were younger than 10. There must have been a thousand of them altogether, waving the green-white-and-black Palestinian flag, shouting nationalist slogans and holding up posters of Yasser Arafat.
There were pictures also of the "martyrs": the teenage militants who fuel the Intifada in the Palestinian territories. Instead of Joshua with his trumpet there was a man with a megaphone who marshalled them as they turned into Nasser Street, named after the Egyptian patriot, on the way back to their schools.
Angels in Jericho: it certainly tied in with the Biblical history of the place. Their teachers were with them, holding the hands of the shyer pupils. All wore light blue shirts and navy trousers and even the sombre nature of their cause could not dampen their high spirits. There were even cheery greetings for the Western journalist.
A liberal Israeli had told me the Intifada was the new Children's Crusade, recalling the aborted medieval pilgrimage to the Holy Land. A teacher in Jericho had a simpler explanation for yesterday's march: "They need to express their feelings." All the strife and death were causing psychological upset and this was a way of letting off steam.
There were Muslim and Christian children together. One group broke off at the Sancta Maria School where a statue of the Blessed Virgin, cradling the Child Jesus, overlooked the playground. The principal is Sister Theresina, a Franciscan nun from Nazareth, and she explained that the "manifestation" was to tell the world how the children felt about the sufferings of their Palestinian brothers and sisters. It was worse for children than adults because they could not articulate their feelings so easily.
"It's a message for the leaders of Palestine and Israel." Nearby, a child gathers the placards and folds them up for storage. One read: "It's our right to live like other children in the world." Despite their extreme youth, you could already pick out which children were going to be the most militant: they shook their fists and chanted just like their big brothers on the television news. This was the second Intifada and, in a few years, if there was no solution, there could well be a third.
The fun over, now it was time for English class. The children were studying a passage in a grammar textbook from Oxford University Press. In large print, it read: "I am flying to New York at the weekend. I am staying with my Uncle Joe and Jane."
Jericho has been relatively trouble-free but there is tension between the town and nearby Zionist settlements. Western children have Hallowe'en bogeymen, children in Jericho fear the settlers will come in the night. "Even the word `settler' scares them," a teacher said. Meanwhile, settler children are scared of Arab terrorists.
Jericho is a lush oasis in the middle of the desert; so beautiful that Marc Antony made a gift of the place to Cleopatra. Before the latest disturbances, Israelis used to come in their hundreds from Jerusalem to gamble the night away in the luxurious casino attached to the Intercontinental Hotel. It closed on Tuesday.
Tourists would also come to visit the Biblical sites or float in the nearby Dead Sea. Now there are no passengers for the cablecars which used to bring a thousand tourists a day up the Mount of Temptation where the Devil tempted Jesus to end his 40-day fast by turning stones into bread and provoked the famously brusque response, "Get thee behind me, Satan." A Greek Orthodox monastery has been built on the spot and a sign outside says: "Weapons should not be taken on to the premises." Only in the Middle East.