An unspoken rule at these clashes was that the Palestinian guys weren’t allowed to wear long shirts, and whatever shirts they wore had to be tucked into their pants. They did this to distinguish themselves from the undercover Israeli agents, or mista’rabeen, who dressed in plainclothes to disguise themselves as Palestinians in order to ambush and arrest us. They’d even wear kuffiyehs to try to fully assimilate with us. What often gave them away, though, was that they pulled their shirts down over their waistbands, to conceal the guns they’d hidden there.
