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Published: February 19th 2007
Even though this time I'm having my laptop with me this time its been so hard to regularly keep up my travel journal as I had hardly any time to put it down.. and the bit time I had I used for taking rest. I've been now for 3 days in ar ram staying with my friends who have been so so lovely and hospitable that I feel really sad when thinking that tomorrow I will leave again.
I arrived in Jerusalem on Thursday evening after a long trip from Dahab through the egyptian-israeli border to Eilat and further till Jerusalem central bus station.
Musab and Ibrahim, his father, were going to wait near damascus gate for me and so I was trying my best to get there by bus from the central station. First of all it appeared that nobody spoke english and I had to find my way around on my own loaded with 30 kilos of luggage (LOL) till I finally found a bus stop from where the bus would depart to the old city. After some missunderstandings and me being lost in the old city we finally met and had a really hearty "seiing again".
We drove home to ar ram, had a lovely arabic dinner, drank ultrasweet "maramia tea" and watched some movie on TV before taking a long sleep 😊
In the next morning Shayma took me out to her university in "bir zeit" where I met some of her friends. We found out that their lectures were cancelled that day and we ended up spending the morning in the university cafeteria. We had such a great time, had coffee and I was teaching them some german. So in case any one of you should ever enter the Birzeit university maybe some people will speak german with you now :D:D:D:D They showed me around the campus and I was a bit surprised to find such a normality there. It is a university like any other in europe, young people being stressed out about exams, hoping a certain lecture to be cancelled, having fun, falling in love or getting their heart broken. It was a really cool morning. At noon Shayma and me went on a massive shopping trip to Ramallah after she showed me arafats tomb and we were glad musab (her brother) wasn't with us as guys go crazy when being
with shopping-mad girls :D especially when girls go to hundreds of shops and try on clothes and don't end up buying anything 😊 Later Yara (a classmate from shaymas uni) joined us.
Ramallah appeared to be very calm these days since the israeli army withdrew from ramallah city centre last week. Once we heard a big group of people chanting and yelling in the neighbor street but obviously the police stopped them from continuing and everything returned back to normal.
Generally Ramallah appears like any other city in the arabic world. Chaotic traffic, crowded streets, multicolored stores and souqs. One thing that is really different to other arabic cities I knew so far is that you don't have to do much of bargaining as I never ever felt like people tried to rip me off and even the first price offer was always really fair. (even when I went to a shop on my own when shayma and yara were in another shop) People are EXTREMELY friendly and welcoming. Once shayma and me were in a shop buying some nice scarfes when the owner started to talk to me in arabic. He was an old and very religious
man with a big beard and also dressed in a very religious way. He was really kind and shayma translated to me that he told me about Islam and was hoping to see me in the paradise, wished me luck and allahs protection for my journey. He kind of stuck to my mind 😊 I couldn't help it and ended up buying 3 big bags of maramia (I guess at the airport they will wonder "WHAT DOES SHE WANT WITH THIS" LOL ) and also a bag of mansaf baharat. (When shaymas mom found out about this she made mansaf for me the next day HOW SWEET!!!)
In the evening musab, mohammed (his younger brother) and me watched "man on fire" on DVD before going to sleep.
The next day started really lazy with sleeping long. At noon when musab and his dad went to work to Jerusalem they took me along too and I caught a bus to Hebron. Hebron is not a city like Ramallah as it experiences a lot of problems and I admit the trip wasnt unrisky. Musab and Ibrahim dropped me off at the taxi-station where service taxis and minibuses departed towards cities
Birzeit university
http://www.birzeit.edu/and towns in the entire westbank. Ibrahim pointed towards a guy in front of a minibus who yelled "al khaleel al khaleel" and i took a seat in the last row.
The drive took less than an hour from the old city of Jerusalem and we had to pass several checkpoints. Checkpoints are seen all over the westbank and cause a major constraint to many palestinians nowadays living in the occupied territories as it limits their ability to move around between cities. THere is no general rule about checkpoints and they are rather unpredictable. I wasn't even sure if they would allow foreigners into Hebron at this stage especially after the westbank went through considerable tensions over the past weeks. Israeli security staff/soldiers don't appear to be very keen on letting foreigners witness the hardships many palestinians face and therefore at times block access for foreigners (Nablus would be blocked most of the time for foreigners and Hebron as well at times - also due to security reasons) On the way to Hebron we didn't encounter many delays at checkpoints, we were waved through by soldiers carrying intimidatingly large weapons without anybody checking IDs.
My first impresion of
Hebron was "VERY WELCOMING". From all sides people called "ahlan wa sahlan" (=welcome) or "welcome to palestine". Obviously the place is not flooded by western visitors. Most obvious was an incredible sadness all over the whole place. People generally had very sad eyes and the whole place looked very run down. Several houses had broken windows, shop signs were damaged, here and there houses carried bullet marks or more severe damage.
I went into a photo shop to buy some new batteries for my camera and was invited for arabic coffee. The owners gave me some advices about the city and mentioned that there were some problems going on that day in the old city. I was unsure whether I should move on or stick only to the shop and market area but then one of the owners told me that he would come with me and that it would be safe then. His name was "mohammed" and appeared to be extremely protecting and helpful.
Once we left the market area and entered the old city area I promise I would have turned around had I been on my own and would definetly not have gone further. It
appeared to be a ghost town and the daily life there is observed by israeli military even from the roofs of the houses. Mohammed warned me to take any pictures of soldiers or military installations (actually it is hard to take a picture in the old city of Hebron without catching anything military related) We walked really fast till we got to the Ibrahimi mosque. Passed through israeli soldier controls and went inside. It was a stunning place!! A man inside offered to tell me about the history of the mosque in english for a couple of shekels and so he showed me around. Next door (in the jewish section of the cave of the patriarchs) you could hear some yelling and banging against the wooden wall (that separates the jewish and muslim part of the place) and it appeared to be Settlers. (i asked the guide "what is this??" and he made the gesture for "mental" and said "jews")
Over the past there have been major problems between palestinians and jewish settlers in Hebron. It is sad to see to which degree human beings can loose natural human feelings towards one another once they have extreme political opinions.
Martyr photo
...everywhere over the walls in Ramallah (and generally westbank) you see postern of "shaheeds" (=martyr) who died either in suicide bombings or in clashes with the israeli military - or palestinian prisoners As many as 400-500 Talmudic Jewish settlers live in the downtown of Hebron among the town’s 200.000 Palestinian population. The settlers, probably the most fanatical of Jews anywhere, say openly they would want to expel or enslave (or even exterminate) all non-Jews in Palestine-Israel and then establish a Jewish religious state that would adopt Halacha (Jewish religious law) as the law of the land. According to Halacha, non-Jews living under a Jewish religious state would serve as “wood hewers” and “water carriers” for the master race. (umm.... this kinda reminds me of the german nazis. Havent Jeews seen the other side already??So why do these extremists do this now to others??) I tried really hard to understand their minds. I bought books that were written by settlers because I was trying to get an impression of both (or all three) sides (Palestinians - Settlers - normal jews living in Israel) or at least understand them better, but this was a tough thing. About the average Israeli Jew you can say they believe its their land and they are taught to be afraid of the palestinians, but their feelings for "the other side" aren't generally hostile and you find a big
amount who disagree with the military occupation. But when it comes to Settlers (Esp in hebron) you find a certain amount of them being very aggressive, insisting on their desire to have a "Jewish state" for themselves. However there are even hebron settlers who are sad about the fact that Jews and muslims can't use the same entrance for the Cave of the patriarchs anymore. Even though there are many quite extreme ones there are others who are more moderate. There are 2 sides of the story and I don't claim to know everything about these minds. But what somehow came across is that both sides generally want to raise their children in peace and each side has a different definition of the best way to solve this conflicts. And obviously if they were really serving god they wouldn't act this way!
Back to my report... the cave of the Patriarchs is a very holy place for both Jews and muslims (for details see this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs) and since A jewish extremist "Baruch Goldstein" (by the way Goldstein is definetly a german-jewish name so he probably knew about the nazi history... why do people never learn...) went amok by
shooting palestinian worshippers while performing thier friday prayer the cave of the patriarchs is now under high protection from the israeli military and is separated into 2 sections. the jewish and the muslim one. It is really a stunning place and definetly worth to see.
On the way back towards the new city we met a really friendly soldier. He told me that hes learning english and is happy top practice it with visitors. Actually it was nice to see that the stereotype of the usually intimidating and harsh israeli soldier is not always true. He had a chat with mohammed in arabic and they sounded like they knew each other quite well.
As we walked down the road we were stopped by israeli military. and had to wait for about 20 minutes as further along the way things between palestinians and soldiers were happening but it was not very obvious what went on. Later once we entered the market area some military jeeps were speeding through a crowd and people jumped aside. Mohammed looked quite worried and we waited in some distance but a few moments later it was as if nothing happened and we continued walking.
Later it started to rain and it also became dark and so I looked for a shared minibus taxi back to Jerusalem where musab was gonna meet me at 8pm. I really wanted to give mohammed something as a "thank you" for being on my side all the time and making it possible for me to see the ibrahimi mosque (alone it is NOT (!) adviseable to go there, even with company it was a rather scary experience) but he energetically declined. What a kind guy! He treated me really respectfully all day long and spent a lot of his time with me in the old city (a tourist is safer there than a palestinian i guess) and I owe him a lot as he helped me to understand many things a bit better. Thanks mohammed!
On the way back to Jerusalem I listened to some music on my ipod and thought about the day. So many strong impressions... For me it was a day experience... for all those people I met today it is home. It appeared like every resident who lives inside the city centre or the old city has a close friend or relative who
was killed or injured, whose house was entered by israeli soldiers in the middle of the night. Intimidation, physical violence and humiliation of the local palestinian population is all present and very obvious. In the old city nets are put as a protection for people walking through the narrow roads as settlers (who live on the first floor) tend to throw stones, garbage, eggs and all kinds of things down to arabs passing by. (those nets are effective only for large items being thrown)
On the way back checkpoints were much more strict and became more intimidating the closer we came to Jerusalem. We were pulled over and usually 2 or 3 soldiers with large rifles entered in order to check everyones IDs. Sometimes they would raise their voices and shouted at someone, the palestinian travellers usually were very quiet.
One event stuck particularly to my mind and until today it makes me cry when only thinking of it. On the minibus there was this elderly man who appeared to be handicapped, probably due to a stroke, maybe he also had some other kind of handicap. He could only mumble and needed a lot of support when walking,
even for sitting down in the seat he needed support of others. We were stopped by a few soldiers at the last checkpoint just before Bethlehem. Usual routine: They entered the bus, people would turn quiet and avoid looking at them, IDs were checked. They would open the back of the minibus and took out all bags. They entered the bus again and started to attack the old man. Imagine the scenario: 2 well-built 20 year old guys attacking an old disabled man. I could not believe what I saw. They pulled him up from his seat. He was crying and mumbling and nearly fell. They dragged him out of the bus and were shouting at him. They started pushing him around between each other, his crying became louder and eventually he fell on the floor. The soldiers were shouting at the man who was lying in the dust and i saw them kicking him. His wife cried silently in her seat. WHAT ON EARTH CAN AN ELDERLY HANDICAPPED MAN HAVE DONE TO THEM!?!?!? WHAT KIND OF THREAT WOULD A MAN LIKE THIS POSE??? For sure he was no militant. THe man was brought back into the minibus and he
with yara and shayma
eating palestinian fastfood with the BEST CHIPS EVER!!!! would not stop crying. If you ever have seen an old man crying loudly due to grief or even if he is completely confused and cries out loud, it is so heartbreaking. Now imagine someone slapping an elderly disabled person. Here it would be big on the news if this happened in public. Now imagine someone pushing an elderly handicapped person that they fall to the floor - in public. No need to continue this... They got off the bus.. the driver continued his trip.. and the soldiers returned to their duties as if nothing happened. .............
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Paulo Goes
non-member comment
Hey, dear Nicola
Hey, dear friend, I can see that you are really enjoying the trip. The pictures show us how incredible it has been. It seems the trip is been more amazing than the last time! Many interesting people and places visited (wow, that ghost town is scary). And you are carrying so many packs!! It is good that an angel doesn't weight ;o) See you, sister. Let Jehovah bless you. Claudia sent you her christian love. You are always in our prayers. Hugs.