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Published: February 23rd 2006
When we decided to travel down through the Middle East to Egypt we had no intention of visiting Israel or Palestine. This was partly because we wished to travel on to other Islamic countries who would not grant us entry visas if we had been to Occupied Palestine (as they refer to it), and partly because of our own, particularly my own, political views and prejudices in favour of the Palestinian cause, their right to their own state and the end of the Israeli occupation. I had spent several years boycotting Israeli produce for instance, as my own way of not giving any support to what I viewed as the illegal activities of the Israeli state, and was happy to rant to anyone about how unjust the situation was and how I never intended to visit Israel, again as a form of protest.
So what changed? Well we had met many other travellers who had been across to Jerusalem from Jordan and got in and out without getting any incriminating passport stamps (using King Hussein/Allenby bridge crossing), we found ourselves in Amman with time to spare, Erika not feeling well enough to cycle, and there not being much of any interest
Fashion Accessories
M16 and mobile phone..... Welcome to Israel.to do or see in Amman. More importantly I guess was just curiosity to actually go and see what things were really like, speak to people (on both sides) and the realisation that prejudice is not a sound basis for political views; it would be better to check things out for myself with an open mind. Maybe my views would change, maybe not, but at least they would be based on first hand information and experiences, which could only be a good thing. Also with Hamas having won the Palestinian election a few days earlier it would certainly be an interesting time to go. So we decided to leave our bikes and a load of stuff in Amman and take the bus to Jerusalem/Al Quds for a few days.
Not that this is an easy process in any way. First you have take the bus to the Jordanian side of the border, an early morning ride out of the fog bound city and then down, down and down into the sunnier and hotter Jordan Valley. The road was pretty spectacular, even from the bus, with views across to the sun drenched hills of the West Bank across the flat,
wide valley floor below. The process at the Jordanian side was pretty fast and simple, but then you have to wait ages for a bus which is overpriced to drive you the 3-4km across the bridge (the Jordan river was a rather pathetic stream in a ditch, not the mighty river we had imagined) to the Israeli/Palestinian side, with a couple of lengthy stops at checkpoints on the way. Then the fun really begins. You have to submit your bags and your passport to Israeli soldiers in a chaotic melee, and you don’t see your bags again until you are through all of the immigration checks. These involve filling in the usual forms and then queuing for ages as the soldiers interrogate everyone in front of you. We kept our cool even though they spend about 20 minutes asking you many of the same questions over and over again. Actually it is quite easy to smile and not get angry with them (as I had expected I might) as they are all particularly attractive girls! I later learned that the ‘mirror’ behind them actually conceals intelligence guys who are closely studying how you react to the questioning, and that the
questioning is, apparently, designed to try and annoy you or get you to reveal any negative attitudes you may have against Israel. Questioning over we were told to wait. The Korean and Japanese guys we had arrived with waited for 20-30 minutes and were then cleared. 3 hours later we were still waiting. I actually stretched out and went to sleep. Apparently the wait is for ‘security checks’ but the reality is if they don’t like you for some reason you have to wait, sometimes up to 6 hours. Seemingly they thought we looked like protester types or Palestinian sympathisers (which isn’t far wrong…) hence our wait. We were saved a longer wait only by it being Shabbat, and the border therefore closing early.
Eventually we got our passports back, unstamped, and were re-united with our baggage for the bus ride into Jerusalem along a deserted highway, past hilltop settlements surrounded by enormous fences. I learned later this was an Israeli/Settler only road and this was why the checkpoints and roadblocks I had expected did not materialise. Palestinians cannot use these roads or cross them, and they therefore effectively partition large parts of the West Bank from each other,
making movement between Palestinian towns and villages difficult or impossible. We found our hostel in East Jerusalem - the Palestinian part, right next to Damascus gate in the walls of the old city. The hostel was full of activist types from ISM (International Solidarity Movement) and other NGO pressure groups as well as people making films or writing stuff covering the occupation, intifada and the recent elections, so political discussions were definitely on the agenda and we had a hard time convincing people we really were just tourists at first. We were both tired and still not feeling fully well again so had a lazy couple of days at first. We managed to get in touch with a friend's sister who lives in Jerusalem working for the UN and who had an empty flat we could use for 2 nights which was exactly what we needed - a quiet place to relax and a nice, deep hot bath - bliss! Thanks Lizzie! We slowly explored both the Arab neighbourhood around the hostel and the old city, as well as venturing up into western Jerusalem and into Israel proper. (The main road outside the hostel was the “green line” after 1948
Old Walls
The old City Jerusalem which divided Palestinian East Jerusalem from Israeli West Jerusalem, until 1967 when Israel occupied all of Jerusalem and the West Bank, annexing East Jerusalem into Israeli territory. As the international consensus seems to be that Israel should withdraw to the pre-1967 borders (something I support) then I will refer to East Jerusalem as Palestine and West as Israel.)
Whilst there are many beautiful and historic sights and landmarks in the city, it is impossible to be there or to move around without being aware of the politics. Guns and soldiers are everywhere, mostly teenagers with machine guns casually slung over their shoulders like some kind of fashion accessory, often chatting with their friends or into a mobile phone. To get to many of the religious sites you have to go through airport style security checks, especially to the Western/Wailing Wall and to the Temple Mount, Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque.
The old city is amazing with its labyrinth of ancient, narrow alleyways that it is almost impossible not to get lost in, especially in the bustling Arab quarter. The Christian quarter by contrast seems to be filled with tourist style shops selling souvenirs and
assorted tat. It was amusing to see shops selling tourist t-shirts including “Free Palestine” shirts and ones with pictures of Yasser Arafat emblazoned on them, right next to Star of David emblems and “Israeli Army” shirts. The Armenian quarter is tiny and notable only for the numerous fly posters informing you about the Armenian genocide in 1915, at the hands of the Ottomans, many of which had been vandalised (by whom?). The Jewish quarter is ultra-modern shopping arcade with museums etc. and didn’t really have much character to it in my opinion.
We visited the Western Wall and watched hundreds of Orthodox Hasidic Jews, dressed in long black cloaks and black hats with big beards and semi-dreadlocks on their temples, bobbing up and down in unison praying, quite a sight. We also toured many of the Christian churches on the “way of the cross” - the route Jesus is supposed to have carried the cross along before his crucifixion.
The church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the supposed crucifixion site, is an enormous and quite ugly building from the outside, and very weird inside. There are about 5 different churches all within the same building, with the Coptic Church having
a smaller church building inside the larger building, within which are smaller and smaller chambers and the actual spot on which the cross was raised for the crucifixion. It was a very busy and confusing place, though the Franciscan chanting and incense burning did lend a vaguely spiritual air to the place. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church and monastery next door was a much more peaceful and spiritual place, with few tourists and smiley Ethiopian priests chatting in Amharic. The monastery area was bizarre, with a series of individual cells resembling rock huts with strange roofs -it looked like something carved in Cappadocia.
There is a bit of controversy over where the actual crucifixion site is, as the gospels make it pretty clear Jesus was crucified outside the city walls and the Holy Sepulchre is well inside them. One of the alternative sites is the ‘garden tomb’, just behind our hostel and next to the main east Jerusalem bus station. In fact according to this theory the crucifixion would have taken place in the old quarry which now houses the bus station!
We also visited Mount Zion, one of the alleged sites of the last supper (but where it almost certainly
Time for thought
Robin and the Dome of the Rock did not happen) and home to the tomb of King David, which consists of a large wooden box covered with hangings of the Torah. We were amused to hear a Jewish American tourist saying that it wasn’t really the actual tomb of David, to the speechless stuttering of the Orthodox guardian.
It seems that the origin of the whole tourist/pilgrimage scene to the exact spots of various biblical happenings stems from the Empress Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome. Helen (who was a Welsh Princess by the way) was herself Christian and came to Jerusalem asking to see the places where Jesus had walked etc. Seemingly nobody really knew with any certainty where these sites were but wanted to keep her happy, so showed her them anyway, even giving her a piece of wood allegedly from the cross of Christ. Apparently she wasn’t a big walker so many of the sites were just the closest places the locals could take her that semi-fitted the bill. These locations have stuck as Helen and various people after her commissioned churches to be built on them, and so this is why these sites are where they are
today.
After a few days in Jerusalem we decided to go and check Bethlehem out. You can’t actually take a bus directly to Bethlehem as it is the West Bank and behind the “Security Fence” as Israel calls it, or the Apartheid Wall/Separation Wall as Palestinians call it. We took a minibus to the checkpoint in the wall and had to walk through. I don’t really know what I had expected, I had seen pictures of the wall and knew all about it but just seeing the thing in real life was quite disturbing. The size of the thing was unexpected; it is very high with regular watchtowers placed along it. It made me very angry but in a powerless way. You want to try and smash it or something but know you can't, you just have to accept it is there and there is nothing you can do about it. Whatever I felt in this way must be nothing compared to how the Palestinians feel - they have to live with it day in day out and can’t go home and forget about it like us. Many of them are unable to cross it to see family in
Jerusalem View
The view from Lizzie's flat Jerusalem, and the wall effectively creates a huge ghetto of the West Bank, isolating people from their land and essential services. Only Israel decides the line of the Wall and it is effectively annexing some 40% of West Bank territory. We spent a while soberly walking along it reading the numerous graffiti, one piece stating “Israel - ‘thou shalt not steal’ still applies”. We took a taxi into Bethlehem as we felt sorry for the Palestinian taxi drivers. Our man complained about the lack of tourists and business, blaming the Wall for putting people off. When he discovered we were from Scotland we had the usual Braveheart stuff, except he knew the name William Wallace. It seems the film is very popular with Palestinians, being a true story of overcoming occupation. “Scotland, Palestine - the same” he declared!! Not quite mate, our wall crumbled the best part of 2000 years ago but we shared some jokes about it all the same. Bethlehem itself was quite strange; the centre is very posh for a West Bank town, with a lot of foreign money and tourist facilities but no tourists. The outskirts are just overcrowded refugee camps. We met lots of nice
Ghetto History
Graffitti on the Wall at Bethlehem friendly Palestinians who were all keen to welcome us in true Arabic style and tell us how safe it was and that it was good we had come, and to tell others it is safe to come. We visited the Church of the Nativity and saw the spot where Jesus wasn’t born, though the church is quite nice. Mostly we just wandered the streets. In the market I found a portrait of Saddam Hussein in military uniform superimposed against the Dome of the Rock. It seems he was popular here and seen as one of the few Arab leaders who stood up to Israel. We sat in the main square (Manger Square) and drank coffee with some Palestinian youths while watching a young boy doing hundreds of keepy-uppys with a football, and the local girls all coming out of school (the main reason our friends were where they were….). I remember seeing 2 beautiful Palestinian girls walking hand in hand, one with a tight Islamic headscarf on and the other with her hair flowing freely and a crucifix around her neck. A nice symbol of religious harmony. Also a reminder that whatever religion we may be or whatever conditions people
Western Wall
Another important wall! The crowds praying at Judaism holiest site. live under there are some things that never change - football and girls.
On the way back we walked to the Wall and tried to find Rachel's tomb. Eventually we discovered it in a heavily fortified bunker built into the Wall. On approach we were yelled at in Hebrew by an invisible soldier, and felt compelled to put our hands up in the air. Fortunately they realised we were dumb tourists and after a few questions we were allowed in, seemingly the main entrance is on the other (Israeli) side. Inside was pretty boring actually, lots of Orthodox Jews chanting away so we just left again. Returning through the security checks at the Wall was farcical; the metal detector wasn’t even switched on.
The next day we finaly managed to get up early enough to go to the Temple Mount in the old city, the site of Solomon's Temple and thus the most holy place in Judaism, and now the site of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosques, the third most important sites in Islam. Unaware that there is only one tourist entrance we were messed around by the IDF gate guards who kept sending us
Praying in the Rain
After being denied entry to their mosque. on to the next gate or back to the one we had just left, instead of just telling us where we could enter. One pair even sent us on a wild goose chase down some narrow alleyways into people's backyards, seemingly just for their own amusement. Obviously this annoyed me but it must annoy the muslims too to have this place guarded by the IDF, who can refuse to let them enter if they feel like it. Anyway, we finally found our way in and up onto the peaceful and beautiful courtyard area that surrounds both mosques. The Dome of the Rock is simply stunning from the outside. Inside it houses the "shettiya" or foundation stone, supposedly the first part of the earth to be formed by God, the rock upon which Adam was made and later the place upon which the Ark of the Covenant was rested inside Solomon's Temple. Can't realy tell you what it's actually like as we weren't allowed into the mosque - muslims only. The Al Aqsa mosque is a slightly less impressive building but a very important one politcally - it was by entering this that Ariel Sharon kick started the second intifada. Before we knew it it was 10 o'clock and tourist time was over, and we were kicked out by heavily armed IDF guys.
In the afternoon we headed back to the Wall on our way to Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank and Palestine while their would-be-capital of Jerusalem is annexed. While the checkpoint at Bethlehem was tidy and clinical, the Qalandiya checkpoint is horrible. It is massive and very busy with complete chaos on either side as hundreds of people try to file into gated "cattle runs'' to go through metal detectors and the whole thing is very frustrating. This is the main crossing between Ramallah and East Jerusalem and so thousands of Palestinians cross, or try to cross, here daily to get to Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and other northern West Bank towns. Actually crossing from Jerusalem into the West Bank is fairly fast and easy, and we were soon in a taxi into central Ramallah. The place is a world away from Jerusalem; crowded, noisy streets filled with people shopping and doing business, and no soldiers or guns in sight anywhere. The roads were lined with the green flags of Hamas and portraits of their political and ideological leaders, in a manner reminiscent of the Hezbollah areas in Lebanon. There were also election posters everywhere from the recent polls, many of Hamas but also many for Fatah, the defeated party. The customary Fatah poster seemed to involve a picture of the candidate superimposed or next to a portrait of Yasser Arafat. We hung out in the streets, drank some juice and chatted to a few people. Everyone was friendly and welcoming and it was like we were back in Syria again. We walked out to the Palestinain parliament building, which is really more a of a military compound surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. Some is brand new built, elsewhere is rubble left from when the IDF entered the place with tanks and bulldozers a few years ago. We asked the very smiley and friendly Palestinian soldiers at the gate if we could go inside to see the tomb of Yasser Arafat, "of course" and we were shown the way. The tomb is not really that impressive as it is still under construction and a bit of a building site, but it was a very odd experience. No searches, no questions, just very friendly soldiers - the contrast to the other side of the Wall couldn't have been greater. We headed back to Jerusdalem as night fell as we had a dinner date with Lizzie. Erika got straight through the womens/foreigners gate at the checkpoint but the soldiers locked it on me, much to the amusement of the large queues of Palestinian men next to me. "Welcome to Jerusalem" they joked, "Go back to Ramallah - it's nicer there" and so on. They were very keen to yell at the women guards and harass them by ringing the assistance buzzer but the soldiers were having none of it so I happily joined the queues of palestinian youths and waited some 25 minutes to get through the first turnstile. Then we had to queue again for another series of turnstiles which control the flow of people into the x-ray and metal detector area. I sighed and resigned myself to a long wait. The guy next to me spoke good english and sighed too; "what can you do?" He didn't have to elaboarte on the feelings of helplessness and powerlessness he obviously felt. He works in Ramallah but lives in Jerusalem, so has to cross everyday. He says sometimes half his day is spent at the checkpoint and it always takes at least an hour to return to the Jerusalem side. Sometimes they close the checkpoint completely and he is unable to return to his family for the night, having to sleep with friends or relatives in Ramallah. After some 45 minutes more I got through and found Erika waiting, seemingly the women are not searched or anything.
Our final day in Jerusalem was a Friday, and we had hoped to visit Hebron in the south of the West Bank. We woke up to see hundreds of heavily armed soldiers on the street outside the hostel and Damascus Gate - 5-6 busloads of them with riot gear and a few on horses. It seems a Palestinian protest was planned later in the day and they had arrived at 6am to be in place for it. One of the buses was full of special forces! Hisham at the hostel also warned us not to go to the West Bank that day. Throughout the week the whole anti-Danish and Norwegian thing (in response to the cartoons published in a Danish newspaper) had slowly started to kick off and now things were boiling over slightly. A German guy had been kidnapped in Nablus the night before, probably while we were on our way back from Ramallah. All the ISM and other international observers and volunteers inside the West Bank had been pulled out for the weekend, so the hostel was suddenly very full. A Danish girl who had just arrived and planned to spend 1 month with ISM in the West Bank was now unable to go there and having to re-plan her time to spend it in Israel - the exact opposite of what she had wanted to do. Anyway the weather was also really bad so we stayed put and decided to watch the street outside. A big crown of young men started to gather just before 12 noon and then proceeded to hold Friday prayers in the street. This was because the IDF had banned all men under 45 from entering the Al Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers. As the clock struck 12 the heavens opened and it poured down with rain. Several of the soldiers ran for cover, quite an amusing sight. The Paslestinian men were not put off though and held a full, if slightly rushed, prayer service in the soaking rain, kneeling to pray in deep puddles. Church bells rang which apparently never happens during Friday prayers and Hisham reckoned this was a sign of support or solidarity. Then loud thunder cracked across the sky and we joked that the IDF had angered God.
It was an impressive and disturbing sight to see these guys praying in the sodden street surrounded by armed soldiers. As the prayers finished the mounted police moved in to break up the crowd but there was no real need as most of them ran straight for the nearest shelter from the rain. By 1pm the sun was out and the crowds were emerging through Damascus Gate after the prayers inside the mosque were over, they halted and formed a crowd in the sunken area next to the gate, with row upon row of IDF at the top of the steps above them. Some shouting started, a few loud cries of Allah Akbar rang out and then two deafening bangs as the IDF threw soundbombs into the crowd and charged it. And that was it, protest over before it had begun. No right to free speach, no right to protest, no rights at all.
That night, feeling pretty depressd by much I had seen, especially that day, I headed up to west Jerusalem to find some music, a bar and some beer. I found a reggae night on in what turned out to be left wing kind of place and got chatting some crazy irish guys volunteering in the West Bank and some of their Israeli friends. These were actually pretty much the only Israelis I spoke to other than soldiers - being a more 'westernised' kind of place its not really normal to just start chatting to strangers on the street as it is in the Arab world. They were all nice guys, one of them worked for a human rights charity speacialising in trying to get young Israeli's out of doing compulsory militray service. But it was a bar, it was Friday night and nobody wanted to talk serious politics, including me. And I guess thats one key difference between the 2 sides; Israelies live in enough comfort and normality to be able to tune out of the whole thing, if you avoid listening to the news all the time and get used to the soldiers everywhere. Palestinians on the other hand cannot; they are subjected to daily checkpoints, searches, roadblocks and cannot ignore the annexation of their land, the Wall, the division and ghetto-isation of the West Bank, the destruction of their homes and orchards, settlements and settlers, and so on.
On the way back to the hostel in East jerusalem I was stopped 3 times by soldiers and searched twice, each time within 100m of the last soldiers and often within sight of them. This made no sense to me. They did not explain that they wanted to search me or ask me to empty my pockets -instead just rifling through them while I stood there helpless and powerless. Was I pissed off? Could I do anything about it?. I kept in my mind I was leaving the country the next day and stayed cool enough not to aggrovate things. This treatment of course is nothing compared to that Palestinian guys my age face all the time, only they don't have the same ability to escape as I do. Although a prevailing view amongst many Palestinians is that everything Israel does is designed to make their lives so impossible they will just leave and go somewhere else, something many who are able to choose to do.
So after all of this we were glad to leave the next day and get back to Jordan. I am glad that I went though, however depressed or angry I may have felt at times when I was there. Have my views changed? Not really, but they are much more informed at least. I would visit again though, as not visiting also denies Palestinians of income and an outlet to the world. I also learnt that much Palestinian produce is labelled as Israeli as it needs to go through Israel for export and gets delayed if it is labelled as Palestinian, so even boycotting Israeli produce may hurt those you intent to help. The Wall and much else that Israel does is simply immoral and illegal and seeing it first hand only strengthened this view.
I want to make it clear though (before the comments start) that I am not anti-Israel or anti-Israeli. I am against injustice and inequality, and this is what I found there. By being pro-Palestinain I am not pro-suicide bombings or other terrorist actions by the Palestinains against Israel, I am simply pro equal rights and justice.
They didnt play any Peter Tosh at the reggae night but the man once summed it up perfectly:
"Everybody crying out for peace, none is crying out for justice"
"There wont be no peace, until we get equal rights and justice"
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Rotem
non-member comment
You always need to hear both sides of the story
Hi I was sorry to read this blog entry. You say:"I guess was just curiosity to actually go and see what things were really like, speak to people (on both sides) and the realisation that prejudice is not a sound basis for political views; it would be better to check things out for myself with an open mind". But actualy you didn't... There is no wonder the Palestinian soldiers don't check you - there is no threat there. Never in the history did anybody walk into a Palestinian building with a hidden bomb. And the wall, that you find so disturbing, was only built after Mr. Arafat declined an offer of peace that the entire world considered as more than generous. After his refusal he started another Intifada, in which he in person paid for suicide bombers to cross into Israel and kill civilians. The only ones to blame for this wall are the Palestinians themselves who did not choose to kick out the terrorists within them. It is true that the terrosists are the minority there, but the silent majority who let them continue are the ones who suffer the most. And it is a shame. Right of speech? Sure! Only when the protest doesn't become violent. And even in your country it is required to have a permit to have a protest, so the police can prepare for it in an organised manner. And what about seeing both sides? Did you ever visit the Israeli parts? Did you see that Israelis go through security checks when entering a mall, a restaurant, a movie theatre? Having guards going through their bags? Just because of the fear of bombs? They give up on their on freedom because of their fear. Would you like to show the content of your bag whenever you enter a public building? And if you are not Pro-Terrorism - do you have a suggestion of how should Israel defend itself against this threat without armed soldiers and a wall? Because I would really like to hear a real solution to this problem. And don't say - just pull out, because the Palestinians never said that the terror would stop if a complete pullout to the lines of 67 will happen... You didn't really come to Israel to check things for yourself. You came with your opinions and just wanted to justify them. Rotem.