Israel & Palestine

View of Al-Quds from the Mount of Olives

Day 49

This trip reminded me why I have long studied the Middle East and has validated everything to this point.

Where to start? I guess the beginning is maybe an appropriate place. I am shooting for the longest post ever, chock full of pictures, so consider yourself warned...

The summer Arabic program here affords for a 5 day break after the 6th week of classes. Many small groups headed to Damascus, Beirut, Egypt, or the desert expanses of Wadi Rum here in Jordan. Some individuals also made it as far as Muscat, Oman and the UAE. Personally, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see the Holy Land of Israel and Palestine, and managed to find three girls in the same frame of mind.

Our home base for the break was Jerusalem, which is actually only about 2 hours as the crow flies from Irbid, although the journey is necessarily broken into a number of different legs on account of the border crossings and piecemeal bus routes. After stuffing our backpacks with just enough clothing and essentials and grabbing a minibus from Irbid's northern station for half a JD, we headed towards the Sheikh Hussein northern crossing into Israel, located about half an hour West. Our particular bus was loaded with Jordanian students heading back home, some of whom hopped off just before departure to buy us the traditional 20-somethings gift of cold Pepsi's (as an aside: Pepsi seems to have a strange monopoly on Irbid's soft drink market, although I have heard this is merely a result of a popular boycott of Coke products due to their heavy investment in Israel). The drinks were much appreciated although not completely unexpected as Jordanians never stop displaying kindness towards visitors, and particularly American students who can speak some of their language.

Unfortunately, the bus stopped at a seemingly random intersection of rural roads whereupon we were informed that the border crossing was about 2 kilometers "that way." This picture about sums up our surprise at the situation and the hot, unshaded walk ahead of us:


Like all border crossings in this region, there are a number of checkpoints leading up the actual line, and suffice it to say the (very friendly) Jordanian border guards at each were increasingly surprised at our improvised means of transport. Apparently walking between the checkpoints is usually not allowed, but we got as far as the last post before the head army officer obliged us to take the next cab that came through. Although speaking some Arabic to the taxi drivers is usually good for (almost) the native fare, this particular guy could quickly surmise our situation and charged us each a JD for a roughly 400m ride to the passport and security screening post.

After a somewhat lengthy passport processing, we grabbed one of the special charter buses designed for crossing over into Israel proper. We spent a long spell waiting just across the Israeli border while the luggage compartments and undercarriage (and one Jordanian passenger of Palestinian origin) were thoroughly searched. The contrast between Jordan and Israel is stark and immediate: the Israeli checkpoint was full of flowers and palm trees and grass (a rarity in this region). Many Arabs will tell you this is merely due to Israel's concerted efforts to divert the River Jordan for irrigation and drinking water.

The Israeli entry screening for individual baggage makes US airport security look like child's play. The Israeli border personal are just as nice as their Jordanian counterparts, but went as far as to open bags of almonds the girls had packed away in their backpacks. They were equally thorough with our passports, as the three of us who had traveled to Syria (with whom Israel is technically still at war) 3 weeks prior had to answer some routine questions before the clerk would agree to stamp the Israeli visa on a separate entry ticket instead of on the pages of our passports. This is important for future trips to Syria, which will refuse entry to anyone with the Israeli visa stamp. I assure you the Arab-Israeli conflict exerts influence on an incredible number of situations here, both the geopolitical and the mundane.

Anyway, once clear of the border 2.5 hours later we had to take another taxi to the nearest Israeli town Beit She'an 10km away, from which we transferred to a public Israeli bus (incredibly punctual compared to the system in Jordan). Our route passed a number of Israeli army bases, so we received the experience of some of immediate effects of Israel's priority on security. Because of Israel's mandatory 2 years of military service, many a bus and sidewalk in the country includes a male or female soldier with a machine gun slung over their shoulder. Their presence is understandable, but the first-time visitor never really gets used to it. It's just a bit shocking to see guys 3 or 4 years younger than me carrying firearms (including, interestingly enough, when they are off duty and wearing a Redsox cap and flip flops). I mean, the safety is on, but often the soldiers on the buses will catch come Zs with the gun propped uneasily against their leg or the window.

We arrived in Jerusalem (Al-Quds in Arabic) at about 830pm on a Jewish holiday in remembrance of the destruction of the first and second Jewish Temples. What's more, our taxi ride from the bus station to the Old City cut through the Hassidic quarter, so the streets were full of Orthodox Jews in traditional garb, which only made for interesting first impressions. We had the name of a youth hostel in the Jewish Quarter of the walled Old City, and after a brief foray for food outside the Jaffa (Yaffa) gate, we retired for the night. The operator of the hostel is a young Palestinian named Fidr with impeccable English. We arranged for sleeping space on foam mattresses and blankets on the roof, both because all his rooms were booked and the price and incredible views atop the building were ideal. Youth hostels in the Old City provide a diverse and incredibly interesting mix of our peers from all over the world, which resulted in a nice sense of camaraderie and community. We shared the roof with a group from Holland, an Aussie named Aaron from Perth, an American (who gained a reputation for stumbling in from the bar/club scene in the New City at odd hours), and the British photojournalist Chris fresh off a stint in Western Darfur.

Besides being incredibly pleasant for sleeping (we actually needed covers at night despite the unseasonably high temperatures during the day), the views of Old Jerusalem were amazing. We went to bed each night gazing over the quiet, moonlit Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Dome of the Rock, and awoke (early) each morning to the call to prayer and a sunrise punctuated by clanging church bells.

















And so following a breakfast of croissants and coffee, we tackled all the Holy sites of the Old City like the most motivated of photo scavenger hunt teams. En route to the Dome of the Rock (Islam's third holiest site behind Mecca and Medina), we got a touch lost in Old Jerusalem's maze of narrow winding alleyways and street markets, until an old Jewish resident--out for some easy shekels--took it upon himself to give us the local's tour of the city over to the base of the Temple Mount. The Dome of the Rock is striking, replete with intricate mosaics and the distinctive golden dome that catches the beaming sun far better than our cameras could do justice.

Opposite the Dome of the Rock is the more practical Al-Aqsa mosque, to which us non-Muslims were denied entry, albeit in a very pleasant fashion by a senile Palestinian man equipped with a cane, some hard candy, and a very disarming demeanor.

Both mosques sit atop the ruins of the Third Jewish Temple, a situation which accounts for most of Jerusalem's touchy geo-religio-politics. Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's visit to the temple mount in 2000 set off the first Palestinian intifadeh ('uprising'), and Clinton's painstakingly close Camp David peace talks between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat--with tediously concluded agreements on the issues of borders, statehood, and the right-of-return of Palestinians displaced by the 1948 and 1967 wars--broke down over the sole issue of Israel's right to excavate the base of the Temple Mount. A quick visit to the Wailing Wall (the only visible remains of the Third Temple and a holy pilgrimage site for Jews) easily confirmed the Israelis' position.


Perhaps feeling a bit inundated with the Temple Mount's weighty religious baggage, we completed our tour with a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, purported site of Jesus' wrapping in the Shroud of Turin and itself a vast network of holy chambers and labyrinths intricately decorated in the Greek Orthodox style.


This seemed an appropriate point to stage a looong hike down through the City of David and up the steep Mount of Olives. We stopped at the Church of All Nations, which houses the grove of centuries-old olive trees with the most gnarly (pun very much intended) of trunks where Jesus prayed to the Father before accepting his impending fate. Carved into the slopes are several smaller walled church courtyards of varying denominations but all with pleasant garden paths and gorgeous views of the valley below. The summit of the Mount of Olives is an impressive panoramic view of the Old City (see picture at very top), and of the distant Sea of Galilee on a clearer day.

And a few pictures later, our whirlwind tour of the holy sites of this city was (more or less) complete. After being inundated with old stone structures and crowded Arab market streets, we went in search of dinner in the sprawling New City. Old vs. New Jerusalem is night and day. Just outside the towering walls of the Tower of David and Jaffa Gate is a cosmopolitan mall (H&M anyone?), and a stone's throw away from that is a district of trendy restaurants and a wide pedestrian mall, where we staged dinner at a Jewish-Italian place and desert at a popular ice cream parlor. The Italian fare was great, but the restaurant's biggest selling point was our waitress Robin, a mid-50s friendly Jewish mothering-type originally from Jersey who had come to Israel over 20 years ago with her husband. She could sympathize with our lack of Hebrew skills and made a convincing argument for appetizers, drinks, and dishes. She handed us the bill with a smile and her purse in hand to pick up her teenage son from his weekend break from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

After another peaceful night atop the Citadel Hostel's roof (minus some encroaching by Aussie Aaron's dirty feet), we caught a bus to Ramallah in the West Bank, in search of a first-hand view of the occupied territories and authentic Palestinian life outside Israel proper. The bus to Ramallah was easy to find after we got passed numerous quizzical responses of "why?" and "do you mean Bethlehem?" by Arab and Jewish Israelis alike. The ride itself was educational. The "security barrier" or "apartheid wall" (careful whom you ask) is an imposing concrete presence, dotted with machine gun towers and lined in many places with barbed wire. It is also covered on the Palestinian side with endless peace murals, angry graffiti, and multi-lingual appeals to the human conscience.




Ramallah itself seems like any Arab city (and resembled to a surprising degree a large Irbid). Before the clashes and destruction following the second Intifadeh, it was the cultural center of the West Bank, and remains the political capital of the Palestinian Authority. As far as specific sites, we were only really after a look at Yasser Arafat's tomb located inside the PA's presidential compound. Access was surprisingly easy, as we followed the usual protocol of charming the heavily armed Presidential Guard with some Arabic and a lot of smiles. Ok, I will defer credit to the girls' charming at this point...Here is one of them with our friend Muayyim, quite a charmer in his own right:


Minutes later we were inside the gates at Arafat's temporary memorial (the unfinished monument is still closed to visitors). Amid our shameless picture-taking the guards at the gate informed us to stay put, as PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen to Palestinians on the street) would be arriving shortly. Abbas was between visits from Tony Blair and Condoleeza Rice, and was hosting some kind of cabinet meeting at the time. While we anxiously awaited his arrival, a PA lawyer-type showed up and chatted with us briefly, giving me the go-ahead to take a few more shameless pictures of Abbas' convoy when it came recklessly speeding into the compound.

Unfortunately, he wasn't speaking for the guards in the convoy apparently, and the last huge black SUV filled to the brim with machine-gun toting SWAT-types whipped around to stop abruptly in front of us. This seemed like another situation for some smooth talking on the girls' part, but seeing as I had taken the prohibited photos I felt obliged to step up and do some explaining. It didn't take more than a few minutes of explaining who we were and what we were doing in Ramallah to get the formerly-stern guy riding shot gun to crack a smile and embrace me with the culturally-transcendent "black handshake." This may not look worth the trouble, but I can attest that this is in fact Abu Mazen's mercedes:

After some friendly goodbyes, the four of us spent a good hour chit-chatting with some off-duty drivers at their taxi stand’s outdoor café near downtown Ramallah. The men ran the gamut from educated former Ohio residents to semi-literate older gents who have in all likelihood never been outside the West Bank. We quickly steered the conversation over coffee/tea from us (the American studying Arabic in Irbid story gets old reeeeeal fast here) to regional politics, and strapped ourselves in for the deluge of very opinionated responses we got. We covered everything from the Bush presidency to U.S. foreign policy in Israel/Palestine to the pros and cons of immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Aside from the occasional thematic detour (read: conspiracy theory, ex. 9/11 = Zionist intelligence operation), the exchange was pretty beneficial and illuminating on both sides. I left pretty excited about my research project here next year--which can seem pretty distant at times--but concerns itself with this exact kind of political discourse and unraveling the tangled web of opinions and distortions surrounding U.S. policy in the region.

Our return bus trip brought us into contact with Zechariah, a story in and of himself. A former Muslim turned Christian convert turned Pentecostal preacher, Zechariah travels daily between Ramallah and Jerusalem where he works his second job as a tent-maker. As such, he could give us an honest appraisal of the trials and tribulations of crossing the Israeli army checkpoints and of relations between the Hamas and Fatah Palestinian political factions in the West Bank. His sweet disposition belies the fact that he faces daily discrimination in a multitude of forms: from his parents as an (illegal) convert to Christianity, from the more hard-line Muslims in Ramallah, and the ever-present difficulties of life in occupation. He spent a stint in jail (where according to him he found Christ) for throwing rocks at Israeli troops in town, and tried to explain the seemingly-explicable Israeli practice of random round-ups of Palestinian residents for interrogation and imprisonment. Obviously we were getting only one side of this particular story, but it was hard not to sympathize with him on a very personal level.

After a relatively uneventful trip to the small town of Beit Lahm (Bethlehem) and the Church of the Nativity, we concluded our trip to the West Bank and Jerusalem in general. With another night to go on our trip, we bought tickets for the bus from the historic religious capital of Israel to its westernized political capital of Tel Aviv. Even our bus ride couldn't help being eventful, however. We were stirred from quiet slumber with the muffled explosion of one of the back tires. The on and off-duty IDF guys instinctively sprang to their feet to check out the problem as we pulled to the highway's narrow shoulder. Turns out that road nails are a far more common phenomenon than IEDs here (thank goodness), and after most of the bus' men did the cross-culturally Middle Eastern thing to debark and try to assess the situation themselves, we all hopped on the next bus to come by.

Tel Aviv = Middle Eastern Miami; although probably not quite as chic as Beirut. The climate is humid in this coastal Mediterranean city, and the residents are indistinguishable from holiday-makers, as everone is decked out in beach clothing and sunglasses. After storing our bags in another swanky youth hostel, we strolled along the boardwalk to dip our feet in the hot sand and hot waves before settling into a casual Chinese dinner. Tel Aviv's nightlife was its original draw in this trip, so we wasted little time after dining in finding a trendy bar right on the beach and relaxing over drinks and argilah. The place was full of our international peers, the techno was thumping, and our table in the sand was a unique setting from which to decompress from a trip in which we seemed to always be on the move. If you ever find yourself in Tel Aviv, check out the place with the bright red cone-lights, you can't miss it.

That just about wrapped up our break. My legs ached, my clothes (most items worn twice) were sticky and smelly, and my camera batteries were exhausted as my companions. We spent a good deal of the return journey breathing sighs of delighted relief and reflecting on our adventures.

Epilogue

For my part, the real story of this trip is found in neither this blog entry's crazy play by play nor my dozens of snap shots. The real story is the human story, authored by all the Fidrs and Robins and Muayyims and Zechariahs out there, and replete with a genuine and very natural desire for peace and normalcy regardless of religion or which side of the 'security barrier' one finds himself. It is a story easily overlooked, but constantly lurking just behind the grim headlines that paint a very abstract picture of the Holy Land for the outside world. And I will carry it with me always.