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Even though he took
everything in stride and probably learned a lot in the process, I
still had to apologise to Éamonn, my boyfriend, for the little
hassles of living and touring in the Occupied Territories. I say
“little” because the hassles internationals face are small in
comparison to those faced by the Palestinians who live here – but
being an international in Palestine definitely has its own quirks.
The fact that Éamonn arrived on the first day of Eid, the Muslim
equivalent of Christmas Day, and was leaving on the night of the
big Rachel’s Tomb events for Jews wasn’t exactly his fault, but it
did give us a rather direct experience with how religion
influences or even controls life here in the Holy Land. On
religious holidays, public transportation shuts down. On Jewish
religious holidays, Palestine is shut down with closures on roads
and at checkpoints, ostensibly for “security reasons.” In fact,
for pretty much the whole month of October and up until yesterday
(November 15, Palestinian Independence Day) when the new Israeli
“terminal” opened, even Palestinians with hard-to-get travel
permits were denied entry into Israel.
At checkpoints (and even inside the Wall, in Bethlehem, on the day
of the Rachel’s Tomb event), we watched as Palestinians were held,
questioned, forced at gunpoint to lift their shirts and trouser
legs while IDF soldiers checked for any explosive devices they
might be suspected of wearing. And then we felt guilty about the
privilege that our American and Irish passports afforded us:
sometimes, the soldiers didn’t even look at our pictures.
As a “Christian tourist from Ireland,” he didn’t have any problems
getting into and out of the country, but getting around inside the
country proved interesting and challenging, and sometimes
downright aggravating.
In an effort to see a bit of the country, we rented a car in
Jerusalem and took a 2-day trip to the North and then took a day
trip south. Two things became immediately apparent: road signage
in Israel is occasionally disastrously insufficient, and Israeli
drivers are some of the rudest on the planet. The honking, the
tailgating with brights on, the unpredictable merging, the
excessive speeding, the honking…
And we got lost quite a bit. I blame the lack of sensible road
signage in Israel and the earth mounds blocking roads in the West
Bank. But our experiences talking to Israelis and Palestinians
whenever we’d stop and check our map were remarkably different.
The Israelis obviously did not want us to be in the West Bank.
There might be some sense in this (driving around the WB in an
Israeli rental car with yellow plates may not be the best idea),
but the message they gave us was clear: don’t go traveling through
the West Bank, because the Palestinians will shoot you. Coming
back from Nazareth, we tried to take the road (Route 60) through
Jenin and Nablus, which is pretty much a straight shot to
Jerusalem, but we got stopped at the checkpoint going into Jenin,
where the soldiers (who had just finished dinner and were actually
pretty friendly, though the flashlight they used to illuminate our
map was attached to the end of one of their assault rifles) told
us that it was too dangerous to travel through the West Bank, that
the Palestinians would shoot us, and that we should instead go 2
hours out of our way to get back on the toll or coastal highways,
go through Tel Aviv, and go to Jerusalem that way. Not having any
other options (they certainly weren’t going to let us through the
checkpoint, and what were we going to do, tell them we had friends
in Jenin we were trying to go see?) we did as instructed and made
it home just fine, if a little later than hoped.
The next day we drove around Jerusalem for an hour, trying to find
the road to Jericho. Little did we know that to get to the
turn-off to Jericho one actually has to first turn off toward
Maale Adummim, so we turned back and then proceeded to get
thoroughly lost in the western and then southwestern suburbs of
Jerusalem. Eventually we made it back to the Talpiyot (on the road
between Bethlehem and Jerusalem) and got to make a second try at
it. Anyway, we made it to Jericho and drove around for a bit (it’s
kind of a ghost town these days, not many people around, and the
little pavilion in the town center has fallen into disrepair)
before heading down toward Qumran and the Dead Sea. Spent a while
floating in the Dead Sea, which was lovely at sunset, and then
gave the lifeguard a lift back to Jerusalem. All was going fine.
We had planned to then visit a friend in Hebron, and on the way
back to Bethlehem we made the turnoff for Hebron. Everything was
going fine until we came to a roundabout, and maybe we made the
wrong turn there or after it, but the last sign we’d seen said
“Hebron 10km” and we’d definitely driven for more than 10km. So we
stopped at a petrol station out in the middle of nowhere (the
place, apparently, is called Bet Guvrin) and asked how to get to
Hebron, and the girl at the counter shook her head and said, “you
don’t want to go there. They’ll shoot you,” making the gun-to-head
gesture as she said so. We eventually convinced her that we knew
what we were doing, and she gave us directions to a crossroads and
told us where to turn to get to Hebron.
So okay, we’re off. We get to the crossroads and make the turn and
go down a ways, but it becomes clear that this is not the way to
Hebron, so we turn back and now see a sign pointing the way to
Hebron. Perfect. We go that way, and turn when the sign says to
turn into the road going into Hebron, but find that it’s blocked
with earth mounds, so we can’t go in that way. We get back out
onto the road and drive for a bit, but apparently our driving back
and forth and stopping has aroused the interest of a jeep full of
IDF soldiers, who pull us over. While the lead guy tells us in no
uncertain terms that we shouldn’t be driving around out there and
instructs us to head back to Jerusalem, 70km out of our way, via
Bet Guvrin (where we’d stopped for petrol and directions) and Bet
Shemesh, “outside the West Bank,” the other guys walk around our
car and look inside, looking for anything suspicious. At this
point, we’ve been driving around in the dark, with no other cars
on the road, trying to find Hebron for about an hour and a half.
After the lead soldier finishes telling us that it’s dangerous
being in the West Bank they all pile back into the jeep. We’re
sitting in the car, looking at our map, trying to figure out if we
can still make it to Hebron that night, and then the guy gets out
again and tells us to move along – obviously, if we’re thinking
about anything, it’s not a good sign to them. So we start moving
on the road in the direction they told us to take (which is not
the direction we want to go, to get back to Bethlehem), and they
follow us for a ways, but then we turn off once we’re pretty sure
we’ve lost them and head back to Bethlehem. We’re a bit on-edge
when after we get inside the checkpoint at Bethlehem an IDF jeep
starts following us into the city, but we head onto Manger Street
and they don’t follow us much further.
I don’t know if all this scaremongering is done on purpose, to
keep foreigners out of the West Bank so they can’t see the visible
reminders of the occupation (checkpoints, road blocks, and the
Wall), or if Israelis genuinely don’t know better than to believe
that all Palestinians are to be treated as murderers. I’m assuming
with the soldiers it was the former, and with the girl at the
petrol station the latter.
What we were told by the Israelis is in direct contradiction to
what we saw and experienced while interacting with Palestinians.
We were welcomed into people’s homes, had a great time dancing
with young people at Cosmos, and were treated with generous
hospitality. And all the people who were helpful to us on the
roads were Palestinians. A Palestinian man near Damascus gate
helped us find the road to Jericho. A Bethlehemite who was driving
through the opening in the Wall on the morning of the first day of
Eid drove us home from the checkpoint, because there were no taxis
running, and wouldn’t accept any form of compensation beyond a
heartfelt “thank you.” Even on the night when we were driving
around trying to find a way into Hebron, when we got lost in a
village (as two young, non-Arab folks in a rental car with yellow
plates, driving around at night through the southern West Bank, we
were the object of some fascination and were soon surrounded by
half of the men in the village), we were met with a sort of
bemused helpfulness and set on the right track.
So I suppose the moral of the story is this: take taxis. The taxi
drivers know where to go, where to go when the roads you thought
were there are no longer passable, how to avoid the IDF soldiers
who will try to convince you what a bad idea it is to be there,
and will generally be friendlier and more helpful than any Israeli
“service industry” worker you might try to talk to. Additionally,
the Israeli mantra, “don’t go into the West Bank, the Palestinians
will shoot you” is ludicrous. The most likely person to shoot you
in the West Bank is an Israeli soldier or settler, and driving on
roads with Israeli drivers is far more dangerous than staying
home, safe behind the Wall in Bethlehem.
Faith Rowold is Volunteer from
the U.S. at the International Center of Bethlehem
More Diaries from Palestine
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