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Palestine Trip 1: Welcomes
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Morgan Davie
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May 05, 2004 15:29 PDT
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(Read this first:
http://www.additiverich.com/morgue/archives/2004_05.html#000280#more)
Thursday April 8
So we're zooming down the highway to Jerusalem on Holy Thursday. The speedo
hovers around 120k, and the sun is coming down, and Cal and I are in the
Middle East.
We've come with an outfit called Olive Tours, who work with the Alternative
Tourism Group. A week-long tour in Israel and Palestine, meeting peace
groups, meeting locals, seeing what its like on the ground. It all came
together fast, and it nearly didn't happen, but we're here. Only a few
people know. We don't want our mothers to worry.
Getting here was a story in itself. In Zurich, after talking my way around
the fact that my passport was expiring in 5 months 3 weeks instead of 6
months, we got the full interrogation by a mildmannered El Al Air clerk.
Where were we from? Where did we live? Why were we going to Israel? Had
anyone given us a bomb? Any weapons? What about small weapons, just for
personal use? We stuck to our story of going for Easter, good Christian
pilgrims. Lying makes me uncomfortable and I didn't enjoy it. Heart was
bumping good. We went into a side room with him and our bags were swabbed
by bomb-detecting gear; then we were ushered out while they went through the
contents in detail. We were glad we'd ditched the Private Eye we'd been
reading on the way over, the one with an article ripping shreds out of
Sharon.
But we made it through, and suddenly we were at Tel Aviv airport waiting for
a driver to meet us. And now we were on the road.
Joseph, the Arab driver, slowed down, and we saw lights and concrete blocks
in the road up ahead. 'Is this a checkpoint?' Cal asked. 'Yes,' Joseph
said. 'Say you are going to church.'
And suddenly there were soldiers around us. Fatigues and automatic weapons.
We were both still running adrenaline-hot, ready for more questions,
wondering what would happen if we were turned back. A soldier came up to
Joseph's window and we squeezed hands in the back seat.
Joseph and the soldier talked in Hebrew briefly, then, incredibly, shook
hands warmly and waved goodbye. "My friend!" Joseph said as we drove off.
"He is Russian! And a Christian!"
Our first checkpoint experience, the lesson being that the unexpected would
always be just around the corner. There were many more checkpoints to come
in the week ahead, though, and that was the only one that gave anyone cause
to smile.
Now we were in the West Bank, in Bethlehem. The Occupied Territories,
seized by Israel in 1967 and still held now. Its a hilly town, and I was
suddenly reminded of home - I hadn't seen a landscape so like Wellington's
hills since I left New Zealand. Joseph was, Cal thought, somewhat amused by
our gushing comments, "It's just like home!" We weren't blind to the irony
ourselves.
We arrived at the Three Kings hotel in Beit Sahour, just outside of
Bethlehem, and were set up in a room and given a great, filling meal. Along
the way we met Samer, the Palestinian ATG guy who was our organiser, and the
other half of the tour group, Jean Guy and Sabine from Paris. After dinner,
we joined the Parisians and wandered down to the local Catholic church to
see the tail end of the service. As we went we saw Beit Sahour at night.
Shops were open late, and teenagers wandered the streets chatting and
texting and flirting. Men sitting on their porches greeted us: "Where are
you from?" "You are welcome."
"You are welcome" was a phrase we heard every day, everywhere we went in
Palestine. And it was sincere, and we did feel it, we did feel welcome. A
feeling precisely opposed to the way we'd felt at Zurich.
"What is your intention? What are you going to do? Why do you want to go
to Israel?"
---
morgue
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