(un)Holy Land, Part 4

CAUTION: political commentary ahead.

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The morning after our adventure in Ramallah found us happily eating yet another fantastic breakfast full of hummus, fresh bread and cheese. We were ready to begin exploring the historic sites of Palestine, and as soon as our two taxi cabs arrived, we were off to Bethlehem.

We alighted in the middle of the town with the Church of the Nativity as our first goal. After a bit of wandering in the wrong direction, we made our way up a long hill and through the narrow streets of Bethlehem towards the church. Bethlehem is a pretty interesting city, as it holds significance for the three major religions of the area: for Christians, it is the place of Jesus's birth; Rachel's Tomb, an important site in Judaism, is on the outskirts of the city; and Muslims have lived in the city since the 7th century BCE.

Governance of Bethlehem has switched hands countless times throughout the years, from a caliph to the Crusaders, from Saladin to the Ottomans, from the United Nations to Jordan. After the Six Day War, Israel controlled the town until the Palestinian National Authority was granted sovereignty of Bethlehem as part of the Oslo Accords. With the escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the city has witnessed its fair share of violence. In 2002, a 5-week standoff between IDF soldiers and locals occurred in the Church of the Nativity. Notably, what was once a Christian majority in the city has dwindled to 12%, owing to emigration of Christians to different cities or the United States, largely due to the significant economic and social decline of the city. And it's no wonder why: the roads are beset with roadblocks, checkpoints, curfews and movement restrictions, and the wall runs straight through the city.

I was suffering from yet another case of mild food poisoning, which really can't be called food poisoning anymore since it has developed into a semi-constant state of digestive unrest. Needless to say I was extremely happy when we reached the plaza of the Church of the Nativity and the recently built Bethlehem Peace Center, and discovered the (amazing, wonderful, clean and free) bathrooms there. The Peace Center was pretty nice. Lots of literature and photographs documenting the long history of Bethlehem.

We opted against entering the church right away, as a large tour group had just gone in. Instead, we walked up a short hill to the Milk Grotto, where it is believed that a drop of Mary's milk hit the ground, giving rise to the chalky consistency of the surrounding terrain. The grotto was clean and cool, and we rested there for a bit before moving on. On the way back to the church, we stopped in several olive wood shops, where I bought some handcrafted carvings.

The entrance to the church was a small door that forced you to stoop to enter; the idea was to humble yourself before God while entering. The main area, the Basilica of the Nativity, was a dark, ornate room lit with hundreds of candles, and is maintained by the Greek Orthodox of Bethlehem. The very stoic man guarding the Basilica had a mild conniption fit because my hands were in my pockets, but considering the recent history of violence there, I can understand their suspicion.

We walked through the adjoining Church of St. Catherine and went down a flight of stairs to the Grotto of the Nativity. There, underneath the Basilica, is the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born, marked on the ground by a silver star.

After leaving the church compound, we found some cheap, fresh hummus and bread--I abstained from eating for the most part, but it looked good--and pushed on. We next went to the Palestinian Heritage Center, a repository of handmade Palestinian artifacts, embroidery and jewelry, where we spoke with its curator for a long time about the current state of affairs in the Arab world. I purchased a beautiful necklace made with replicas of Palestinian currency, Laura got a plate for her mother, and we all got some interesting literature. We left the cultural center, and began what would be, for me at least, the turning point of our trip to Palestine.

We went to see the wall.

Like I wrote earlier, any description I attempt to give of the wall will belie its true nature, but I'll give it my best shot.

The wall--known amongst Israelis as a separation or security fence, and amongst Palestinians as a racial segregation or apartheid wall--is, bluntly, a physical barrier between Israelis and Palestinians. Over 8 meters tall in some places, the idea for the wall was first posited by the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, and after escalating violence in Gaza, erected the Israeli Gaza Strip barrier in 1994. Support for the creation of a larger and more extensive barrier between Israel and Palestine grew, with various rationales: Rabin stated it was to protect the people of Israel from terrorism, while subsequent PM Ehud Barak said that a security fence was "essential to the Palestinian nation in order to foster its national identity and independence without being dependent on the State of Israel." The Israeli Supreme Court cited the violence of the al-Aqsa Intifada and loss of Israeli life as the background behind the decision to construct the fence.

The barrier itself runs roughly along the Green Line, which marks the 1949 Jordanian-Israeli armistice border. However, it deviates from the Green Line in many places to include Israeli settlements in the West Bank, extending past its stated path as much as 20 kilometers. 20% of the wall is on the actual Green Line. In some places it splits roads or almost entirely encircles towns.

While the Israeli Supreme Court has twice ruled that the route of the barrier should be altered due to negative impacts on Palestinians, the International Court of Justice has argued that this is not enough, stating that the wall is "contrary to international law." For their part, Israel does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ. The UN has passed several resolutions about the wall, notably stating that "it is difficult to overstate the humanitarian impact of the Barrier. The route inside the West Bank severs communities, people's access to services, livelihoods and religious and cultural amenities."

While Palestinian public opinion is almost unanimously opposed to the wall, Israeli favor is mixed. Most feel that it will improve security and define the borders of Israeli vis-a-vis Palestine. Many Israeli West Bank settlers now support the wall, as it has become clear that it will be diverted to include their settlements as part of Israel. In March 2004, a study conducted by Tel Aviv University found that 84% of the Jewish population of Israel was in support of the wall.

Not all Israelis favor it, however. Colonel Shaul Arieli of the IDF has famously stated of the barrier that "in its current format it creates the future terror infrastructure because this terror infrastructure is precisely those people living in enclaves who will support acts of terror as the only possible tool that they perceive as being able to restore them the land, production services and water wells taken from them." In other words, the resentment and anger generated by the construction of the wall and the resulting daily conditions may foster and augment the very terrorism it was made to prevent.

Physically, 95% of the total length of the barrier is comprised of a multi-layered fence system with staggered walls demarcating approximately 50 m of width, with stacks of barbed wire, anti-vehicle ditches and patrol roads in the "no man's land" in between the fences. The sections we saw, however, were constructed as a simple wall made out of interlocking concrete slabs 3 m wide and 8 m tall, a large span of empty land and sniper towers, and another similarly constructed wall. In Bethlehem, the gray, anonymous concrete is covered with Palestinian graffiti: quotes, pictures and words.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.



As we followed the wall in its snake-like slice through the middle of Bethlehem, we came upon a house at the dead end of a small street enclosed on three sides by the wall. We were walking down the road as the couple who lived in the house pulled up in their car. The conversation we held with them will be forever etched in my memory.

Very much as a matter of fact, she told us her story. The abandoned, empty street on which we were now standing used to be the main street of Bethlehem, and down the road, where a sniper tower now sat, her husband had maintained an auto parts store. The closed garage adjacent to their home used to be her thriving interior decorating shop. When the wall was built through the middle of the town, not only did it affect the economy and force the eventual closure of many Palestinian businesses, but it separated families. Her brother and his children lived literally across the street; she could now only see him by driving twenty minutes around the border of the city. When the Israelis had started building the wall through Bethlehem six years ago, they had been under a 24-hour curfew. Now, while she can leave her home during the day, the town is virtually dead. Restricted in movement and commerce, they cannot rebuild their businesses in another section in town; they're struggling to make ends meet.

For six years, she has written letters to anyone she can think of: Israeli leaders, Palestinian groups, US Congressmen. No one has returned her emails.

Now, something that might surprise you: this woman and her family are Christians. Being Palestinian is immediately connected with being Muslim, but the Palestinian Christian community does exist and is marginalized along with the rest. Those kept out by the wall are not just Islamic fundamentalists, radical Muslims just waiting to blow themselves up. They are Muslim and Christian families living in provincial cities that rarely witness violence.

She asked us where we were from, and when we answered, she began to implore: the United States, she said, was the only country in the world that could help her, could change things for her and her family. As Israel is the largest recipient of US direct foreign assistance--that's $9 billion a year, but who's counting--the United States holds the greatest sway over Israeli domestic policy. We remained quiet, because, really, what could we say? She told us all of this with a tone of resignation. Not complacency, but resignation. After six years surrounded by a wall that has erased your culture and livelihood, I don't know where your hope would be.

"We pray to God," she said. "We pray to God every day. This is our strength."

Later, back in Jerusalem, I discussed what we saw with my friend. For me, experiencing the totality of the wall and hearing the woman's story had been a defining moment in the crystallization of my opinion on the conflict in Israel and Palestine. Before this trip, my view on the issue was rather ambivalent. I support--and still do--the right of Israel to defend itself and its citizens from violence and terrorism, and the fence was described to me as a way to keep suicide bombers and terrorists out of the heart of Israeli cities.

But tell me how the security of Israeli citizens is augmented by the construction of a wall through the middle of a city that contains no Israeli citizens? Does building a wall in Bethlehem keep bombers out of Tel Aviv? Does isolating and economically ruining Palestinian towns encourage peace and security, or does the oppression of the peaceful citizen engender resentment and anger? The planned route of the wall will take it through Hammad's home town of Deir Debwan to include the hill-top settlements, making it even harder to reach things like grocery stores and hospitals.

During my stay here in Egypt, I've witnessed some things that make me think, "Would this fly in the United States?" If the Smithsonian had a separate, $1 line for Americans while foreigners were forced to pay $50 for admission like at the Egyptian Museum, would this be acceptable? Absolutely not. You could count on various civil rights groups and national leaders to stand up and say something. So look at it this way: if the city of Los Angeles decided to build a 25 foot wall around Compton under the auspices of protecting Hollywood, do you think we would remain silent? No.

I'm coming away from my semester in Egypt with a greater appreciation of the tradition of American dissension, our frequent use of our right to free speech, and the virtual guarantee that somewhere someone exists to fight any injustice that arises. This courtesy, however, has not been extended to the people of Palestine. And it is our problem: with every billion the United States grants in aid to Israel, we are not simply condoning this; we are facilitating it. This puts us in an unique position to apply pressure to Israel, but that power goes largely unused.

The significance of the Palestinian issue goes largely unknown within the United States, but has widespread repercussions. Namely, many in the Arab world view as hypocritical America's espousal of democratic ideals paired with its continued unconditional support of Israel. I fervently believe in the values of democracy, and have supported the United States' democratizing missions throughout the world; it has made me disillusioned and ashamed to see that in some parts of the world we are supporting the very ideas we purport to stand against. And, more importantly, this issue at the root of a predominance of the hostility witnessed against the US within the Arab world, even in seemingly unrelated conflicts such as the insurgency in Iraq. It is seen as part of a greater malaise: the imperialism of the United States imposed under a facade of democracy.

I can't take it that far; I don't believe that the United States has colonialist designs on the Middle East. I don't think our promulgation of democracy is a farce. I do acknowledge the strategic benefits of democratization for the US, but choose to view it as part of a greater mission to foster freedom and liberty throughout the world. Additionally, I do acknowledge Israel as our ally and recognize the strategic reality of its existence. It has a right to defend itself. But it behooves us to think about whether the current state of affairs in Palestine and Israel is ethical, legal, democratic or even pragmatic. My personal answer to all of these questions is no; you must find your own.

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After seeing the wall, we were all a bit exhausted. We went to the Dheishe Refugee Camp, where we visited the Ibda’a Cultural Center. Unfortunately, it was too late to tour the camp, but we did listen to a speaker who was informative but not as compelling as the wall itself had been.

We went back to Deir Debwan, collapsed, and woke up to spend our last day touring Jericho. The lowest place on earth, it's renowned for being oppresively hot in the summer. Luckily, it had cooled off this day to about 80 degrees from the previous day's 103. We took a gondola up to the Monastery of Temptation, where Jesus is believed to have spent 40 days and 40 nights fasting in the wilderness. We ate lunch and ended our trip exploring the ruins of King Hirsham's Palace.

Our trip back was long, and a blur: a taxi from the palace to the Jericho bus station, a bus from Jericho to Jerusalem, a long bus from Jerusalem to Eilat, a taxi from Eilat to Taba, and a sketchy minibus at 4am from Taba to Cairo. 19 hours of straight travel later, I entered the dorms, vowing never to travel by bus again. It was back to the land of hassle and harangue.

Palestine was an incredible experience, one I can't really summarize to satisfaction.

But I tried, here and elsewhere. I wrote the following poem for my creative writing class, and I guess this is as good a way as any to end my post. Thanks for reading.

The House of the Butcher

Tell me where your bullet goes
When you shoot into the sky.
Does it disappear in clouds,
Or land between my thighs?
Does it hang like stuck in honey,
Like hollow-pointed flies?
And do you keep on walking
To let your revolution die?

Tell me where your people go
When you shoot into the sky.

Do they rise?

And tell me whose humanity
You hold up with this wall.
Are you building it towards heaven,
For freedom, after all?
Or do you stretch it on the plane of men,
Were only men so tall?
And what is in the concrete
You're so ready to install?

Tell me where your people go
Held up by this wall.

Or do they fall?

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See my all of my pictures in the photo albums on Facebook: Good Fences and Good Neighbors.

food poisoning and finals.

i'll finish my saga soon.

sorry.

Odds & Ends

Brief break from Holy Land posts to bring you this gem from the National Democratic Party of Egypt:

Egypt to celebrate Mubarak's birthday

Egypt celebtrates Friday President Hosni Mubarak's birthday which marks an all-out march of achievements in the various domains.

Since Mubarak assumed his post as the President of Egypt, he did his utmost to serve the Egyptian people.

He leads his country like a wise skilled captain knowing how to control his ship and save it from dangers besetting it in a world full of changes and challenges.

He has always sought to protect Egypt's security and spare his people the suffering of war.

The president is even keen on not taking risks that would negatively affect his people's lives as Mubarak has lived the bitter experience of the 1967 war when he was serving as an Egyptian air force officer.

At the right moment Mubarak efficiently led the well-prepared airstrike in the 1973 war.

Mubarak has led a march of economic reforms leading to great Egyptian economic acheivements.

He has also pioneered a political reform march, including for the first time in Egypt's history holding multi-presidential elections after amending Article 76 of the constitution.

It was natural for such action to spark debates as the door became open for all political parties, including opposition blocs, and newspapers to express their opinions freely.

Seriously. Wow.

And it's Mother's Day! So go call your mother, kids. I love you, Mom!

(un)Holy Land, Part 3

"Is that gunfire?"

Across our empty ice cream bowls we looked at each other. A faint popping noise could be heard in the streets. The room, filled with chattering families, hushed. I'd never heard gunfire outside the firing range, where even through ear plugs the sound was jarring; this noise was oddly muffled.

Pop. Pop pop.

Two Palestinian women ran to the low-set window and crouched to peer down onto the street. After a moment's reflection, they stood up, and shrugged their shoulders. Casually, a man gave me a look that expressed a sense of the routine, almost of complacency. He chuckled softly, seeing our faces. This, unfortunately, was just another day. Without any sense of emergency, the families packed up their belongings and went downstairs. We were told by the owner to stay upstairs for five minutes, and we readily agreed.

Our minds turned to our friends coming from Israel. Although we didn't know the circumstances surrounding the shooting, now probably wasn't the time for three Jewish kids to be crossing the border into the West Bank. It probably also wasn't the time for a bunch of American kids to be running around the streets of Ramallah. But our friends were already in transit, and we couldn't very well leave them to fend for themselves. Hammad told us to stay in the ice cream shop, while he went to find taxis to take us back to Deir Debwan.

While we were waiting, we adopted the air of placidity that seemed to pervade the almost-empty shop. Just another night in Ramallah. Soon, the owner came up and told us that the gunfire had been from men firing into the air: a Palestinian had been killed nearby and all the shopkeepers were to close in solidarity. The gunfire was their warning system. We speculated on the cause of death: had it been a continuation of an argument we had seen earlier that night on the streets? Or was it simply an IDF-Palestinian scuffle?

After fifteen minutes, Hammad had not returned, and the shopkeepers were getting antsy. We were the only patrons left, and all the downstairs lights were off. If the men on the street saw the upstairs lights on, they would think the shop was not complying with custom. They wanted us to leave. "It is not dangerous on the streets for you. It is dangerous for us," one man explained, "to stay open." Sure, sure, but there was no way I was headed out to aimlessly wander the streets when men were shooting into the air. Bullets, you know, come down.

We migrated downstairs, stalling. A metal door had been closed over the storefront, which the shopkeepers occasionally cracked open to watch the street. The mood was tense; they wanted us gone. While we were waiting, I asked one of them what had happened, and they told me it had been a fight about a stolen car, and someone had been killed.

Without a way of contacting Hammad, we were stuck; eventually Carolina decided to call Hammad's uncle, who told us to wait five minutes and, if Hammad wasn't back, he would drive to Ramallah to come get us. Almost immediately after hanging up, they returned: Hammad and our three, bewildered friends from Israel. He had negotiated three taxis back to Deir Debwan at a steep price, but we were willing to pay almost anything to get out of there.

In a rush, we thanked the ice cream shop employees for staying open, and dashed across the dark street into our waiting taxis. Ramallah was dead, the streets were dark. Only a half an hour ago this had been a vibrant locus of downtown nightlife, and to my Western-trained mind, forcing a shutdown of a center of commerce in protest only exacerbates the economic troubles of the region. But so it was. And while the shops were closed, there were people on every corner, exhibiting the complacent mood I had seen earlier. I guess anything less than a full-on shootout is part and parcel of living in the West Bank, but for us, we were ready to leave.

We sped through the dark hills of Ramallah on the long road back to Deir Debwan. The moon cast a soft back light onto the mountains of the West Bank, barely visible as we plunged into the valley below the city. On the radio, strangely, Brooks & Dunn's Only in America hissed softly through the speakers:

Sun coming up over New York City
School bus driver in a traffic jam
Starin' at the faces in her rearview mirror
Looking at the promise of the Promised Land
One kid dreams of fame and fortune
One kid helps pay the rent
One could end up going to prison
One just might be president

Only in America
Dreaming in red, white and blue
Only in America
Where we dream as big as we want to

We dipped behind a mountain, on top of which sat a massive Israeli settlement.

The signal sputtered, and died.


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Hammad's uncle told us the version of the story he had heard: Hamas and Fatah factions had scuffled, and someone had been killed. Later I searched on Google News for information about the story, and found only this.

(un)Holy Land, Part 2

Thursday morning broke, clear and warm. Excited, anxious, hungry, tired, nervous: we were going to the West Bank.

We packed up our gear and headed out early to meet Hammad at the Damascus Gate. After a bit of wandering around the Old City, we walked a short block uphill to a parking lot-cum-bus station, where shuttles ran from Jerusalem to Ramallah, Jenin and beyond. 6 Shekels and we were off, clutching our US passports for the golden tickets they were. Sooner than I thought, we were passing a big dark anonymous terminal: the checkpoint.

Suddenly the scenery had changed. Gone were the long flat sidewalks of Jerusalem, gone were the boutiques and bus stops. Barbed wire ran along the roofs of houses, and trash collected in corners. Hammad leaned over, pointed, and whispered:

There's the wall.

And so it was: a gray snake, with scales of concrete and rebar colored only by its graffiti, the wall fell and rose with the hills of Palestine, running dim into the distance. To read about it--the security fence, the apartheid wall, whatever you want to call it--is not to see it. Everything you've read drips out of your head and is replaced with the reality of its sheer size, its immobility, its permanence. As our snub-nosed bus rolled on towards Ramallah, the wall kept pace, only being lost to my sight when it dipped below a hill. To see the wall was the first reminder of the occupation of Palestine; it would not be the last. And as I was to learn, to simply see the wall is not to understand it. That comes with time.

We jumped off the bus at a stoplight, and headed straight for Samer's Restaurant, one of Hammad's favorite eateries. A traditional breakfast in Palestine, like in Egypt, consists of small, cheap plates of mezza eaten with bread, like hummus, ful, falafel and tabouleh. A traditional breakfast in Palestine, unlike in Egypt, is incredible, amazing and delicious. It brought back memories of that amazing food in Siwa, which was the only time in Egypt I've been impressed with the food.After exiting our food coma, we took a big yellow van to Deir Debwan, Hammad's home town. As the crow flies, it's about five minutes from Ramallah, and ten years ago, that's how long it would have taken us, too. Now, though, the Israeli settlements have begun to encroach on Palestinian-controlled territory, including right outside Ramallah. The settlers get private Israeli security, which means private Israeli roads, which means the streets formerly available to the Palestinians are now closed off so that Israelis can use them exclusively. This translates to a 45 minute taxi ride around the outskirts of Ramallah to Deir Debwan, instead of the direct path Hammad's family used to take.

During the Second Intifada, many of the remaining roads were also closed or bulldozed to prevent and monitor Palestinian movement, or at the very least serve as a massive inconvenience. During our stay in Palestine, our taxi drivers would explain to us the historical significance of each road on which we travelled: here is where they would pile the rocks to barricade cars. There is the point at which no cars were allowed, so men, women and children would have to get out and walk. And here is the bulldozed and still-unpaved road that we are going to take, because it saves us a half an hour.

Deir Debwan, known as the Beverly Hills of Palestine, lived up to its name. BMWs, four-story houses, blue tile roofs: it's not exactly what you picture when you think of Palestine, and Hammad was careful to remind us that this is not an accurate representation of what life is like in the occupied territories. Most of the people who keep homes in Deir Debwan have spent significant time in the US, and keep palatial residences in their homeland as a token of their foreign success. Hammad's maternal and paternal grandparents live close to each other, and we spent time at both of their homes. From the get-go, we were fed incredibly well. One of Hammad's grandmothers had him running around her kitchen preparing snacks to serve us, while the other grandmother spent hours making delicacies like stuffed grape leaves. I could get used to a kind of hospitality that involves eating really good food all the time.

The girls stayed in one house, and the boys the other. After some showers and naps, we called another big cab and headed back to Ramallah. Our cab driver was, like every one we encountered, extremely knowledgeable about his history, his land and his people, something that US citizens could do well to emulate. With Hammad serving as a translator, our driver went out of his way to show us some of the sights along the way. Perched atop hills (strategically, he said) were some of the Israeli settlements. Below them, the streets of the refugee camp of Jelazoon, through which we drove. In the middle of the camp there was a square with a monument dedicated to those from Jelazoon who had died during the Intifada.

Refugees have a different political status than most Palestinians, he said, explaining that refugees were not allowed to travel or to attend college, ensuring their social immobility. We visited Arafat's grave and compound, where they are in the process of building a memorial to the former Palestinian leader.

Ramallah was, in a word, incredible. It's what Cairo could be: a busy, bustling town that integrates modern culture but retains its Arab character. We wandered through an open air produce market, where the vendors were calling out their prices instead of their pruriencies. There were no McDonalds, KFCs or Hardees, but there were modern coffee shops and fashionable clothing stores, right next to shwarma stands and falafel shops. The streets were clean, there were trashcans, and the bathrooms had toilet paper. In short, Ramallah works, and it's under occupation.

We went a little crazy with the food that first night, but I don't regret it. Everything I had was what had been missing in Cairo: a chicken shwarma wrap filled with fresh vegetables and spicy sauce, falafel sandwiches that weren't greasy or overcooked, kanefa with just the right mixture of cheese and honey, and soft serve ice cream that tasted just like home.

Our group was closing out the night in Eiffel Sweets, sitting upstairs, finishing our ice cream concoctions and waiting for a phone call. Hammad's friend who had showed us around Jerusalem the previous night was coming to Ramallah to spend a few days with us. After seeing the West Bank with Hammad the day before our arrival, he wanted to share it with two of his friends from his university. They had been planning on taking the same bus we did and arriving in downtown Ramallah sometime early that evening, but they got delayed. They were all taking a risk by coming to the West Bank: if their university found out, they could be expelled.

Ramallah at night, taken by Hammad.

Pretty harsh punishment, so we were all somewhat anxiously awaiting their safe arrival in Ramallah. We pushed around our ice cream, talked about what we would do the next day in Bethlehem, and just generally killed time.

And that, I guess, is when the shooting started.

(un)Holy Land, Part 1

Okay. So now that my Arabic vocab test--which I very well couldn't study for in Israel--is over, I can get down to writing about my most recent adventure. Sorry for the delay. And if anyone wants to know how to say reconciliation conference in Arabic, let me know.

Some pictures unabashedly stolen from friends.

---

Our trip to the Holy Land was only a few days away, but between scheduling difficulties and political realities, we weren't sure it was actually going to happen.

The original plan, which was to take a ferry to Jordan and then make our way to the Allenby Bridge crossing, had been nixed in favor of a direct bus from Cairo to Jerusalem that ran from the Sheraton. It went through the Taba/Eliat border crossing in the Sinai, which originally hadn't been on the table because Hammad, as a Palestinian-American, wouldn't have been let through. Even with his US passport, Israel would deny him entry due to his last name alone. For him, the Allenby crossing was the only viable one, as Jordan doesn't consider the West Bank a part of Israel. However, he decided to take a few more days off and flew to Amman instead, so we were free to cross at Taba. We'd meet him in Palestine.

The excuse for this trip was Sinai Liberation Day (aka when Israel decided to give the Sinai back to Egypt), a national holiday here. We had Wednesday off, and wanted to leave for Israel Tuesday night and take a long weekend, returning on Sunday. But when Sarah went to the Sheraton to buy us all tickets to Jerusalem, she found that the buses only ran on Thursday and Sunday. She bought them anyway, but after some harried email exchanges with Hammad, it was decided that we should return them and take public transportation all the way to Jerusalem.

Thus Monday and Tuesday found us running between the AUC travel office, trying to buy a seat on the Tuesday night bus to Taba, and the Sheraton, trying to return our rather expensive Thursday tickets. We only got about half of our money back (~$25), after the idea of using them as return tickets on Sunday fizzled out: no one at the Sheraton could tell us the Jerusalem to Cairo schedule, so we just ate the money.

But the Sheraton did manage to tell Sarah something about the West Bank being closed. We had all woken up to our respective BBC homepages telling us that the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was over, some militants had been killed, and rockets were being launched into various West Bank towns. The main purpose of our trip was not to see Israel, but to spend a good deal of time in Palestine. Would we even be able to get into the West Bank? And more importantly, would we make it out?

Our destination was Ramallah, which is located significantly south of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade-controlled areas where the fighting was breaking out. We figured that the friendly people at the Sheraton were referring to northern Palestine, but when it was time to leave Tuesday night, I think we were all a bit concerned as to the viability and safety of our trip.

What I would find out, however, is that most of the things you hear about in the news with regard to Palestine don't really affect daily life. To six clueless American kids, headlines like Hamas Fighters End Israel Truce are worrisome. To Palestinians, that's unfortunately business as usual, and daily life more or less remains unchanged.

So we packed our bags and headed to our favorite bus station. After attempting to secure some return tickets for Sunday and being told that you could only do that in Taba, we got on our 22:15 bus to the border. It was loaded with other AUC kids who were either on their way to Israel like us or using the Taba crossing to get into Jordan for the break.

I think I've already devoted enough space in this blog to the wonderful experience that is 7 hours on an Egyptian bus, so I'll skip the details this time. In a few words: cold, loud, long, and uncomfortable as hell.

We arrived in beautiful Taba at the crack of dawn, under a pink hazy sky that hung low over the cliffs of Jordan. After stomping around the Taba bus "station," finding no one there and figuring that we'd figure out our return trip on the fly (HINT: foreshadowing), we made the 15 minute walk to the border crossing.

Egyptian customs? Kind of a joke. We paid 2 LE at the gate for a little ghetto paper stamp that we later affixed to our exit document. We laid around the station while they entered all of our information into their "system" by hand. I think they took a tea break. But to their credit, they did not stamp our passports when we asked. Why? Because an exit visa from Taba is just as good as an entry visa into Israel, and we were still under the delusion that perhaps Israel wouldn't stamp our passports. Many countries in the region, including Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, will deny you entry into their country if you've been to Israel, so we were all hoping to get through with a clean record.

No such luck. We walked about 100m to the Eilat border control office, which was decked with enough blue and white so as there could be no confusion as to where you were. Nationalism had thrown up all over the border, and it had apparently eaten swags of plastic Israel flags for dinner.

We were immediately greeted by a very professional looking (read: aviators, too much hair gel and three-inch heels) woman who was clearly master of her domain (which was a tiny little podium, but whatever). Our "story" was that we were just going to Jerusalem to see the holy sites. We had a hostel booked (we actually did, for one night). No mention was to be made of Palestine or staying with a Palestinian family, as this would incur massive interrogation and might end our trip altogether. So this is what we told her, and into the building we went.

Our bags were searched to varying levels of thoroughness: some thrice, some once, some with those little swabs that look for explosive residue. I had heard that it wasn't a good idea to bring in any Arabic material into the country, as it just invites questioning, so I had xeroxed the pages from my textbook for the test and hidden them in my backpack. Also tucked away in my planner were Hammad's informative emails, damning in and of themselves. My backpack wasn't touched, but the guard did go through my messenger bag--"Are all of these books yours? ..Are you sure?"--and flipped through my planner, but didn't find the emails.

I was second to go through passport control, and Jacob had already tried and failed to get through with his passport unstamped. I guess his rationale ("to travel freely in the region") had not sat well with the official, as she made it clear that she was exasperated with me when I asked for the same treatment. I told her some story about traveling to Oman in May, to which she said she would call the Ministry of the Interior to get permission to not stamp me, which would take three hours. We didn't have three hours, however true that was, so I just shrugged and let her stamp it. I didn't want to see Beirut anyway. Right?

After buying some shekels, we hopped on a bus to take us into the city of Eilat. There, we bought a 65 shekel (about 4 shekels to the dollar) bus ticket to Jerusalem that left in two hours, and killed time by grabbing a totally underwhelming breakfast. The bus station was filled mostly by IDF soldiers who looked like they should still be in high school. Something kind of funny about a semi-automatic weapon in one hand and a rhinestone-bejeweled cell phone in the other. It was weird to see so many soldiers using public transportation, but I guess that's how they do it there? They all seemed to have a very high degree of autonomy, though, so maybe they were on casual status.

It was four hours from Eilat to Jerusalem. We stopped halfway through at a rest stop, where there was: one, free restrooms; two, clean restrooms; and three, toilet paper. To say that it was nice to use a bathroom that wasn't hostilely guarded by a grubby, shiftless man looking for baksheesh is a mild understatement. To say that it was nice to use a bathroom that wasn't a Hepatitis magnet is the understatement of the year.

Once we made it to Jerusalem, we realized that our plan--get to our hostel and then call Hammad--hinged on first finding our hostel, and we were without a map of the city. The woman at the information booth, whose job was apparently to just shake her head in admonishment, had neither a map nor a clue where our hostel was. We did have a rough idea of its location, though: across the street from the Damascus Gate of the Old City. We finally managed to catch a bus that took us in the vicinity, and after some of the semi-directionless walking around that is part and parcel to backpacking adventures, found it.

Even though it was late in the afternoon, our rooms weren't ready, so we dropped our bags and went to call Hammad. He promptly told us not to check into the hostel; his friend in Jerusalem had an empty apartment where we could crash. But like the Sheraton bus tickets, we were out luck. The hostel got angry when we tried to leave, so we ended up just staying there for the night. It was at this point that I realized a US$50 bill was missing from my wallet, where it had been safely nestled between a 100 Shekel bill and two US$10s. All my other money was there, it was just the fifty that was missing. Looked everywhere. Searched my bag twice. No idea how it managed to run away, but as it's a fortune in Egypt and to a lesser degree in Israel, it made me a sad panda for a few. But I tried not to let it bother me. Karma will balance it out in the end, right?

We met Hammad and his cousin in front of the Damascus Gate, and proceeded to explore the Old City together. They had taken a bus into Jerusalem that afternoon from Ramallah, and were in the city illegally. Even though Hammad was born in Jerusalem, as a Palestinian from the West Bank he is no longer allowed to enter the city freely. At the checkpoint in Ramallah, he had flashed his US passport, which didn't have the magic entry visa that we got in Taba, meaning he came straight into the West Bank. For a Palestinian to obtain an entry visa into Israel is an almost impossible and certainly time-intensive and expensive process.

Luckily, the IDF soldier didn't go through his passport very thoroughly; she was too busy making fun of his cousin's name for being so Western, I guess. So they both made it through, but were on guard the entire evening. Israeli soldiers will commonly stop people who look Arab and investigate their passports and paperwork. If caught in Jerusalem illegally, Hammad could be fined up to US$800, intensively interrogated or even arrested. Even though he is an American citizen just like the rest of us, his heritage prohibits him from visiting one of the most important cities in the world that happens to be the city of his birth. Does that seem right to you? Anyway, he dressed as Western as possible that night and stuck close by the rest of us, especially Laura and me, who were so obviously American it hurt.

The Old City is an intricate web of narrow streets running every direction, filled with bazaars and shops selling everything you can imagine. We stopped in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is built on what is thought to be the Hill of Calvary, where Jesus was crucified. Inside the church, rocks from the original ground are still visible under glass. The Old City also holds the entrance to Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, two incredibly important religious sites. After Ariel Sharon's infamous 2000 visit to the Dome of the Rock, non-Muslims were barred from the Temple Mount; however, the site has been recently opened to non-Muslims during certain hours. Unfortunately, we missed our window, so only Hammad and his cousin could enter, after surviving the scrutiny of both the Israeli and Arab doormen and convincing all parties that they were, in fact, Muslim.

After that, we met up with Hammad's friend who is studying in Jerusalem for the semester at Hebrew University. We went on a cool night exploration of the Old City, ending up at the Western Wall. After visiting the respective sex-segregated portions of the wall, our group was sitting in the plaza when a couple with a baby stroller stopped next to us. The man started talking to the boys, and the woman started talking to us. And by talking, I mean practically interrogating:

Are you here with a group? No, just friends. Not Birthright? Nope. Just traveling on vacation. When did you get into Jerusalem? Tonight. Where else in Israel have you been? We just got here. Well, where else are you going? Just Jerusalem. Where are you from? The US. Oh, us too! But we moved here. Do you all go to school together? We're all studying in Cairo together. Why did you want to come to Israel? ... Um...to see Israel? Wtf? What hostel are you staying at? uh...one by the Old City. WTF?

Seriously. She was smiling the whole time, but included almost no traditional hi-how are you-pleasantries. Creepy. The border guards in Eliat weren't even that thorough. Turns out the man asked the boys almost the same questions, and when we found out that they told him a slightly different story--that they were on spring break from the US--we got out of there. We spent some more time in the Old City, got a good look of the infamous excavations/ reconstructions/ ramp/ whatever the Israelis are doing there, and then returned to our hostel and collapsed. It had been a long day of travel and interrogations, and we hadn't even made it into the West Bank yet.