Palestine. Part II

July 15, 2012

Palestine is divided into three types of areas: A, B and C.

Area A comprises territories fully under Arab control, with Palestinian police, etc. Area B has joint security patrols. Area C is fully controlled by the Jews.

For example, the capital, Ramallah, is Area A, so Jews don’t go there.

The road from Jerusalem to Hebron, which has a large Jewish settlement, is Area B. In other words, Arabs can use it, but they have to buckle up (when on their own turf, of course, they demonstratively refuse to use seatbelts).

Jewish settlements (Area C) are off-limits to Arabs. Back in school, I was taught that this is called apartheid.

Dhisha

Right next to Bethlehem is a migrant camp. I expected to see tents and old men with sorrowful eyes, but instead saw a regular city, only consisting entirely of shoddily built informal houses that have stood this way for fifty-odd years.

Because this is a camp and not a city, no one works here. Instead, they wait for compensation payments and subsidies. After all, their grandfathers suffered at the hands of the Jews, so how can they be expected to just move on after something like that? New generations all grow up with the feeling that normal life will resume only after enormous and well-deserved payouts.

And so they continue to sit amidst half-empty shelves.

But with pretty graffiti, at least.

Suspiciously pretty.

Hebron

The Third Palestinian Conference on Modern Trends in Mathematics and Physics.

A fire brigade.

A city trash can.

A dumpster.

A car junkyard.

A payphone.

A dairy store.

A sprinkler truck fills up the fountain (which isn’t connected to the water supply).

A young man hands back some change. The currency used in Palestine is the Israeli shekel.

At first glance, it’s just a regular Arab city.

The difference is that Hebron is one of the cities with a Jewish settlement that’s considered an exclave of Israel. It comes with a Category B road, which connects it directly to the country’s main territory, and the Israeli army, here to protect its citizens.

This is what this looks like in practice. Part of the city has simply been cordoned off with barbed wire.

And metal fences.

And slabs of concrete. The Israeli side is on the left.

You try to cut through an alley—and hit a dead wall (very much like in Northern Cyprus).

There are additional nets installed on top of the buildings all around the perimeter, and tons of security cameras.

People below bake bread and sell fabric, while a convoy keeps watch above.

Locals claim that the Jews throw garbage and bricks down from the top, and that someone even got killed that way. So there’s a net stretched over the bazaar.

It’s like a cross between a corrective labor colony and a free economic zone.

The building on the left, with the soldier on the corner of the roof, is Israeli territory. Everything else is Palestine.

The army’s combat capabilities are demonstrated incessantly. Here we have helicopters flying by, for instance.

In Hebron, I had the most delicious chicken heart kebabs I’ve ever tasted in my entire life.

Ramallah

A bustling capital.

Lots of construction going on in the city.

A pharmacy.

The sidewalks and the corners of intersections are roped off with chain barriers.

A tea seller.

Hot corn kernels are sold on every corner.

Street signs are accompanied by a plaque explaining who or what the street is named after.

Traffic police.

A parking meter.

A trash can with a decorative picket fence (like in Ankara).

The wall around the presidential palace.

Roofs with water storage tanks stretch all the way to the horizon.

There’s a Stars & Bucks coffee shop here.

Facebook running shoes are sold here (to keep up with Trincomalee).

A large Middle Eastern city carries on its existence here.

The capital of a country which the rest of the world knows practically nothing about.

* * *

Ramallah has horrible traffic jams. It took about three hours to get out. We finally got to Bethlehem, where a car with Israeli plates was waiting. I transfer to the new car and cross the border. The soldier at the border post glances at my passport cover, but doesn’t even bother to look inside. No one checks my bag, even though I could have easily put a hundred kilos of just about anything in there. I was coming from enemy territory, after all. This makes absolutely no sense when you think about the difficulty of flying out of Ben Gurion Airport, where every passenger is practically turned inside-out.

I’m back in Israel. I return to my hotel. There’s a scenic restaurant on the roof, with views of the Old City and rather mediocre steak.