Yesterday was the Friday salat (call to prayers) and the proclaimed "Day of Rage" by Hamas, so I kept a low profile. Mercy Corps's concern was that all those young men on their way to the noon prayers could mean trouble. So, I went for an early walk, then pretty much stuck around the hotel the rest of the day. Pretty quiet in the part of East Jerusalem where I was located, but plenty of action elsewhere.
Today (Saturday) I casually inquired at the hotel desk about a "political tour" around Jerusalem and Ramallah. Five minutes later a guide came up to me in the hotel's restaurant and said, "We leave in 10 minutes." I decided, what the hell, and went.
I can't say the Palestinian guide was very good (a lot of loud hectoring directed at us, the clients), but it was interesting. It was easy enough to let him vent --- who can blame him? It's only a day for us, a lifetime for him --- but it gave me an idea of how deep the rage can go.
On the way to Ramallah, we stopped at a section of the "Security wall," a sinuous wall that separates the Israeli settlements embedded in the West Bank, from the surrounding Palestinian communities.
Most of the Palestinians who live in Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens. Instead, they hold "residency cards," which can be taken away for the slightest infraction. If they marry a Palestinian who does not hold a residency card, they cannot live together and, instead, must have "weekend relationships". Their children do not automatically get residency.
If they leave the area too long, they can lose their residency.
There are elaborate rules that govern how they can travel. They must go through certain checkpoints to pass from West Bank back into Jerusalem.
For a Palestinian who lives in the rest of the West Bank, she/he has no rights at all to enter into Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, there is a continuous slow process of ever expanding settlements, working their way outwards from Jerusalem. Most are in former "green areas" --- parks --- but some are where the land was simply confiscated.
Once in Ramallah (my second trip in 3 days), we visited Yasser Arafat's tomb. Whatever you think of the guy, he sure got himself a nice place to rest.
It's interesting to compare it now to my last visit, almost 10 years ago:
So, off to the Qalandia crossing we went. But then our guide got the idea that the Jaba checkpoint, which as I understand it, is a settlement-only checkpoint, might be doable if he could pass as an Israeli Jew. Again, the 7 foreign passports was our ace-in-the-hole.
Today (Saturday) I casually inquired at the hotel desk about a "political tour" around Jerusalem and Ramallah. Five minutes later a guide came up to me in the hotel's restaurant and said, "We leave in 10 minutes." I decided, what the hell, and went.
I can't say the Palestinian guide was very good (a lot of loud hectoring directed at us, the clients), but it was interesting. It was easy enough to let him vent --- who can blame him? It's only a day for us, a lifetime for him --- but it gave me an idea of how deep the rage can go.
On the way to Ramallah, we stopped at a section of the "Security wall," a sinuous wall that separates the Israeli settlements embedded in the West Bank, from the surrounding Palestinian communities.
Most of the Palestinians who live in Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens. Instead, they hold "residency cards," which can be taken away for the slightest infraction. If they marry a Palestinian who does not hold a residency card, they cannot live together and, instead, must have "weekend relationships". Their children do not automatically get residency.
If they leave the area too long, they can lose their residency.
There are elaborate rules that govern how they can travel. They must go through certain checkpoints to pass from West Bank back into Jerusalem.
For a Palestinian who lives in the rest of the West Bank, she/he has no rights at all to enter into Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, there is a continuous slow process of ever expanding settlements, working their way outwards from Jerusalem. Most are in former "green areas" --- parks --- but some are where the land was simply confiscated.
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| This is one of Pisgat Za'ev, one of the many Israeli settlements around Jerusalem. Note the security wall that separates it from the Palestinian areas of Jerusalem (from which this picture was taken). |
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| The wall. |
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| The outside of Arafat's tomb. |
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| His honor guard. |
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| The tomb 10 years ago. They had run out of money so not much was happening. |
The canonization of Arafat is now almost complete. Palestinians see the old terrorist as a "man of peace," who was duped, and possibly poisoned, by the Israelis after the Oslo agreements.
After a quick coffee in downtown Ramallah, it was time to head back. Rather than risk going through the Qalandia crossing, we decided to try the usually much quieter DCO / Beit El checkpoint to the north. It's only for "authorized persons," but our guide hoped that the 3 American and 4 Dutch passports in the car would do the trick. Unfortunately, once we got up there, it was in the middle of a raging rock battle, with several ambulances around. I only had time to take some hurried pictures from the window of the van, shown here as a GIF, before we got out of there.
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| The entrance to the DCO / Beit El checkpoint. |
We breezed right through.
Such is life for a Palestinian Arab.
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