I came to the West Bank through the King Hussein Bridge border crossing between Jordan and Israel/Palestine (excuse the slashes - I think I may be using them a lot when writing about a place that is so contested). In Jordan I, like Moses, first gazed on the Promised Land from Mount Nebo. I thought I would suffer the same fate as Moses (die before setting foot on the land) after spending 9 hours waiting and being questioned on the Israeli side of the border. I got there in the morning and shut the place down as the last person to be let into Israel that day as I watched hundreds of others, mostly Palestinians, come and go after me. I was the last person left at the border crossing! I think that it got so late that they realized they could no longer send me back to Jordan since there was no longer any transportation in the no mans land between the Israeli and Jordanian border security stations.
The problem was that I have a Lebanese stamp in my passport from just days before the war broke out in 2006 and I was completely honest with them about why I was coming to the West Bank. I told them I was going to Ramallah, staying with a Palestinian family, studying Arabic, and working for a local Palestinian NGO. Needless to stay they were equally unthrilled about each of these aspects of my travel. They did a very thorough job questioning me and it was pretty awful. The interrogation room was freezing cold and there was a very mysterious looking man sitting silently in the corner. I know they have to do this and I have no problem as a foreigner with having to go through those 9 hours when I enter another country. That is not to say that I don't have a problem with Palestinians having to go through this simply to return to their homes and families. Some people told me to lie and say I was a tourist going straight to Jerusalem but I couldn't do it. And in a way the fact that they let me through gave me some hope. They absolutely could have turned me away no problem but instead they let me in and I have an opportunity to learn first hand about this land that has captivated me since I was a child devouring books on the Holocaust, the formation of Israel in 1948, and all of the turmoil of the past 60 years that has followed.
I am staying with a family here in Ramallah and from the windows of their house I can see West Jerusalem, the al 'Amari refugee camp across the street, an Israeli settlement, and the archeological site of an ancient city. Surrounding the city are military checkpoints and roads that are off limits to Palestinians. The major roads connecting Ramallah with the Jerusalem and Nablus have been cut.
I will also be working with a Palestinian NGO called Filastiniyat. I begin work there tomorrow.
Forgive my wordiness. It appears to be incurable.
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