Palestine

Diary

Dates: 10-17 December, 2022

Visa Process: No VISA 🙂 – entry ticket as opposed to a stamp

I try my best to travel as if I’m still backpacking around and, other than my briefcase with my laptop, I still look like it pretty much. So when I arrived in Tel-Aviv I opted for the train to get to Jerusalem, which just happened to be cheap and surprisingly good quality. It felt like I was still in England.

When I arrived in Jerusalem I quickly realised I wasn’t still in England with a guard looking me up and down with a rifle ready in his arms. The first sign that there might just be a little bit of drama during this visit.

After a night in Jerusalem, I was asked to take a taxi to Ramallah in order to meet our partners. What looked like a 15 minute on Google Maps, ended up being a 45 minute taxi ride, costing more than £100. Turns out we are leaving ‘Israel’ (the taxi driver insists it’s still Jerusalem) and entering ‘Palestine’ where some cars are allowed and others aren’t based on the colour of their plates. It’s confusing because although you’re in Palestine, there’s Israeli checkpoints at every turn and you’re still paying for everything in Israeli money.

It seems like the best approach is to keep an open mind and just listen to people.

The middle-east and Africa are two areas I’ve not really travelled enough of, but I just can’t get enough of the food. Hummus, falafel and bread is a staple and it’s a staple I could definitely get used to.

Every day I was exploring a new meal that I hadn’t seen before, including mansaf which is lamb and fermented dried yogurt, Kanafa, a syrup like dish with cheese and Musakhan, a flatbread with chicken on top that you have to ring-out all of the oil.

The people live under the constant pressure of the Israelis and this is felt in all interactions. During the week there was, in the news, a young girl who was ‘accidentally’ shot by Israeli soldiers. Passing the checkpoints are tense, they are often closed with no notice, and towns are sometimes closed for ‘security’.

All that being said, every Palestinian I met was lovely and kind to me. Welcoming me into their lives and, one of our partners, into their home. It was a really heart warming experience to see what life was like under the radar.

As the home of the Holy Land, it would be amiss to not mention Bethlehem. I stayed two nights but had one full day to visit it in-between work. It’s no doubt the touristy part of Palestine and is heavily fought over. Both nights I heard gunfire, sirens and a bit of chaos but it appears to be fairly ordinary occurrences for the people here, unfortunately.

It was interesting to see a number of Banksy works, including one near the wall that depicts a young girl searching a soldier that, somewhat ironically, had a wall built around it for a shop to be installed and a private viewing of the wall.