Finishing What I Started: Final Days in the West Bank

So the original plan was to get back to the old Al-Hajal in the evenings and post some stories from each day while we were in the West Bank.  As it turned out, there were a lot of interesting things to do in the evenings, wandering the busy Ramallah streets, stopping in at vegetable markets and bakeries for some tasty snacks, killing some time in a coffee shop and interacting with the locals, or just hanging at the Al Hajal, watching Arab news and pop programs with the fellas.

Back stateside, I hit the ground running, working hard the past couple months to keep momentum on our humanitarian work with our new Palestinian colleagues in the West Bank, and also trying to keep my head above water in my own work (and slide in some skiing here and there).  So here I am, now two months out from my first travels over the Atlantic, and just getting around to posting some comments about the conclusion of the trip.

The remainder of our week in the West Bank was full of a lot of really productive meetings with various Palestinian Authority officials, university professors, NGOs and aid agencies.  All in all, we met with close to 20 people, a huge surprise considering we only had one scheduled meeting when we left the States.  There is a great need for support in the West Bank, however, I found that many, probably most, Palestinians are not uneducated and incapable of taking care of themselves.  They are actually a fairly well educated people with a wide variety of useful skills.  This wasn't what I was expecting.  I expected to see some form of a male dominated, militant society with a deep religious influence.  This couldn't be farther from the truth.  In many ways I envy the Palestinian people.  Here they are in a dire situation, their land being slowly overtaken by a nation that was only recently established in the region who has the unconditional support of the world's strongest country.  Nonetheless, Palestinians are among the happiest people that I have ever encountered.  Granted, they are not too thrilled about the state of their state, but there is an evident hope for continued improvement.  The reestablishment of the Palestinian Authority is invigorating commerce, infrastructure and industry, providing jobs for people who were before unemployed and destitute.  Walking the streets of Ramallah I still saw people that just looked bored, however, I also saw construction workers building intricate wooden frames in massive pits that will soon support office buildings, truck drivers hauling municipal wastewater from outlying villages to the one of two functioning wastewater treatment plants, and engineers working with NGOs to devise creative ways for providing basic needs of food and water for villagers outside the city.

We finished out our final day in the West Bank travelling south of Ramallah and Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Jericho.  A day of travel and leisure after a productive and exhausting array of meetings in Ramallah and Nablus.  It was Greek Orthodox Christmas in Bethlehem where we visited that Church of the Nativity, the site that is believed to be the birthplace of Jesus, and the Mosque of Omar, where Omar (Muslim leader during 600s) prayed after the death of Mohammed.  The Church of The Nativity was bustling with hundreds of Greek Orthodox Christian pilgrims and a huge procession of clergy chanting hymns for the celebration.  We entered the church through the "Door of Humility", a 3-4 ft high opening that everyone entering must pass through to enter the Basilica of The Nativity.  Worn 600 year old mosaics are high on the walls of the wood supported structure of the church.  A section of the worn wood floor could be lifted up to reveal the original mosaic floor.  I muscled open the hatch, the old wood hinges squeaked, a bunch of  .

Continuing south we drove along the Wall toward Jericho.  At Bethlehem University we saw the soccer field where students played for several days forcing Wall construction to be diverted around the field.  Outside of Bethlehem the Wall veered easterly, at one point cutting right down the middle of the road we were driving on, cutting half of the city off leaving many Palestinians trapped in "no man's land".

As we continued south toward Jericho and the Dead Sea the number of yellow license plates (Israeli) increased as we traveled along the Israeli maintained highway providing access to numerous settlements looming atop rocky hills, surrounded by steep rocky slopes and concertina fencelines.  Arriving at the Dead Sea an hour and a half south of Bethlehem we followed several large Israeli tour buses to a resort "compound" near the north end of the shrinking body of water (diversion of the Jordan River into Israel has cutoff nearly all of the water supply into the Dead Sea).  We parked the car near the edge of the compound closest to the water and looked out at the sea through tall chain-link fence, a few hundred feet from the shore, bearing a large sign that read "Danger Mines".

Jericho is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with traces of habitation dating back to 9000 BC, and also the lowest inhabited site in the world.  We ascended (with the help of the lowest gondola in the world) a steep cliff to the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Temptation, constructed above the cave where it is believed that Jesus spent 40 days and nights fasting and praying, resisting temptation from Satan.  As we watched the sun set over the Jordan River Valley, looking out across the valley to Jordan I asked Fayez why there didn't seem to be any inhabitation in the valley except for Jericho.  "The valley is full of land mines, left over from the Arab-Israeli wars to keep anyone from exiting or entering the West Bank at the Jordan border."  We gazed up further the valley to the north along the West Bank-Jordan border, where, Fayez informed us, the Israeli military has established a large military test range, another area that we are advised to avoid.  We descended the cliffs of the Mount of Temptation, drove along the luscious fruit farms and grabbed a bite to eat in Jericho before heading back to Ramallah where we would say goodbye to Fayez and spend our last evening with our friends at the Al-Hajal Hotel.  We were lucky to be heading north, as we found that a checkpoint near Bethlehem had cut off southbound traffic, backing up Palestinian motorists for several miles for an unknown amount of time

The next day, a jaunt back across the border into Jerusalem, two meetings to discuss funding for our work, a sunset on the Mediterranean coast in Tel Aviv, a risky wager for a cheap taxi ride to Ben Gurion Airport, and 3 hours of special treatment in Israeli airport security after I informed the security employees of our adventures in the West Bank.