Palestine Trip 8: Bumps in the night

Up here. [DEAD LINK – REPRODUCED BELOW] This is the last one. Thanks for reading ’em.


PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 7

Thursday April 15, 2004

THE EMPTY HOUSE
Trouble in the night. Morning, and we drive through houses on the outskirts of Aida refugee camp, Samer leaning out the window to ask directions of kids passing by. Then we park. A Red Cross guy parks behind us. We walk down a driveway and see the house.

Samer was woken in the night by the sound of the detonation, but it still stands. Two storeys. Looks like a nice house.

There are people around, fifty or so. Old men sit smoking and drinking tea on the patio, women cluster talking in the shade of another building nearby, young men stand around frowning. Kids trawl through it all, grinning and playing.

We walk through the house. It still stands but there is nothing inside but rubble. The walls are riddled with cracks and the floor is covered with heavy chunks of wall and furniture. The destruction is complete.

The owner of the house shakes our hands warmly, smiling. Samer translates. His son, it seems, is in prison, suspected or convicted of being an associate of a suicide bomber. That connection was apparently enough for the visit in the night. At 3am the IDF soldiers knocked on the door, gave the family fifteen minutes to get out. Then they went in and set the explosives. Soon after 4am they set them off and the house was ruined. Then the IDF left.

The family had closed their eyes to sleep with a home. By the time dawn came there was nothing left.

The owner smiles at us. ‘You are welcome!’ he says through Samer. ‘I only hate the governments, not the people. The people are welcome. You are welcome.’

He keeps talking as the old men watch and we are given sweet tea to drink. He talks about the destruction of the Twin Towers, how no Jews went to work that day. He uses that obnoxious conspiracy theory to demonstrate what the Palestinians are up against – a ruthless system, willing to sacrifice
innocent lives for political convenience. I can’t challenge him, his home has just been destroyed. And he doesn’t hate Jews. ‘Only the governments.’

THE PASSAGE OUT
The wall and the checkpoints are protective measures, so suicide bombers can’t get into Israel from Palestine. That’s why there’s the searches, and the harrassment, and the detainment, and the intimidation.

Except nearby both there’s a crossing point where the only barrier is a mound of dirt. Dozens of taxis are there, dropping people off, picking people up, waiting for fares. There is constant foot traffic over the
mound, which is only about five feet high and gently sloped. Men and women and children, bearing suitcases and shopping bags.

This isn’t exactly a secret. There’s an IDF watchtower not twenty feet away.

Samer follows us over into Israel to help us load up the van waiting on the other side. I hug him farewell. I really like him, he’s a great guy. I gave him a flag I had in my pack, the Silver Fern, symbol of Kiwi identity.
I like to think there’s a bit of Kiwi culture sitting around Samer’s home or the ATG offices or somewhere. I watch him walk back over the mound to Palestine and disappear out of sight and I feel sad that our time there is over.

But there is still Israel to negotiate. We drop off Sabine and Jean-Guy and Sarah in Jerusalem, and then its just Cal and me on the way to the airport. We have two envelopes stuffed with Palestinian information to send home, and I’ve deleted all the photos on my digital camera. On with the show.

As we approach the airport, the driver – one of the Issa’s army of contacts, who drove us around on Saturday morning with Anjela – tells us that we will be stopped as we approach the airport, and to say we don’t know him, that our hotel in Jerusalem called a driver for us. We get there, five lanes of traffic, each car being checked. When our turn comes the driver waves him over – an Arab face, I guess, being all the justification needed for special treatment. A teenage soldier clambers into the van, his gun swinging, and
he checks our passports and asks us questions: where did we stay? What have we seen in Israel? Where did we go? Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, we say, a trip to Bethlehem for the holy sites. We stayed, of course, in a hotel in Jerusalem. Lies, again. He seems happy enough, and eventually waves us on.

We farewell the driver and find a post office, send off our packages. The woman in the post office takes Cal’s passport details as a matter of routine. No idea why and we didn’t ask.

Then we join the boarding queue. We had been warned to come early – this process can take a long time. A pair of young women are working our queue, and when they come to us they take our passports with a smile. The red stickers from our arrival cause their brows to furrow and one of them scoots off to ask a superior some questions. Then she returns. Cal and I do our best to stay relaxed, but we’ve heard some troubling stories of the departure security.

We get the questions again, in more detail this time – where did we go? Did we visit any private houses? Do we know any people in Israel? For some reason I mention an old friend, who last I heard was in Israel, but that was some years back. Her attention instantly sparks – what was his name? What was his profession? She double checks that she got the name right. Maybe it is just small country syndrome, she’s wondering if she might know the person too. Maybe its some weird test of my truthfulness. She doesn’t
explain.

And then we get waved through to the baggage checking. Cal’s bag goes through the detector fine, mine gets stopped and I have to open it for the security man. He takes out the guidebook, flips through it attentively. Maybe things can be hidden inside thick books? He nods and gives the book back and we press on.

Now we’re up to check-in and passport control and after another twenty minutes of queueing we make it to the departure lounge. We spend the last of our shekels at a concession stand on chocolate and then board. We’re exhausted by it all. The plane is delayed in the air, oncoming winds or something, and arrives in Zurich almost an hour late, shrinking the time we need to make our connection to about fifty minutes. We sprint through the late-night halls of Zurich airport, just make it in time. And then we’re
aboard an Easyjet flight. Familiar territory. Home ground.

Back to a real-seeming world.

FINAL WORDS
It was an amazing experience. I learned far more than I could have hoped and met some wonderful people. Thanks ATG, thanks Olive Tours, thanks Samer and Jo and Mark and Sarah and Johnny and Manar and Mahmoud, and our fellow tourists Jean-Guy and Sabine.

I understand things better now.

Hopefully this account has helped other people understand things better too.

The group: (back) Jean-Guy, Cal, Sabine, Sarah; (front) me, Samer.

Thus endeth the trip. Salaam, Shalom, Peace.