If there was no border or traffic to deal with, you could bicycle from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 15 minutes. Bethlehem is not a pretty town but it has a special energy. Most homes and businesses stand behind security walls and fences. The Arab market is colorful. And the skyline is a commotion of satellite dishes, minarets, and church spires.
Bethlehem is a ramshackle Arab city — sacred to both Christians and Muslims. At the main intersection, cars circle a memorial to locals (terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective) who are locked up in Israel doing life in prison.
Of course, Bethlehem is important to Christians because it is the birthplace of Jesus. Half of the Christians in the West Bank live in Bethlehem. In Palestine a century ago, about 20 percent of the people were Christian — now it’s not quite 2 percent of the population. There’s a Palestinian Christian diaspora, and hundreds of thousands now live in South America. Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire until the end of WWI in 1918. During that war, most Palestinian Christians fled the draft — since the Ottomans were neither Arab nor Christian, these Arab Christians saw no reason to fight in their army.
Bethlehem’s skyline is decorated by steeples and minarets.
Because Palestinian Christians have been leaving in large numbers for years, the prospect of holy sites like Jerusalem and Bethlehem being without local Christians is looming as a real possibility. The Christians who remain in Palestine are mostly Greek Orthodox. Ecumenism is now necessary and embraced within the shrinking Christian community. With the rise of Islamists across the region making parishioners nervous, the church needs people to stay. Christian leaders meet monthly with Muslim imams to discuss growing extremism in the Muslim community.
Pilgrims wait to touch, kiss, and pray upon the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born. In the year 326, Roman Emperor Constantine sent his mother, St. Helena, to establish three churches in the Holy Land: Church of the Nativity, Holy Sepulcher, and one on the Mount of Olives. Today, Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity is oldest because the others were destroyed, then rebuilt.
Not all Arabs are Muslims, a fact that surprises some. When meeting an Arab Christian, many tourists ask when their family was converted. The answer is usually, “About 2,000 years ago, back when Jesus’ disciples were doing missionary work around here.”
In Palestine, attempts are made to keep minorities (meaning non-males and non-Muslims) in places of importance. The Minister of Tourism — both a Christian and a woman — is a two-fer. (Composing only about 2 percent of the population, Christians actually contribute substantially to Palestinian society.) Both the Israeli and Palestinian ministries of tourism are supportive of my work (producing a TV show about the West Bank), because tourism is potentially a big economic boost on both sides of the border.
Bethlehem could be considered the fourth most holy site in Islam, as Muslims consider Jesus a major prophet and have a special reverence for Mary, who has a big role in the Koran. Because of the tension between Israel and Palestine, most Arab Muslims are not allowed to visit Bethlehem. But when things settle down, it’ll become a big pilgrimage destination for Muslims, and that will be helpful for the struggling economy.
This is the barrier, from the Israel side, that divides Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Every day, Arabs with special clearance pass through here for better-paying jobs in Israel.
Leaving Israel I took a cab to the Security Barrier, then walked through the lonely no man’s land, which reminded me of the US-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana. Once across, I hopped into one of the many Palestinian cabs waiting on the Arab side of the wall for the quick ride into downtown Bethlehem. Jerusalem and Bethlehem are just minutes apart… except for the nasty border.
I checked into my Dar Annadwa guesthouse (run by the Lutheran Church and a great place to call home in Bethlehem) and within minutes met two of the three guides I’d hired for my week in Palestine (Hassam Jubran and Kamal Mukarker). Organizing my time in advance was tough because I couldn’t really know just how complicated getting around would be.
Hassam and Kamal took me to a tourist-friendly restaurant called “The Tent.” It posted a “families only” sign so they could turn away rowdy young men. I guess we looked harmless enough as they let us right in.
We sat down and an impressive array of Palestinian plates appeared. We enjoyed a great meal, and planned our itinerary. The Palestinian beer, Taybeh, was excellent. And I think I laughed more in my first two hours in the West Bank than I did in the entire past week.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
Israel feels as affluent as the USA. There is the ever-present security dimension of the country, which is hard to escape but after a while becomes routine. Flying in and crossing borders comes with lots of questions and amazing security (although I could leave my shoes on and take my water bottle through airport security). I felt very safe. There is no language barrier. And the infrastructure for travel and tourism is about like what you’d find in Europe. Distances are short, taxis are plentiful, Wi-Fi is everywhere. It felt about as expensive as one of the cheaper European countries. The weather was great this time of year (what you’d expect in California in the spring) and there were almost no tourist crowds — except at popular pilgrimage sights, which could be mobbed.
Now I’ll cross Israel’s “Security Fence” and enter a land where that fence is called “The Wall” — Palestine. I had great guides in Israel who gave me that country’s perspective. I’ll have three different guides for about a week of travel in Palestine to give me its peoples’ viewpoints. It promises to be quite a powerful experience. Please share my invitation to any friends curious about this part of the world — ask them to like me here on Facebook and travel along. Shalom.
Patriotic parades with plenty of Israeli flags circled Jerusalem’s old town as Israel celebrated 65 years of independence.
The second Jewish Diaspora began in A.D. 70. That’s when the Roman Empire defeated the Jewish rebels at Masada, then destroyed the main Jewish temple and exported the defeated Jews as slaves. Jewish civilization was scattered for centuries until finally, in 1948, they had an official homeland to return to. During my visit, Israel celebrated 65 years of independence.
It is national policy to welcome all Jews into Israel. Its “law of return” welcomes immigrants with grants and loans, subsidized housing, and classes to facilitate their assimilation. No matter how poor, foreign, and rough the returning Jew may be, the program expects to create well-educated, Hebrew-speaking Israelis out of his family within two generations. Israel claims to have successfully absorbed at least a million penniless refugees this way.
I was told that when President Obama visited last month, every Israeli girl fell in love. (“How nice, how charming he was.”) Many considered him naïve in his first term and now more mature. My guide said, “His advisors had him very well prepared. He pushed all the right buttons.” His charisma charmed the Israeli media.
The tradition each Independence Day in Israel is for friends and families to have big barbecue feasts.We made new friends who invited us home for a family Independence Day party. It’s easy to find yourself welcomed into an Israeli home on this festive day.Our friend’s daughter was newly married and shared photos of her amazing, over-the-top wedding. With many Israeli families newly immigrated from a wide array of countries, a wedding — designed to please all involved — invariably includes a mix of old country traditions.
I am embarking on the challenge of making two TV shows: one on Israel and one on Palestine. My challenge is to do it in a way that partisans in the vitriolic debate realize that there’s nothing wrong with understanding better the perspective of the side they oppose. In fact, I believe that if peace is ever to be found, it will come when empathy goes both ways.
I’m impressed by the harshness of many comments here as I’ve simply shared, so far, what I learned from Israelis in the country they consider their homeland. I’ll be in Palestine next week and sharing that perspective. I know what it’s like to be committed to a political viewpoint to the degree that I shut down any attempt to help me better understand what I oppose. Guns, drug policy, economic justice issues, abortion: These are all issues on which good people can be diametrically opposed. And so, certainly, is the issue of Jews and Palestinians.
As long as I’ve been politically active (since the American invasion of Grenada), I’ve been impressed by how land issues are so fundamental to peace with justice. And I’ve believed that peace without justice is not peace at all. It seems to me, land is what the struggles in the Holy Land are all about.
Israeli settlements generally take the high ground in Palestinian territory.
After the tumult of the past 65 years, a political border divides Israel and Palestine. It is drawn in a way that favors Israel but gives Palestinians enough land to build an independent state. Israel has steadily encroached upon Palestinian territory by building hilltop settlements in the West Bank. It has built enough settlements there to make the option of creating two states (a Jewish Israel with a viable and potentially satisfied Palestine) nearly impossible. When the two-state option is no longer possible, the only option will be the one-state option, and with that Israel has a choice: one pluralistic state or one Jewish state. If Israel insists on one Jewish state (rather than a secular Jewish/Muslim state or two separate states, allowing for the creation of a truly independent Palestine), I believe Israel will have forced itself into an ugly and undesirable corner. Israel will ultimately have no option but to become what Jewish Israelis don’t want to be in order to simply be. Here’s what I learned about the settlements from the Israeli perspective.
Ancient Jewish rebels hid what came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls in about A.D. 70 while en route to their dramatic last stand against the Romans, which ended in the Jews’ mass suicide and the beginning of the second Diaspora. The Jewish people scattered through the world and the Diaspora lasted nearly 2,000 years — until 1947 when (in the wake of the horrific Holocaust) the United Nations adopted a plan for the creation of a Jewish state. Those sacred scrolls, which were discovered that same year, 1947, had remained hidden for the entire Diaspora. Notably, most of the scrolls were found in the West Bank, and so legally the Palestinians have a claim to them — which just further underscores the complexity of this region.
There are Jews who don’t concern themselves about Israel at all. There are Jews who think the state of Israel is a terrible, even un-Jewish idea. And there are Jews who believe that their people should live together in a single homeland. These Jews are Zionists. Zionists built Israel.
Imagine a people, maintaining their culture and traditions for 2,000 years without a homeland. Imagine them remembering the holy temple destroyed by the Roman Empire and that epic last stand ending in mass suicide on the fortified hilltop of Masada. Imagine a generation of people whose parents were killed in the Holocaust and who, with a love of their heritage, found themselves in the position to retake what they believed to be their homeland. A phrase among these Zionists is “Masada shall never fall again.” That shows a determination to never come to such a point of despair as that faced by the Jews who died there in A.D. 70.
From 1947 until 1967, when Israel routed its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War, Israel lived with the military installations of its enemies on the high ground all around. They were able and willing to rain rockets down on the Israelis at will. In the spirit of “Masada shall never fall again,” Israel is hell-bent on retaking the high ground and establishing itself there in an irreversible way.
The settlements Israel has built over the past years are huge, well-funded, government-subsidized, fortified hilltop cities that creep into the Palestinian Territories — and certainly establish the high ground. Israel justifies many of its land grabs as creating a needed buffer zone (an action they can defend by simply referring to their recent history). They say that according to international law, if land is used to attack a nation, that nation has the legal right to both occupy and settle that land for its own defense. And they’re doing that now with a vengeance.
Israeli settlements are like planned and gated Jewish communities. The growth of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank has embittered Palestinians as much as terrorism embittered Israelis. With Israeli government subsidies, it’s easier for many Israeli families to live beyond the country’s border than within it.
There are hundreds of thousands of settlers. My guide, Benjamin, lived for two years in a settlement. While not convenient for him, he moved to it after a settler was killed there by a Palestinian, in order to show solidarity with that community. Other settlers are attracted by fine new housing and government subsidies, which make raising their families much easier. Some like the serenity — being away from the big-city rat race. And most appreciate the comfort of knowing their children will be raised with other friends and families who have similar Jewish values. Israel claims that the settlements are not in the valleys but on the hilltops — which they say are unused by the Palestinians anyway. In regard to its policy on settlements, it seems Israel doesn’t ask permission or wait for anyone’s approval. They’ve got a mission and they make it happen.
There are legal settlements organized and built by the Israeli government. And there are illegal settlements built against the government’s public wishes — but that ultimately become accepted and rarely stopped by the government. Hilltop settlements are built within certain boundaries in an attempt to minimize trouble with Palestinians. But they invariably grow in size, which is justified by a belief that it’s only natural for these communities to grow organically.
A more extreme position held by many conservative Jews as well as conservative Christians is that the presence of Palestinians in the West Bank impedes God’s will. Therefore, the settlements are God’s will and opposing them is the work of the devil.
By the way, as a travel writer, there is the interesting issue of what to call the land of the Palestinians. Mainstream guidebooks, for instance, barely acknowledge the distinction between Israel and the occupied territories. More independent, non-corporate guidebooks will actually refer to the area as Palestine. I find an interesting spectrum of political correctness when it comes to the name: On the far right the disputed land is Judea and Samaria (land promised to the Jews in the sacred texts). Less conservative but still politically correct from an Israeli perspective is “Occupied Territories.” I find “West Bank” and “Palestinian Territories” reasonably middle ground for both sides, and the most progressive name would be to call the area Palestine — which implies the ultimate legitimacy of an independent Palestinian state. Based on the United Nations decision last November to recognize Palestine as a “non-member observer state,” Google has decided to go with the term Palestine, and I will too.
Israel is determined to fight what it considers terror in the streets. I was told, “Sometimes we know who the next suicide bomber is before even he does.” From 2000 to 2005, the Second Intifada brought a rash of bloody terrorist attacks in Israel. In response, Israel began building a nearly 500-mile-long wall — which it calls the “Security Barrier,” “Anti-Terrorism Barrier,” or “Security Fence” — in the West Bank. They justify this by saying that in the decade before it was built, over a thousand Israelis were killed by terrorists. Since its construction, there have been almost no deaths due to terrorist attacks. While it’s called a wall, over 90 percent of it is a fence. The actual walled part is generally limited to highly populated areas like Palestinian towns and cities. I noticed that the Israeli side of the wall was nicely designed with landscaping and fine rockery work, but the side facing Palestinian communities was rough concrete — now decorated with gritty political art. While insulting and humiliating to Palestinians, Israelis believe the wall, along with the many police checkpoints associated with it, has thwarted thousands of terrorist acts.
Crossing from the Israeli to Palestinian side, you’ll find the wall decorated with political art.
