If you’ve visited this page before, you may
notice that I changed all the names and removed the passport photos.
I’ve decided from now on to substitute new names everywhere. Basically,
Israel and the PNA monitor these sites to acquire information about
who’s doing what. Neither of these two gentlemen are doing anything to
attract the ire of the authorities, but I may write later about someone
else who is. So just to protect all of my friends, I’m going to always
use fake names and avoid passport-like photos.
Ghassan
Yesterday morning I got a ride to Bethlehem with a fellow
named Ghassan–he had moved to San Fransisco when he was 13, but
returned two years ago to get his identity card renewed, and never
left. He’s got a job setting up computer networks, and studies at Bir
Zeit at the same time. And he bought a car, a French one (a model which
Israelis buy, not Palestinians). When we reached the Ramallah
checkpoint, he calmly removed a Kuffiyah–the name for the black and
white headscarves that Arafat always wears–tied around his rear view
mirror, and another rolled up on his dashboard (he replaced them after
passing the Bethlehem checkpoint). When I asked him about it, he said
"That’s the way things are here."
Ghassan also had a bit of a story which might justify this
rather strange ritual. He’s got yellow plates and on October 30, 1996,
he and a friend, Muhammad (actually, his name isn’t Muhammad. I’m
really not sure what his name is, but let’s just pretend, shall we?)
were driving through a Palestinian village near Ramallah after sunset.
I should explain the license plates. As far as I know, there
are four: yellow, green, blue, and white. Yellow is Israeli, blue is
West Bank, green is PNA issued West Bank, and white includes official
PNA vehicles and–I think–UN vehicles. Actually, that’s wrong. Let’s
try it again. The white ones with green letters are issued by the PNA
for residents of self-rule areas. The green ones with the white
letters–I think with Hebrew letters–are Israeli issued, self-rule
territory residency plates for taxis. The green ones with black letters
are also Israeli issue, self-rule territory residency plates for
non-taxis. Blue plates are the same, but for non-self-rule territory.
The white ones with the red letters are Palestinian Authority, but just
military, I think. The white ones with black letters are UN, but if a
car has white plates with pink letters, it means it was probably
stolen. Forget it. I was just informed that the letters on the plates
say more than the color. Just click here
for a better explanation.
To continue…
Suddenly, Ghassan heard a loud crash, and as he ducked behind the
wheel, he noticed that Muhammad was slumped over, bleeding profusely
from several large gashes on his head. An instant later, another
fist-sized rock crashed through the windshield. If Ghassan hadn’t
already ducked his head, he would have been knocked unconscious, and
considering the steep hills in the West Bank, a fatal crash would have
followed.
Perhaps the only thing that saved Muhammad’s life was the
rapid response of a few Israeli soldiers. After escaping the
Palestinian village, the closest inhabitated area was an Israeli
settlement. Ghassan just drove up to the gate and screamed for help,
and an Israeli soldier immediately summoned an ambulance. Two weeks and
almost thirty stitches later, Muhammad was released from the hospital.
George
For the rest of the trip in Bethlehem, we were joined by a
21-year-old Birzeit student named George. Of course he didn’t have
Jordanian citizenship (or any other citizenship for that matter), so he
needed permission from Israel to leave the West Bank (the quickest
route to Bethlehem or Hebron is through Jerusalem). Needless to say,
his permission had expired on the 12th. We only learned of George’s
dilemma after we had left the West Bank and entered Israel proper. I
wasn’t sure what to think. I mean, the crossing to Ramallah was a joke:
I hadn’t seen a serious inspection of a car since arriving. But George
insisted that the Bethlehem crossing was close to Erez in Gaza when it
came to security.
So what would happen? Should I try to interfere if they
harassed him? George himself had told us two weeks earlier that a
foreigner causing a row would only make it worse on the Palestinians
with her/him. George tried to be pretty calm about the whole thing. He
said that the worse that could happen was that he would be turned back
at the border; that he’d have to go home via a road dramatically called
Wadi Nar (literally, Valley of Fire, but some insist
that, in this case, it means Valley of Hell). He admitted, however,
that he could be detained for several hours, and God only knows, even
jailed. George had all sorts of plans. He was going to argue that his
permission was still valid, and then look stunned when he discovered it
was the 13th, and not the 12th. He was going to say that he was our
tour guide (which was true), that he was a student (which often
resonated with the young Israeli soldiers)…
We took a cab to the checkpoint, but it had green plates and
couldn’t carry us any farther. Either we walked across, or we waited
for a Ford van with yellow plates. We left the decision to George. He
wasn’t necessarily happy with that, but while arguing about whose
decision it was, a Ford van pulled up, so we took it.
We needn’t have worried, after all. An Israeli soldier noticed
me in the front seat (goatee, glasses, pale skin–clearly a stupid
American tourist), but still opened the back. What he saw first was a
blond British woman (deliberately placed) with four other foreigners,
and then George crammed into the back corner. George’s pale skin,
shortly cropped hair (quite the fashion in the States) and vaguely
Mediterranean features just blended in with our
Greco-Danish-German-Swiss-American-British group. After studying us for
a minute, the soldier shut the door and waved us on.
The only mistake we may have made was that our reaction
was–at least for Americans–phony. A typical American like myself
would have said, "Can I help you?" or something slightly condescending,
almost offended to be interfered with by some soldier. No, we were
totally silent, like we were hiding something.