Contrary to expectations, Israeli check posts at the entrance to the West Bank were not heavily manned. Israeli military presence was hardly visible.
‘Our driver is an Arab Muslim while I am a Jew. We live in harmony. There is no problem between us”, said Gabi (short for Gabriel), our guide, as we drove in a bus full of tourists, almost all from the American continent and Europe. We were cruising down a highway that was as smooth as a runway past white coloured limestone hills of the visually mesmerising Judean desert after setting off from the 5,000-year-old historic city of Jerusalem. Gabi was voluntarily commenting on Jewish-Muslim relations, his only such remark during our tour of some historical and geographical landmarks across Israel and the West Bank.
We were en route to the historic fort of Masada built over 2,000 years ago by Jewish King Herod on a plateau shaped hill from where one gets a clear and imposing view of both the Dead Sea and of the hills of Jordan located just beyond what is essentially a gigantic saline lake that is horizontally divided between Israel and Jordan. The Dead Sea, where non-swimmers can safely float on water without a life vest, is located over 400 meters below sea level. It is the lowest place on the earth’s land surface.
Just the previous day we had visited Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ located in West Bank, where we were given a guided tour of both the Catholic Shepherds Field (there are three such Shepherds Field in Bethlehem) and the Church of Nativity that is built over the cave where Jesus was born. Our tour guide, a Palestinian Christian and resident of Bethlehem, interestingly informed us how three different Christian sects in Bethlehem observe three different Christmas’ in the birth place of Jesus Christ—the Catholics on 25 December, the Orthodox Christians on 7 January and Armenian Christians on 18 January.
As he narrated several other interesting insights, our guide asked us to look in the direction of a residential area comprising apartment buildings built on a hill across from the Catholic Shepherds Field which is also located on a hilly terrain. “Can you tell which of these apartments belong to the Israelis and which belong to the Palestinians?”, he asked. As we struggled to guess, he told us that apartment buildings with overhead water storage tanks belong to Palestinians since they have an inconsistent water supply and, those buildings without storage tanks belong to Israelis since the latter have a separate and assured water supply system. And then interestingly he went on to tell us how Palestinian labourers in the West Bank prefer to work for the Israelis which includes building their controversial settlements since they get paid up to as much as 500 shekels a day (Rs 21 per shekel) compared to 100 shekels per diem working on Palestinian property. “They prefer to work for the Israelis by day and then complain against them at night”, he said with a wry expression.
As we walked through a residential area of Bethlehem, Palestinian residents looked at us with curiosity while a few pre-teenagers aged between eight and 10 rudely asked a tourist leaning against a parked car on a hilly street near the Chapel of the Milk Grotto to “go away from our country”. One of them began kicking at a tourist. The guide quickly intervened to admonish them in Arabic. “They don’t like outsiders”, he said. Insignificant as the incident was, it served as an evocative demonstration of how the younger generation is being indoctrinated by their elders in the community.
Whether it involved visiting Bethlehem, or Jericho (which is the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city), or the Dead Sea, or “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” on the Jordan River where Jesus is believed to have been baptised or Mount Temptation, one has to visit the West Bank all of which was captured from Jordan in the Six-Day War of 1967.
Contrary to one’s expectations, Israeli check posts at the entrance to the West Bank were not heavily manned. Not that Israeli soldiers were not alert and keeping a hawkish watch. Our passports were checked by armed soldiers only once on re-entering Israel from the West Bank. But contrary to perceptions, Israeli military presence was hardly visible. The only Israeli military personnel in uniform was one armed male and female soldier each sitting on a bench overlooking the “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” located on the Jordan River. If there were more soldiers in the vicinity, they weren’t visible. Some Christian tourists were seen taking a holy dip in the river while two soldiers sat chatting casually. Across the narrow river, a handful of Jordanian soldiers stood watching casually while some tourists visiting their country took a holy dip on the Jordanian side of this point of historic interest to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike for entirely different reasons steeped in history and spanning many hundreds of years apart.
We experienced guides of different faiths and nationalities—a Palestinian Christian in Bethlehem, an Israeli Jew who accompanied us to Masada and the Dead Sea and a Palestinian Muslim of, surprisingly, Indian descent to the Jordan River, Jericho and Mount Temptation. The beauty was the system worked so harmoniously. Mohammed, the Palestinian Muslim who proudly told us of his Indian antecedents and spoke with candour, gave us a tour of the old city of Jericho and then rode the ropeway to the biblical-era Mount Temptation that is accessed by a 1.33 km long ropeway which originates 233 meters below sea level. The Mount comprises a monastery built in brown rocky caves but is out of bounds for tourists. We could even see a tiny part of the Jordanian capital of Amman located atop a ridge located about 150 km by road.
Everywhere we went, streets, markets, buses, trams and trains were punctuated with girls and boys, some still in their late teens and fresh out of school, armed with machine guns and automatic rifles. Barring only a few exemptions, military service is compulsory for all school graduates—two years for girls and three years for boys. The level of alertness and vigil was high. Security personnel manned every tram stop in Jerusalem, same for Old Jerusalem, which is barely a square mile in size. The Walled City comprising its three religiously significant locations—the Western Wall, the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock—comprises cameras on every street and teams of armed security personnel at regular intervals across the Old City’s four historical quarters. Tel Aviv, the modern city located on the Mediterranean Sea, was bustling with life in its many eateries and its pristine beaches. Everywhere we went in Israel, movement and systems were smooth, unobstructed and seamless. Israel looked both relaxed and so much in control. The Hamas from Gaza has changed that with its despicably brutal and inhuman terror for which even the strongest words of condemnation can never be strong enough.
Dinesh Kumar is a geopolitical analyst.