Hear in the Holy Land | Wasteland?!

Getting in to the West Bank

My time in Tiberias was up, and so I turned my feet toward Nablus. Getting there, however, proved to be a rather sordid affair.

A little help?

I asked the guesthouse staff; I asked the servers at the restaurant who served me breakfast; none of them had a clue how I ought to get into the West Bank, and frankly they seemed rather surprised that I should even want to go there. “The West Bank?” retorted one of my servers, incredulously. “You mean Waste Land.” Hrmm… Then I asked around at the central bus station, and I came up empty once more.

Ah well, I thought. I’ll just bus to a town located closer to the border—they ought to be more helpful. A little later I hopped off the bus in Afula, the central city of the Jezreel Valley, which, according to Google Maps, is only a 12-minute drive from the nearest checkpoint into the West Bank. I asked some locals at the bus depot for directions. More confused responses—responses that, beyond being of no help whatsoever, indicated that I’m somewhat off my rocker for even wanting to go there in the first place.

Frustrated, I got to a wifi connection and asked Google Maps how to get to an even closer little settlement—one that practically skirts the border. Google spat out a bus number at me, which I found on a sign at the depot; a bus showed up shortly after, and the driver told me that his route has a stop only a few minutes’ walk from the checkpoint. Oh good, finally. But by this stage I was growing a bit nervous. Was the West Bank really as undesirable as these folks made it out to be? What was waiting for me beyond the checkpoint?

Slipping through…

A short while later the bus arrived at my destination and, after strapping my 2 packs on front and back, I began the short hike in the hot sun to the checkpoint. I made it to the main entry and started walking toward the border when I saw an Israeli soldier who was advancing toward me, rifle in hand; he was holding up his other hand toward me, commanding me to halt, so I did. When he reached me, he grabbed a big iron gate whose hinges were inches in front of me and swung it shut. “The checkpoint is closed,” he said. “You must find another one.”

“Really?” I asked, somewhat desperately. “There’s no way I can get in here?” The soldier shook his head.

“Where’s the next closest checkpoint?”

Shrug. “I don’t know,” he said, apathetically. “Ask them.” He nodded toward a car twenty feet behind me; a man was standing next to the car, leaning into the passenger window, speaking with another man in the driver’s seat.

I turned, groaned, and made my way to the car; now I was desperate: this checkpoint was pretty empty, and I had no idea when the next bus or taxi was going to show up; there was relatively little shade, and I did not relish the prospect of huffing my packs all the way back to Afula in 35º weather. The vultures were already circling in my mind.

I asked the two men at the car, and one of them pointed at a little branch of road that broke off just a bit behind us—and then the other gestured that I should hurry, and held up his hand with all five fingers spread out. “Five minutes. Closed.” I thanked them, turned, and hoofed it down this other road.

I arrived at the cul-de-sac at the end of the road just as a bus of Palestinians pulled up. They all disembarked and funnelled into the narrow enclosed walkway in front of me, and so I joined up just behind them. We walked forward for about 10 seconds, and voila! I was in Palestine. There was a somewhat heavy presence of armed Israeli soldiers lingering about—including the guy who denied me entry at the other entrance—but they just watched as we walked by them toward the road on the other side. I lugged my gear into a taxi trunk, hopped in the back, and hit the road to Nablus.

What Just Happened?

At the time, this all felt a little sideways to me—as though I was somehow eluding the border guards in plain sight. Maybe it was like that story about Peter getting out of prison with the help of an angel—when he just walked through the prison gates right in front of the guards, and they didn’t even seem to notice him (see Acts 12). Maybe these Palestinians were my angels of the Lord, and by following them through the checkpoint I miraculously avoided the attention of the I.D.F. I mean, I do have a bunch of people praying for me on this trip—just like folks were praying for Peter’s release. Plausible, right?

Well, no, that’s not really what happened. But how I wish it were the case. The reality is (I found out much later) that Israel really doesn’t care who gets in to the West Bank; they care about who gets out. That’s the more stringent part—the part where, I suppose, some sneaky-Pete skills might come more in handy (though I’m going to just stick with the ‘show-them-my-Canadian-passport’ tactic I think).

Contemplating Comfort

That said, I still really needed to muster up my courage here. Leading up to this trip, I had always been a bit nervous about this leg of my schedule, and the lack of travel help from the locals in Galilee really amped up my anxiety. It actually felt like I was maybe doing something stupid, and yet I felt incredibly compelled to just keep moving forward. I was praying the whole way, and, as if in response, there came a calm and composed urge to simply continue my intended path. And so I did—in faith, I suppose.

In the end there really aren’t any big dramatic bells and whistles to this little section of the journey: I just took a couple buses and then walked into the checkpoint the way most vehicle-less people do. No biggie—I just got a little jacked up about it is all. But at the same time, this event holds some importance to me—a quiet but significant profundity I don’t want to let slip by without giving it voice.

Basically, it felt like I was a little kid in bed at night, flipping out over the monster that was trying to get out of my closet; and then Pops came in and helped me bravely face it. Who cares that the monster was only timber creaking in the wind, or flickering shadows from the tree branches outside my window: comfort and reassurance can undo the paralysis of fear regardless of the foe’s actual reality. And it seems God cares about casting out even the most illogical of fears from His children’s minds, giving us the courage needed for even the smallest of tasks.

Were my fears a little bit childish and uninformed (or, rather, ill-informed)? Yes, most definitely. But at the time, some comfort and reassurance were what I needed to get into the West Bank instead of taking the beaten path around it—and those were the things I was given.

And wow, am I glad I went in. More on that soon!