On Belonging: Palestine, a dream comes true! — Part I

Reverse Monkey
Nov 7 · 12 min read
Photo by Anton Mislawsky on Unsplash

I am currently sitting on a wooden bench under an olive tree contemplating another breathtaking sunset, a sunset that never gets old in this amazing and dear land called Palestine. To make this moment even more imposing, this beautiful scenery is conversely occupied by a newly established Israeli settlement. A settlement that could have even gotten wider and wilder and invaded my current spot here on this amazing small organic farm I have been volunteering at for the last 3 weeks, had the Palestinians not been able to get back part of the land that Israel tried to seize from them. Another monstrosity that intensifies the contrast in this scenery is this fucking wall that splits the West Bank (or rather what remained of it) and Israel. A fucking damn wall that gives me a feeling of deep disgust whenever I pass by it, which I do twice a day; or I look at it, which happens countless times a day. But the sunset still prevails and dominates the scene, despite all of these unsightly elements …

This my dear friends is how most of my days in Palestine unfolded; days that will leave their strong imprint in my heart and soul for countless days to come. If you are wondering why those heavy words (that gave me goosebumps now that I am writing them), I am inviting you to continue reading this post, which will most likely be not only my longest post so far but also the one with the deepest emotions I will be sharing with you!

Back to the very beginning

My story with Palestine started years ago. Growing up in Tunisia and being part of a highly religious and conservative environment, Palestine was one of the most iconic topics for me as a teenager when it comes to what defined and still defines (to a lesser extent in the recent years since my identity have been expanding considerably lately) a big part of my identity. Without losing myself and you in too many details here, I can tell you that, I have always identified myself quite deeply with the idea of an Arabic Nation or World. In this context, Palestine with its rich history and culture being the only Arab country that is still suffering under a repressive and discriminative external occupation has always been in my heart.

Long story short, what was happening in Palestine was and still is paining me deeply and coming to visit it was something I have always dreamt of but never thought would actually happen in my life… The reason for that is that as Tunisian, Israeli authorities — which control the borders of Palestine tightly— won’t allow me to enter as a normal tourist, not even in my dreams! Fully convinced by the idea that I will never be able to visit this country that I felt so attached to despite never stepping on its lands, I went with my life and almost forgot about its existence and what it represents to me…

But then a new important element came into play: After spending almost 7 years in Germany, I finally got my second citizenship: I became German. Frankly, when I immigrated to Europe 9 years ago, I was deeply against getting a second passport because I felt that doing such a thing will strip me of (or put a question on) a major layer of my identity: being an Arab. Clearly my thinking (as well as my identity) changed during this last decade, but that’s another topic, for another post ;) More importantly, from a practical perspective, having a German pass opened up many doors in front of me, one of them is better mobility when it comes to traveling, including Israel/Palestine.

Crossing the Borders From Jordan

Like I mentioned in the last section, the idea of visiting Palestine despite being an old dream of mine got buried deep down in my soul since I never thought I will be able to fulfill it in this life. Even after getting my German passport, it still didn’t cross my mind at all. Till one day as I was telling one of my best friends, who is Palestinian, that I was considering shortening my stay in Lebanon to just 4 weeks (instead of 8) and go visit another country in the Middle East before heading to India in November. Hearing this from me, he directly insisted that I should give the idea of visiting Palestine a serious thought. And then my dormant dreamt ignited again and I decided on the spot to give it a try despite the challenges that this entails…

Within a week from taking that abrupt but decisive decision (I know I am being redundant here :p), I worked up a draft of a plan and booked my ticket to Amman (I was in Lebanon at that time and I needed to get to another country before traveling to Palestine because the borders between Lebanon and Palestine/Isreal are closed). I got to Amman on the 6th of October, spent 2 days there and on the 8th my long journey to the west bank started.

On that morning, I was supposed to take a bus at 6:30 am to the crossing bridge (the cheapest option) but since the evening of that day happened to coincide with the starting of a jew holiday: Yom Kippur (jew’s holidays are from sunset till sunset), the bridge was planned to close before 12:00 with the last group of people crossing it to be accepted at latest by 08:00 (on the Israel side). Arriving at 6:15, I missed the bus. Shit! The day is starting super well, I complained to myself… But still, I didn’t lose hope. I went outside the office and hoped in the first taxi to the bridge.

After an hour or so, we arrived at the Jordanian Gate. The bus that I missed was already there. I felt a bit pissed off because I missed it (the taxi cost was more than twice the bus and Jordan is so fucking expensive)… I entered, went through some security checks, paid some tax and observed how indifferently puzzled the Jordanian authorities there looked at me when I presented them with my German passport but talked to them in Arabic (an adjusted version of my Tunisian dialect). I could clearly read in their eyes and annoying tones a strong disapproval of what I was about to do: Going to the west bank. Clearly that’s not something they see every day. I felt annoyed with their judgemental sub-communication which added to my general state of emotional mess: excitement because the decisive moment is drawing closer, a bit of frustration because of the bus, and now annoyance as a response to this tension I was feeling…

Anyway, after some minutes, they called me to go get on the bus that will transport me to the Israeli side (and some other travelers: a couple of Palestinians and 3 Asian tourists traveling on their own). We paid some fees, got back our passports and the bus started heading towards the other gate with some talks in the background stating that it is already getting too late to get moving if we don’t want to risk being sent back by the Israelis. It was almost 8:00.

The ride wasn’t that long; but for me, it felt like ages. As we drew closer and I started seeing the Israeli flags decorating what felt like a serious military base (compared to the more chilled out Jordanian side), my excitement increased. At the gate, the famous bus that I missed earlier that morning was already there with its driver talking with the Israeli authorities, and then it started heading back. A passenger asked the driver what was happening and the latter stated that the bus seemingly got ordered to get back to the Jordanian side because it came too late. Oh, fuck! After all of this and they will send us back and it was still fucking 8:00!!! My frustration started to build up again. The driver continued to give it shot.

Once at the gate, I heard the driver talking in Arabic with the Israeli agent (I think all of them speak Arabic there). He explained that we are mainly a bunch of locals and that it won’t take too long to process our documents. Thankfully and after what felt like an hour (it was just a couple of minutes), they let us in. Phew, another unexpected hurdle cleared! At that moment, I felt so grateful that I missed the other bus — after being so pissed off about it for the past 2 hours…

The bus stopped, we got off, put our luggage on a moving trail to be scanned and transported to the luggage room on the other side of the gate. At the entrance, I got confused when I saw (and heard) Arab employees coming to help with luggage, while jew employees started processing our luggage. That was probably the first ‘WTF-moments’ I had in Palestine/Israel. Many others followed during my stay. Knowing about the tension ruling the place, I frankly didn’t expect to see Arabs working with Israelies in the same place at all… But clearly my preconceived ideas were totally detached from the actual reality as my days in Palestine repeatedly made clearer and clearer.

I entered the building and proceeded to pass control. I handed in my German passport (I previously buried down my Tunisian one within other documents in my bag since I didn’t want to risk them finding it). Reading my name, which unquestionably made it clear that I am either Arab or Muslum and most likely both — couldn’t hide that one :p), the agent asked me if I can speak Arabic. With that the final hurdle I had to pass to finally enter Palestine started…

At that moment, I decided to continue my act of detaching myself from my Arabic origins as much as possible (I was seriously concerned that if they found out that I am Tunisian they will deny me the entry!). My answer was: Just a bit — but I said it in broken Arabic in an attempt to craft a new story regarding my identity. After that, he asked me another question, this time in Arabic 🙄. Luckily, I didn’t expect the question at all (it was whether I have a Palestinian passport/document or not). This helped further proceed with my new story while still being believable. I said: sorry, what? (In English, of course ;)). At that moment, he probably thought that I can’t speak Arabic well and he switched back to English. Despite the tension, I was literally about the burst in laughter as that happened. He finally bought the story of me being of Arabic origins but having nothing to do with those origins. He nevertheless asked me about where my parents are from and why I was in Lebanon for 4 weeks (the only stamp I have on my newly issued passport was from Lebanon), which in itself is already fucking fishy 😅 — Lebanon denies entry for anyone with a stamp from Israel for instance. Thankfully, I contained myself and didn’t laugh or smirk during this unexpectedly short questioning, after which he told me to go take a seat while someone else did further checks on my identity.

After 1,5 hours of waiting during which I was a bit tense and quite annoyed especially as I saw others pass through without any deep checks and some others getting questioned multiple times, I finally got my passport back and crossed to the safe side still confused about how I ended up faking not being an Arab — something I still pride myself in — to reduce the risk of being sent back, which I frankly was expecting to happen any moment during this long and exhausting journey…

Anyway, mission accomplished, I am finally in Palestine!!!

The rest of the journey that day was way more relaxed and less tense and since this post is already exceeding in its length my wildest expectations, I will save you this torture and myself the effort and wrap this first part of the post (I’ve just decided to split into 2 parts now :p) by sharing with you how my journey back to Jordan looked like.

Crossing the Borders back to Jordan

Succeeding at crossing the borders to the West Bank on the 8th of October was on its own an accomplishment for me. The next 3–4 weeks were seriously amazing (I will share more about them in the second part of this super long post ;)). And then the time to say my goodbyes fatefully came...

During my stay and even before, I heard many stories of people getting heavily questioned when exiting Isreal about what they were doing during their stay (especially if the Israeli authorities knew some way or another that they were in the West Bank — I boldly/stupidly told them that I will be visiting some cities in the West Bank when I entered). I even heard that some got banned from entering Israel/Palestine for years (I heard about 5 and 10 years bans) because they were suspected of doing some kind of activists work and considered a threat to the national security of Isreal (I am talking about young enthusiastic Europeans, not some hot-blooded and stubborn Arabs, who anyway can’t enter in the first place). Hearing about such stories and having already decided that I would definitely love to come back in some near future, I knew that the hassle will only end once I am out and started thinking about how to minimize the risk of me getting in any kind of unneeded trouble (not that I did anything that has caused any trouble in the first place).

Taking this and other personal factors into account, I decided to leave Palestine/Israel again through Jordan, but this time I opted for the southern borders (wadi araba crossing) that connected Eilat to Aqaba. And the 4th of November was the day I chose to undertake this endeavor. I also decided not to organize anything through a tourist agency because I wanted to experience everything first hand, as I did when I entered the country 4 weeks ago.

Anyway, from Ramallah, the city where I was staying, I went to Jerusalem. That wasn’t the first time I visited Jerusalem, but it was definitely the first time I experienced how much frustration the Palestinians living in the West Bank (mostly Ramallah) and working in Jerusalem experience on a daily basis to get to their work and back home. A journey that should have cost 30 minutes if there was no fucking wall with an overcrowded checkpoint, ended up costing between 1.5 and 2 hours, and this is only one way!!! If you are wondering, why I didn’t experience this before, the answer is simply because I was avoiding rush hours and working days, but on that day I had to leave early like everyone else since my bus to Eilat was planned to leave at 10:00.

Shortly before 10:00, I got to the bus main station in Jerusalem. I was accompanied by a friend from the UK who was also heading towards Jordan. In the station and on the bus, there were a lot of 18–21 years old solders (Israelis have to join the military from 18 to 21 years old !?). Frankly, that sight was and still is too fucking strange, to a point that I can’t even find the words to describe it. Bref! We took the bus and went to Eilat. The trip was uneventful except being forced again in a brain fuck when we stopped at one of those road stations for a break and it felt like we are in a military base due to the huge number of young soldiers being there (traveling as well between cities).

After reaching Eilat, we took a cab to the border which resembled a touristic resort compared to the other gloomy and shitty border in the north, the one I crossed when entering the country. I simply walked in, gave my German passport to the agent at the entrance, who got puzzled by the place of birth which didn’t rhyme with anything German at all (Sfax) :p. After telling him that I was born in Tunisia, he just gave me my passport without making a fuss out of it. I was puzzled; but mainly relieved. After all, this is going way smoother than my best-case scenarios. I paid some taxes to enter Jordan (yes, again… In Jordan, you pay taxes for every single fucking step) and proceeded on foot this time to the other side of the border, to the Jordanien ‘brothers’…

Being quite relaxed now, I dropped off all the fake acting I was ready to do with the Israelis and started behaving naturally, as an Arab; an Arab with a German passport who was in Palestine/Israel… And the annoyance started as soon as the imbeciles there heard me talking in Arabic while presenting them with a European identity. My companion ended up spending 2 minutes with the pass control agent. I, on the other hand, had a special welcoming, got invited to another room and got questioned by an imbecile for 30 minutes. The questioning was not that difficult (how come you have a German Pass, where did you study, what were you doing, why are you coming back), but definitely stupid (found myself spelling the name of my universities multiple times because the dude sucked so badly at English, had to repeat my answers multiple times and felt as if I was getting interviewed for a job by a stoned interviewer).

What pissed me off the most about this episode of questioning is that it clearly reflected how we Arabs deal with one another (at least when talking about authorities); how again just for being an Arab, I got another unnecessary special treatment that mirrored the disapproval I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I felt from Jordanian authorities at the other border. Their behavior was just screaming: Why the fuck would a fucking Arab go to Palestine ?… As if it is a crime to think/do so.

To which I am answering: Because I love this land, I love its people and I will come back again !!!!

Reverse Monkey

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“Life is growth. You grow or you die” — Phil Knight. Challenging myself and you to pursue a life of conscious learning and growth till the very last moment!

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