 |
| Our team leads a warm-up to a series of games at a Palestinian school. |
The Bedouin nomadic villages along the ridgelines of Israel’s major super highways let you know this is a unique place. Olive season, olive festivals and olive vendors alongside major roads hint that despite significant foreign investment and modernization, the countryside of the West Bank and Israel still live close to the land and their ancient planting seasons. Between visits to community centers, special education facilities and remote refugee camps where our programs run, our group enjoyed the finer details of traveling with local colleagues – Ghada’s reckless driving and astute knowledge of the Israeli checkpoints; gender segregated restaurants in Hebron; and haggling with young buys selling the most perfect purple grapes alongside a quiet road tracing Israel’s rocky ridgelines.
 |
| Israeli sign alongside the highway near Ramallah; beginning of the military zone. |
Having settled into my colleagues’ lives for a few days in Ramallah, I came to understand the real time challenges of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Facing the traffic and choosing one’s route to head south of Jerusalem alone is enough argument to just stay home. Driving fifty miles can be a 2+ hour commitment and if traveling through a checkpoint with improper documentation, the risk isn’t worth the time. Palestinians are supposed to be out of Israel by 7 pm at night unless granted exceptional documentation. I have a colleague married to a Palestinian Israeli (a Christian woman whose family has multi-generational roots in Jerusalem and self-identifies by nationality as Israeli) and family gatherings redefine ‘complicated.’ When coordinating a car from Ramallah to Tel Aviv, I had to arrange for an Israeli cab to pick us up and drive back because of the license plate requirements – literally had to pay double the cost for half the route (!).
Logistics aside, this region is poignant because of the commitment that millions of people, both residents and visitors, demonstrate regardless of religion. Their ownership in the region’s history, artifacts and historic nooks is remarkable.