one saturday while we were living up in the galilee we decided to make a little trip to the city of jenin in the west bank. jenin is at the northern tip of the west bank just across the border from afula, but the only people who ever visit are israeli arabs from the galilee who go to visit family. jenin was a hotbed during the second intifada; half the suicide bombers during that uprising came from jenin. during that time the city was occupied by israel with heavy tanks and artillery and a lot of people died. we wandered the bustling streets for some time, and had a meal of assorted salads on a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city.
one of the more interesting institutions in jenin is the freedom theater. there, an acting troupe seeks to resist the occupation through art rather than violence, and seek to guide the children of the jenin refugee camp through acting as therapy. its founder juliano mer-khamis, who was both jewish and palestinian, was unfortunately assassinated by a masked gunman on the streets of jenin in 2011. much speculation surrounds the motive for his death. too bad that the good guys usually seem to die too soon in this part of the world.
returning to israel from jenin turned out to be an adventure in itself. we took a taxi to the crossing, but palestinian registered cars cannot cross into israel so we got out to walk across. we discovered however, that though we walked into the west bank earlier that day at the same crossing, it was illegal to cross by foot in the other direction. so we had no choice but to catch a ride with someone in their car. over the next two hours as twilight fell, we begged people in cars to let us cross the border with them, to no avail. one of my classmates eventually became so exasperated that he walked toward the crossing, waiving his hands in the air and protesting in hebrew, despite the disapproving yells of the israeli soldiers who had their automatic weapons trained on him. eventually we convinced him to relent. we finally were able to convince an older arab gentleman to let us into his van for the crossing. while we waited he told us that he had been in palestine to get some dental work done: it is much cheaper in the west bank than in israel. our van was pulled aside for a “secondary inspection” – because we were in it. now we realized why no one wanted to give us a ride. apparently the only foreigners who cross this border are activists. we were all interrogated and patted down, and then directed to a holding area, where we sat for another two hours while they closed all the windows on the van and pumped it full of a gas, the identity of which was unknown to us. strange times at the border. we profusely thanked our driver for taking two hours out of his evening to help our sorry selves. just another day in palestine.
