"Okay, get off the bus. NOW!"
So this is what it feels like. The large automatic gun is not pointed at me, per se, but a young finger is most definitely poised on the trigger finger lest I try to make a run for it. While I'm not exactly scared, it's safe to say I'm starting to sweat a little.
I am at the infamous Calandia checkpoint, the only gap in the 8m high brick wall around the West Bank through which it is possible to pass into or out of the Israeli capital, Jerusalem. I knew the young IDF soldier, no more than 20 years old, was looking for trouble the moment he stepped onto the number 18 bus from Ramallah to East Jerusalem. Unfortunately for me, none of the Palestinians on board had provided a suitable pretext for his aggression. I, however, am a prime target, as I do not have an Israeli stamp in my passport.
"Ok, go." He waves the bus off. His colleagues surround me. They look even younger, and yes, even more aggressive than him.
I've seen armed men almost every day since June now: in Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Syria, Lebanon; yet none have seemed quite as intimidating as this mob. The South Americans are typically Latin: laidback and friendly. The Syrian army are bored, listless, malnourished and poorly-equipped conscripts; liable to be overrun by a well-trained troop of boy scouts. The Lebanese are well-built, well-equipped, professional soldiers who mean business. The Israelis are a nightmarish combination of brash youthful arrogance and religious zeal. These are God's chosen people, defending their homeland from non-believers. They seem desperate for action, desperate to pull the trigger. While they'd probably prefer to gun down a Palestinian or two, they won't hesitate to execute foreigners, safe in the knowledge that they have legal impunity in the event of any "accidents".
Rachel Corrie, an American aid worker, was run over by a bulldozer in Gaza in 2003. Just to make sure she was dead, the driver reversed back over her already grossly wasted body. Her last words were "my back is broken". British activist Tom Hurndall was gunned down by an Israeli sniper in Gaza in the same year, while shielding children from Israeli gunfire. After nine months in an irreversible coma, his parents turned off his life support machine in January 2004. You could say I'm starting to get nervous.
"Where is your visa?"
"Check the computer system, I have a visa. I came in from Jordan at Allenby Bridge yesterday."
"If you have a visa, where is the stamp?"
"They didn't stamp my passport, they stamped a piece of paper. If they stamp the passport, I will never be able to go to any Arab or Muslim country again."
"Where is the piece of paper?"
"They take the paper off you when you leave the terminal at the border. Check the computer system."
"I don't even know how to check the fucking computer system. Why would they do that? Why would they stamp a piece of paper and not give it to you?"
"I dunno. You're the one that works for the Israeli government."
"Well, you're not coming in without a stamp, I'm sorry, but you're just not."
We have clearly reached an impasse. He is getting more and more annoyed. So am I. He won't budge. Neither will I. He has an M16 and a licence to kill. I have a bag of apples and a devastating array of sarcasm. It's not really a fair fight is it?
"Ok, I guess I'm not coming in then..."
"Yeah, that's just the way it is"
"Ok, no probs. Just one question."
"What?"
"Do you know a good real estate agent in Ramallah?"
"What?"
"Well I need to find an apartment don't I?"
"What?"
"Because if you won't let me through pal, I guess I'm just gonna have to live in Ramallah for the rest of my life aren't I?"
Game over. His colleagues collapse in hysterics. Win the crowd and you've won the argument.
Of course it was funny for me, but for the average Palestinian it's no laughing matter. The Israelis call the giant concrete wall they have constructed around the territories they have illegally occupied (in contravention of numerous UN Security Council Resolutions) since 1967, the "Security Fence". The East German government used the same terminology to describe the wall they built around West Berlin in 1961. Just like that wall, the "Security Fence" divides families and communities, and leaves thousands of people virtual prisoners, trapped in their towns and villages and unable to move around in what, nominally at least, is their own country. For Jerusalem is the transport hub of the West Bank; to travel between Bethlehem and Ramallah by public tranpsort, say, is virtually impossible without changing buses at the Nablus Road terminal in East Jerusalem. The only way for Palestinians to get into Jerusalem is to apply for a permit from the Israeli government. This can take weeks to issue, if indeed it is issued at all. The result is that most residents of the West Bank haven't visited Jerusalem since the new regulations were introduced seven years ago.
Somewhat surprisingly then, walking around the West Bank towns of Ramallah, Jericho, and Bethlehem, the Palestinian people are mostly cheerful, friendly, and hospitable. I drank tea and coffee with them; we chatted about football. They support Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool. (Incidentally no-one mentions Chelsea - owned by a Russian Jew and managed by an Israeli, their popularity is probably not at its highest here in occupied Palestine.) These are eminently normal people. They have homes and families, hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares. Yet they are treated like animals. And we in the West ignore their plight at our peril. Make no mistake, the ludicrous oil crusade known by the White House as the "War on Terror", most definitely has its roots here.
At the Allenby Bridge border crossing the previous day, I had waited for close to five hours while the army of young girls that bizarrely form the entirety of the Israeli immigration staff processed my application. My recent visits to Lebanon and Syria, combined with my request to avoid a passport stamp, did not ease my progress. As I waited, I chatted to some of the young Palestinians undergoing a similarly thorough background check. Khalid spoke the best English, but his friendliness was by no means unique. Well-dressed, in designer jeans and fashionable shoes, he was the archetypal modern Arab youth. Yet after exchanging the usual pleasantries, buying me a coffee, and offering me countless cigarettes, he showed me a video on his state of the art Nokia mobile. The content was soberingly familiar from countless news broadcasts. A military funeral, a baying mob carrying a coffin, a photo of a young man in fatigues and a chequered keffiyeh brandishing an AK-47. Khalid's brother was a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, shot dead by the IDF.
I looked around me at the hordes of Palestinians waiting patiently to be allowed through the border into their own country. These were a broken people, their spirits extinguished by decades of oppression. The bowed heads, the skulking demeanour, the total acquiescence in the face of overwhelming power; the Palestinians have been crushed by a mighty military and political machine. The Israeli girls, all flirtatious smiles for us Westerners, bark orders at the Palestinian untermensch. The odd unfortunate youth is dragged off for interrogation by sadistically grinning Israeli men. One of Khalid's friends, apparently a member of the Palestinian Authority's Mukhabarat, or secret police, returned silent and shaking from an hour long "interrogation" by Israeli officers. He wouldn't discuss what happened or what was said in the cell. When my turn came to be questioned, in the main hall in full view of everyone, Khalid and his friends laughed at me.
"Today you are Palestinian, like us, terrorist like us".
Khalid made sure the word terrorist was given the sarcastic sneer it deserves. I am no more a terrorist than he is: the only difference between us is that I am free to walk away from this nightmare of checkpoints, soldiers, prison walls. Khalid and the others are still there, still living in this warped world of Israeli colonisation. Perhaps one day Khalid will strap a bomb to his chest and eviscerate himself and countless Israelis on a bus in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, like his brother apparently intended to. I will see his vaguely familiar face on CNN or the BBC, condemned as "evil", "warped", "a terrorist". I will remember a friendly, charming young man, much like me, except that stripped of his freedom, livelihood, and land by the apartheid regime in Tel Aviv, he feels he has nothing to live for.
I visited many historical and religious sights in Jerusalem: The Dome of the Rock, the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Garden of Gethsemane. Yet I did not visit the Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem. Instead I took my voyeur's curiosity to the West Bank, to view a crime against humanity which is not a part of history, but is taking place now, in 2007. The historical and spiritual significance of the Holy City is undoubtedly a part of the global "clash of civilisations" between Islam and the West: the incredible physical proximity of the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock attests to that. Yet a much bigger part of this new Cold War is the unjust and inhumane subjugation of the Palestinian people by an Israeli government financed by the UK and US.
Just don't say no-one told you.
