The Great Escape Blog post
4/6/15
I have been saving
this Kalandia escapade from April 2 and now I have a follow-up story four days
later to share as well.
My Ramallah host drives me to Kalandia checkpoint for a bus
to Jerusalem and I am once again struck by this chaotic, depressing monument to
the lack of urban planning and to traffic chaos. He informs me that the Israelis do not allow
the PA to patrol this area and the Israelis surely do not care how many
Palestinians are stuck in gridlock honking traffic, so sometimes folks from the
Kalandia refugee camp nearby (villages, refugee camps, and checkpoints often
share the same name), try to manage the vehicular pandemonium. I am struck by a sudden surge of
palpitations, tremor, and shortness of breath.
I am having a low grade panic attack as I approach the oppressive metal
barred corridors and turnstiles and take my place in the line of men and women
and children waiting for the turnstile light to turn green. Red-green-wait-red-green-wait.
One young man keeps setting off the metal detector, the Israeli security lady
behind the bullet proof glass is barking at him, he finally takes off his
shoes, walks through in socks, okay, grabs his shoes, but she barks, and he
puts his shoes on the x ray machine. A young woman with two small children
tries to fit them all into one segment of the turnstile, the kids are climbing
the bars. They get to the barker and are all turned back, their faces blank and
passive. I can only imagine what rage and
hatred is brewing behind that mask.
There are minutes of down time when nothing happens and no one gets
through. Waiting as torture. My lips are getting numb, I start singing We shall overcome (very softly) and
trying some of those tapping things the TRC
told me about, breathing deeply and trying to appear normal in a deeply
abnormal place. And I am just visiting.
Finally the turnstile swings with me in it and then I set off the metal
detector. Coat off on the dirty ramp to
the x ray. Watch off. Bracelets off.
Beep-beep-beep. Finally it dawns
on me that my dangerous hair clip must be the trigger and I am released. The
sign on the other side says: “Have a nice day.”
April 6, finally time for the grueling trip home to sleep in
my own bed preferably with my own cat and husband, (with a nod to the
Wampanoags and whatever other Native Americans we - as in white people, not my
own personal zadie shvitzing in a
sweat shop in Williamsburg - displaced hundreds of years ago). I have been plotting my escape, emailing
everything that I would regret losing should it inexplicably “disappear” at Ben
Gurion airport, (yes that does happen) or should the hard drive of my trusty
computer suddenly develop a fatal error in the hands of the lovely 20 year old
security officer, (yes that does happen too). My host debates whether I should
get a bus from Ramallah or Kalandia (I am looking for a bus with yellow plates
that can travel into East Jerusalem from occupied Palestine.) He decides it
would be faster to get one at Kalandia checkpoint (my fave as you know) so we
creep through the sardine can traffic, pull into the dusty parking lot, only to
find that there are no busses here to Jerusalem. So…I need to schlep my two suitcases and backpack through the checkpoint and try
my luck on the other side.
I am wearing a scarf from Gaza to keep me calm and fierce
and I am prepared: money belt off, hair clip off, I leave the watch and
bracelet on because they were not the offending items last time, right? It
turns out it is very challenging to wheel two full suitcases down the narrow
metal corridor but it can be done, especially because Palestinians are so
helpful. I get to the turnstile and
(clever me) load each suitcase separately into the turnstile, push furiously
until the bag plops on the other side and then do the next suitcase. I am feeling like wonder woman incarnate. Why
hadn’t I thought of this, like ten years ago? At the next turnstile I ask the
soldiers to open the door which they do, which by the way, is a lot easier and
less humiliating for the schlepper. Then everything up on the x-ray machine and I
saunter confidently through the metal detector. Beep-beep-beep. But I am feeling fierce and I am wearing a
scarf from Gaza and just decide to ignore that alarm and stride confidently up
to the window and aggressively shove my passport onto the bullet proof glass. The bored young man on the other side just
waves me through!!!! Attitude is everything and of course it helps to be white
with a face from the shtetle.
I avoid the next turnstile by opening the adjacent door
which is unlocked, (there is a goddess), but there is one more turnstile at the
very end. An unhappy man and woman with
six suitcases are waiting at the end pushing the button to open the door, but to
no avail. I try the button, nada. I show them my suitcase/turnstile technique
and then we start taking their suitcases (which are large and heavy) one by one
through the turnstile. I find myself heaving furiously with all my weight
against the metal bars, violently nudging each bulky bag to freedom. It takes three of us to accomplish this task
and we are feeling quite victorious and unified in our micro struggle against
the vast forces of occupation. I feel
like a wild woman; this is my final act of defiance and power. Khalas.
I am so done. I wander out into the sun
and hear gun shots, no one seems to notice but me, but then I look up and see
tear gas wafting above the wall. Ho hum,
another day at Kalandia.
I find the Jerusalem bus, get the suitcases loaded on, and
sit down in front of a nice redheaded lady and her daughter who I soon find out
are from Portland Oregon, now living in Germany. They have just been to Ramallah for the first
time, “It wasn’t as bad as we expected,” so we start talking and my experiences
in Gaza just pour out of me like I am going to explode. She listens intently and then says,” You know,
but there are two sides to every story.
If Hamas would just stop shelling southern Israel…” I resist an incredibly strong urge to punch
her in her nice little nose, but take a deep breath and say more abruptly than
I intended, it is much more complicated than that. I wrote a book on the topic, I suggest you
read it. Like I said, khalas. And I
am not even home yet.
My colleague of the Traveling while Muslim variety and I arrive
at Ben Gurion airport, take a deep breath, find our inner wonder women, and
saunter into the airport smiling and laughing, carefree tourists coming home
from the Holy Land after a quick stop in the Tel Aviv bubble (actually to have
dinner with a very left wing activist who is working on a new organization
called DE-COLONIZER shhhh). At the first security screen, there are two serious
young Israelis, the usual identity-where are you coming from questions, I can
honestly say Tel Aviv. My face is open and friendly, but I cannot control my
annoyingly rapid, pounding heart. One of them explains very sternly “This is
for your safety. If someone gave you something, they could blow up the plane.”
Really? Shocking! It is hard for me to keep a straight face and I feel a little
bit sorry for him. I bet his job satisfaction is really low. The other woman keeps apologizing for all the
questions, “Anything sharp that could be used as a weapon?” I reply earnestly
that I do have a nail clipper. She
apologizes again and again, and I must give her credit. In the past few years the airport folks have
called off the attack dog type screening and I must admit it is refreshing to
hear an Israeli say “I’m sorry,” as I know how hard it is for them. Honest. I breeze though the first checkpoint,
streaming wonder woman vibes all over the airport. Heart rate slows down.
My colleague
has a less, shall we say, breezy experience.
The security guy asks her name, say your middle name, say your last
name, where is your name from, origin of your name, (she answers smiling that
her name is pretty international, it can be a Hebrew name, etc, that’s why her
parents chose it), this drives him a bit crazy, but we are playing cat and
mouse. Why are you here, where did you go, why Gaza, will you come back, did
you have armed guards, (he asks this repeatedly and I realize that he cannot
imagine being in Gaza without a full armed battalion or else we must be with
Hamas, right?), where did you stay, do they have hotels in Gaza, (really), did you
have armed guards (again and again), parents name, (she asks which one, mom or
dad?) When he hears her father’s name is Mohammed, he actually says: “Oh now I
understand.” Bingo!
So it seems
they are not actually asking if you are a Muslim, but they are using all the
usual racial profiling techniques to extract that bit of information. Having
established that she is indeed a (dangerous) Muslim American physician who has
done humanitarian aid, he asks where did you volunteer, she responds: Everywhere. Where? It’s a long list. But where in the
Middle East? She starts listing countries: Sudan, Nepal, Bosnia, Iraq, and he
says okay. He asks her what kind of work she does and she responds that she is
a pediatrician and a Fulbright Scholar. (Soldier man, she is a FULBRIGHT
SCHOLAR! Get that? And what exactly do you do for a living???) But I keep quiet
and smile. I am a nice Jewish doctor
traveling with a nice Muslim doctor and we are peace loving friends. Back to:
how long has she known me? We were on the same delegation. Who do you work for, (over and over), how do
you know each other. Interestingly, she
clearly indicates that she and I traveled together to Gaza, but they never come
back to re-interrogate me probably because of the iron domed protection of my
last name: Rothchild. The Baron Rothschild bought a big chunk of
historic Palestine pre ‘48, really. Not my family, but check it out.
Our bags are
tagged with a blue strip, not sure that is a good thing.
Then we get on line for our plane tickets. Eesy Peesy.
Next is the physical security screen, our bags are x-rayed,
(FYI I just want the record to show that we both have TSA pre-check which is a
pretty meaningless blessing here.) My colleague is immediately pulled aside, told
to go to a different place, chastised that she went to the wrong place first. She is placed in a separate containment area
with three to five security guards, it is semi-open with a partial wall. She is questioned with a repeat of the
previous interrogation. This time when
she lists where she has done humanitarian aid, she gets to include Afghanistan
and Pakistan. She is asked if she is carrying bombs. (Really.) She is told to
take everything out of her suit case,
all electronics, batteries, over and over again: empty your pockets. (They do not find her other passport with
stamps from all the forbidden countries slipped within a pack of sanitary pads,
small victory and great place to hide stuff, just saying ladies). She is aggressively
patted down by a gloved woman with special attention to her arms and legs, her
shoes are off, she is x-rayed and her bags are x-rayed for a second time.
Everything is wanded and I mean the inside of her camera where the battery
sits, every book, all her papers, the inside of her computer. They take her computer, say that they are putting
it through the x-ray, (again?) whatever
it is, it is now out of sight so anything can happen. They wand all her audio material,
all the wires, sim cards, all her medications. After all of her carefully
backed belongings are piled in a jumble, they say you can clean this up
now. She reminds them that they have not
returned her computer which they finally do. Through this 30 minute
interrogation, she remains “super nice and cooperative.” The computer is finally returned, insha’allah. Who knows what the Israeli
forces or the Shin Bet or for that matter the NSA has done to it. So, dear
reader, is this about Israeli security or Israeli intimidation and racial
profiling and surveillance?
I am pulled aside and wanded in a public area just beyond
security.
After I wait, pacing back and forth, my colleague emerges
and we get on line for passport control, the final hurdle. The blond woman in the box is chatting loudly
in Hebrew on the phone, barely looks at our papers, her stamp bonks on our
passports, and we are in the international area. Free at last.
Entering the international area of Ben Gurion with my
traveling while Muslim colleague, fellow physician and writer
|
But I am not done with you quite yet.
There is a walkway down to the shops and fountain that
always has some kind of exhibit, the PR companies’ last opportunity for some
flashy hasbara, a tourist’s air brushed goodbye impressions of the Promised Land. This
year’s exhibit is called: Beautiful Israel in Green: An Exhibition of the
Council For a Beautiful Israel and features a series of enormous high quality photos
of truly gorgeous flowers and trees. As much as I love flora and fauna, (which
I really do) I am much more interested in the language, framing, and inherent
messaging of the exhibit. I have to admit that green is not usually the color I
associate with Israel given the hot summer sun, extensive rocky hills, and the
Negev which last I checked was a desert, but what do I know? The captions speak
of the: “Intense flowering that carpets the landscape in spring,” notes the
wide diversity of plants in the “Mediterranean Basin” and the “considerable
destruction of natural habitats.” (By whom exactly?)
So one of the first things I notice is that the borders of
Israel are unclear, the exhibit repeatedly mentions Samaria and the Jordan
Valley as part of Israel thus actually referring to the land from the river to
the sea, there is no mention of the messy details of occupation and settlement
building, the takeover of the Jordan Valley as a military zone, the details and
politics are intentionally vague. There is an oak tree from the Odem Forest in
North Golan (translation: occupied during the 1967 war, some 200 Palestinian villages
wiped out.) The captions note that the Common Olive Tree is the “national tree
of Israel which characterizes its landscape, and especially the ancient
terraces in the mountain region,” and there is an exquisite photo from the
Galilee of an olive tree easily 1,000 years old. So the invisible text includes
the inconvenient fact that an indigenous Arab population terraced the land,
planted these ancient olive trees, and that the Israeli Defense Force and the
more rabid Jewish settlers have been involved in uprooting many thousands of
these national treasures, supposedly for “security.”
There are also a number of subtle reminders that history
started during the Old Testament and then whoosh, skipped to modern times and
that many flowers (like the Jews) can survive as tubers or shoots from a dying
tree, (and reappear hundreds of years later), like the Common Cyclamen which
happens also to be the national flower. “The Carob Tree is not mentioned in the
Old Testament. [just reminding]…Was it here from time immemorial, or was it
brought to the region by nomads from the south?” [translation: Arabs?] The Common Almond: “The root of its Hebrew
name – Shaked – comes from the word for being industrious since it precedes the
other flowers in its flowering. This is an ancient crop mentioned in the Old
Testament.” [in case you forgot, just reminding]
In another ahistorical reference: the Aleppo Pine is
described as “one of the common trees in Israel. It is quite rare in nature, but due to its
quick growth it is frequently planted in forests. It is an extremely
inflammable tree [do they mean flammable?] and consequently problematic.” Think
Jewish National Fund forests planted over destroyed Palestinian villages. Think the massive forest fires in the Galilee
a few years ago. Think big problem.
I love some of the names: Persian fritillary, Sodom apple, obviously
poisonous given the Old Testament reference (just reminding again), and then
there is the true Rose of Jericho, (which is guess where) and the Euphrates
poplar: “This tree is common along the banks of the Jordan River…” (you know,
the closed military zone in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.)
In the chutzpah department I think the awards go to the
Prickly Pear which “serves as a live fence, for marking fields, and as an
edible fruit,” these “live fences” mark the borders of pre-Nakba Palestinian
homes all over Israel, and especially in the middle of JNF forests.
And second prize to Citrus: “The citrus trees symbolize
Israeli and Mediterranean agriculture.
They were brought to the country by Arab in olden times and the coastal
plain –especially Jaffa – became a world citrus growing center.” So: brief
translation, the Arabs were growing their Jaffa oranges and involved in a major
export business until 1948 when the Palestinian population was largely
dispossessed of their land and fled for their lives if they were lucky and the
Jews took over their citrus industry.
Forgive my sarcasm, but I will just highlight the pertinent
parts of the remainder of the exhibit before I have a seizure in the airport.
“About the council for a beautiful Israel, The Council for a
Beautiful Israel (CBI) is a public, nonprofit environmental and nongovernmental
organization promoting quality of life
in Israel through safe guarding the environment and the landscape’s aesthetic
façade. It adopts a positive nonconfronting way of operating….through cooperation with governmental and
private bodies from all sectors including the IDF…with emphasis on the more
vulnerable parts of the population and the country’s periphery.
Preserving the
countries landscape and its natural treasures is the prime concern of the
exhibitors…only a few decades ago, Israel was a natural wild landscape dotted
here and there with a few
settlements. Today the opposite is true. Many large settlements developed,
industrial zones were built, and agricultural areas grew larger. Now they
encroach on the few pristine islands of green that can be found amidst the
densely developed populated areas.” (Now, how and where exactly did that
ever happen?)
Is it just me? I feel like I have taken some kind of
hallucinogenic drug in the mind altering, history rewriting, hasbara department. We crash in the VIP lounge (thanks to my well-traveled
dangerous Muslim friend with TCA pre-check) for a well-earned glass of
wine. Ironically Norah Jones’ (full name
Geetali Norah Jones Shankar), lyrical
music wafts across the room. Her father
is Ravi Shankir. Another dangerous non-Jewish brown-faced terrorist?
But I am not quite done. As we wait on line to board the
plane, an Israeli woman, curly hair, maybe early 50s, is arguing loudly with
the stewardess, she does not want to dump out her water bottle. The woman keeps pouring out a bit and then
arguing, pouring out a bit then arguing…. She is oblivious to the backup she is
causing, the entitled edge to her voice, and the taunting ridiculousness of
this public argument. See: Israeli, I’m
sorry.
So…I settle into my United Airlines seat, adjust the head
rest, take a cleansing breath and decide to wait for takeoff by scanning a
throwaway magazine, United Hemispheres,
April 15 edition. How dangerous could a puff piece be? I am looking for something entertaining and
hopefully meaningless, I am tired and I am done with all this political
detective work. An article catches my attention, “The World’s Next Great
Cities,” and sure enough after Rotterdam, Houston, Bogota, and Fukuoka, there
is Tel Aviv, pop. 404,000, “The Next Great Tech Hub.” The article gushes with
comments like: “And now, Tel Aviv boasts Silicon Wadi (that’s Arabic for
‘gully’)” Forgive me, but I think Wadi
actually means valley which has a less, well, third world ring to it. And such
smoke and mirror historical magic tricks: “You might assume a country that’s
home to such ancient stalwarts as the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock
would be stuck in the past, [God gave this to us, everyone wants it, Holocaust,
Holocaust, every threat is existential and will be the next Holocaust, but who
is stuck in the past???] but Israel has its eye firmly on the future…Youthful,
fun-loving Tel Aviv – a ‘startup’ city itself, having been founded in 1909...[as
a Jewish neighborhood north of the thriving city of Jaffa](It’s not difficult
to see the logical progression from the communal culture of the kibbutz to the
collaborative, open-plan workspaces of the modern high-tech sphere). [from the
Bundist, back to the land, joint ownership, muscular and bronzed, to…Google?] Where
do I begin?
Who needs drugs?