A last attempt to like Israel.

Don’t accuse me of not trying. Today, I really, really tried to like Israel. I met locals. I went to the tent city. I engaged with them, and I have a personal rule about not engaging.

In my defence, Israel started it.

We left the usual way from Ramallah, on the bus to Jerusalem, where, as foreigners, you are normally allowed to stay on the bus and waggle your passport at the border guards. Not today. It seemed the Israelis wanted a good look at us, so we were removed from the bus and forced through the cattle gates like everyone else. I don’t know what the official term for these contraptions is, apart from something like the Humiliator 2000, but it resembles an 8 foot high rotating door-cum-prison cell, electronically controlled from elsewhere, that bleep and jar at the controller’s whim. Navigating them alone is frightening enough, but navigating them with a suitcase and a large bag is both humiliating and hard. After 2 of these and a bag X-ray, I was in no mood to wave my passport at what I can only describe as a man who appeared to have been poured into his army uniform and the wheely chair he so lazily reclined on, picking his nose while hassling Palestinians. His female guard friend deigned to give me a lazy thumbs up, before rapping on the window and addressing the Palestinian in the queue behind me as ‘Palestin, Palestin.’ This process took an hour.

After two more cattle gates, we were ejected into a shadeless car park to wait for a bus, which took some time since it coincided with midday prayers, and, in foul moods, eventually managed to negotiate our way back onto a bus to Jerusalem. From there we were relieved of some 40 shekels (£8) by a taxi driver to go to an incredibly unpleasant bus station that resembled what I can only describe as a mixture of my recollections of Prague train station cerca 2007, Riga bus station cerca 1999, and the Palasades centre in Birmingham, probably cerca now, but with metal detectors and bag X-ray checks manned by the usual dumbo 18 year old puppets.

So far so whiney. I will give the Israelis some credit for their more reasonably priced and promptly timetabled bus transport, but not for making me sit next to an orthodox Jew who insisted on shuffling and Torah-mumbling for the duration of the journey. That’s fine though, I’d hate that in any country, I won’t take it out on the Israelis.

After arriving in Tel Aviv and having my bags reluctantly prodded by another child soldier (he deigned to unzip my suitcase as far as finding a slightly grubby towel on the top and deciding that there wasn’t a bomb underneath it), we arrived in the city centre and I was, again, given a tour by local expert (read three time visitor) Tina. Needless to say it appears to be another haven of pretending-we-aren’t-in-the-Middle-East. It may as well be a poor seaside town in Italy or somewhere. It’s dirty and ugly and full of beggars and African immigrants but yet simultaneously full of hipsters with their demand for off high street brands and vintage shops and shabby-chic bars, like Brick Lane in London but racist. I couldn’t switch off the grumpiness and resentment that I already felt but the Ramallah checkpoint had increased, and it was when we sat down for dinner and I couldn’t even bring myself to order the cheaper Israeli beer over the more expensive imported stuff that I decided to make more of an effort and text a couch surfer who had offered to show us the tent city and wanted to know about Ramallah.

Post-encounter I can report back that I am now done being fair. The couch surfer in question walked me through tent city, stopping to introduce me to people and chat, all very enjoyable until they took the time to inform me that their protest had nothing to do with Palestine. All well and good if they thought I was a journalist, but I made it very clear I was a student and they were still adamant. If they are going to sit there and protest the Israeli government budget priorities and call for less defence spending, fine, but then at some point they have to acknowledge where the defence budget is being focused, and against whom. But like I said, I’m not engaging anymore.
After this the couch surfer and i walked a long way while he lectured me on why a two state solution will never work, how he’s not racist even though the Arabs bombed his village from Gaza, that yes the wall is terrible but has to be there to stop the suicide bombers, and that no Palestinian wants peace. I was allowed to interject at various moments with my view, but was ultimately written off as a foreigner who didn’t understand. It was, as always, good holiday anthropology and very educational, but ultimately as frustrating as ever. Oh, until we ended at a blood donor centre and I was invited to donate my blood to the Israelis. On declining to take part in this happy activity (I can’t give blood for medical reasons anyway), I was essentially snubbed and left to make my own way home.

So, as they say in Arabic, hallas, I’m done. I shall spend tomorrow on the beach (in an experiment called ways to boycott Israel while you’re in Israel – the beaches are free) and the night in the airport. And, inshallah, not return for some time. Next up, Lithuania, historical eastern European land of anti-semitic Catholics. I almost long for London and its delightfully secular ways.