Two Hours in Jerusalem: Getting There is More Than Half the Fun

By Richard H. Curtiss

It's 10 a.m., exactly 24 hours after I paid 35 Jordanian diners (about $52) to an Amman travel agency to secure official permission to cross from Jordan into Israel. The fee covers the taxi ride to the border as well. The driver is from Sabastiya, just across the Green Line from Israel, near Nablus in the West Bank. He "had a good job fixing tires,'' he says, until 1975 when he "started having problems" with Israeli intelligence. They began calling him in with increasing frequency, sometimes every week, accusing him of working with the PLO. When he said he did not, they wanted to know who among the young men he knew did.

Finally, he told them all he wanted to do was go abroad to find a job. The authorities gave him a permit, but it specified he must return within three years or lose permission forever to reside in the land where he was born. He did not find high paying work in the Gulf as he planned, but eventually found a factory job in Germany.

As the three-year deadline approached, he was faced with a dilemma. Make the required visit to Sabastiya and lose his job in Germany or keep the job in Germany and let the future take care of itself? He chose the latter. When the factory laid off an entire shift of workers, he returned to Amman to try to get permission to re-enter the West Bank. He might have been able to if he had spent a lot of money to do it, he says. Instead, he married a Jordanian woman whose father had been a 1948 refugee from Palestine.

Now he has three sons and a daughter. Neither he nor his family can make the four-hour drive back to Sabastiya, where his mother, father, brothers and sisters still live. Even if he bribed his way back, his wife and children could not live there. Sometimes his parents visit his family in their rented house in Amman.

At the Jordan border, he tells me I am in luck. The small bus that shuttles foreigners back and forth is on the Jordan side, meaning I will be able to cross within an hour. I tip him, he insists on buying me a coffee, and then the bus is ready to go.

There is one other foreigner, a tall young man from New Zealand following the Kiwi-Australian tradition of backpacking around the world. As the bus snakes around narrow roads bounded by barbed wire and guarded by soldiers, he tells me he's been two and a half years on the road, working at a summer resort in the Catskills and for a time in France. Now, after visiting Greece, Egypt and Jordan, he hopes "to work for a while on a moshav in Israel'' to save up enough money "to see a bit of Asia" before arriving home.

As he talks, two scruffy soldiers board the bus to check our papers. One has a cigarette drooping from his mouth; the other is wearing a long blonde Afro too dirty to be a wig. From the Hebrew lettering on their uniforms I realize we're in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. From more dramatic crossings in previous years, when I had to carry my own luggage across a small, well-guarded bridge, I knew the Jordan River is fast-moving but less than 12 feet wide at this point. This time I didn't even notice it.

We proceed to a cluster of buildings where, as in Jordan, our small bus for foreigners is steered into one building, and the big, packed busloads, their roofs laden with the baggage of Palestinian passengers, into another. Two neatly uniformed Israelis on duty find the New Zealander's brawny physique, sun-browned face, and dusty tee shirt with no message puzzling.

They wave me past him.

One of them, a clean-cut, red-haired Israeli, leafs deliberately through my passport and asks why I'm coming to Israel. "Tourism," I answer.

"You seem to travel a lot in Arab countries," he observes.

''All my life,'' I answer. ''I'm a retired foreign service officer."

''You'll soon need a new passport."

"Not unless you put an Israeli stamp into this one.''

"We don't do that,'' he says. "I mean your passport is nearly full."

Although his fluent English is spoken with the tough, slurred cadence of an Israeli, I ask if he's American.

"Used to be," he says.

He was born in Philadelphia. He politely asks me to operate the battery-powered laptop computer in my briefcase, but doesn't even open my bulging suitcase. Perhaps he's read the recent remark by a visiting American Jewish journalist that, in crossing the bridge from Jordan he passed from the politest to the rudest society in the world.

When I show him my note in English and Arabic from the Amman travel agency calling for a service taxi to take me from the border to Jerusalem at a set price of 10 Jordanian diners ($15), he obligingly calls a number that brings a service. Meanwhile, my New Zealand co-passenger emerges from a more thorough grilling and ambles off toward the hangar-sized shed where the busloads of Palestinians are waiting. My note only gets me as far as another shed. There, after I insist I have no intention of paying $100 for a 45-minute solo taxi ride to Jerusalem and that I have plenty of time to wait for a service taxi to fill up, I'm directed by the Palestinian driver to sit on a bench in the shade. After half an hour a bus arrives, bearing the New Zealander. No, he doesn't want to pay the 10 JDs for a service, he'll take still another bus.

Some other people from the bus pile into the service taxi and, since I'm the tallest of the seven passengers, I get the most comfortable seat, next to the driver. As the taxi winds up the cleft in the hills leading out of the Jordan valley, along the sides of the road are some of the most run-down bedouin tents I've seen in 40 years in and out of the Middle East. Sheep, goats, pickup trucks and children are in evidence, but few adults.

Looking down on them from virtually every hilltop, in fenced-off enclosures, are Israeli military positions and Jewish settlements. Most of the neatly aligned houses and apartment buildings still are in various stages of construction. As we near Jerusalem, the settlement buildings grow higher, many appearing to be three- and four-story apartment buildings. There also are more Palestinian villages and suburbs.

The only other male passenger directs the driver off the main road and up a hill to a stop in front of one of a cluster of prosperous-looking Palestinian houses. A teenaged boy in front of the house, grinning from ear to ear, welcomes the arrivals.

While the driver unties their baggage from the top of the taxi, one of the passengers, an impeccably dressed little girl of three or four, runs ahead of her mother toward the front door. She trips and falls, skinning her knee and hands. Preparing to cry, she looks around for her parents, but now they have rushed past her toward the house. Even the teen-ager carrying the baggage has passed her. Bewildered, she dusts herself off, and then breaks into a joyous smile as she toddles off to join the homecoming celebration.

The next stop is an East Jerusalem taxi stand, where a young woman and her mother transfer their baggage for a ride to an outlying town. Homecoming joy must await their arrival there. At the last stop, in a more modest neighborhood, the service driver helps a weary elderly woman climb, with her baggage, to a house overlooking the road. Clearly for her it's not a homecoming from a good job in the Gulf, but a return from visiting children and grandchildren who, like my first taxi driver, can't come home themselves.

It's 2:30 p.m. when the service taxi lets me off at the American Colony Hotel which, before the Israeli occupation, was a welcome East Jerusalem respite from more primitive hotels located at points east in the Arab world. Now, after five-star hotels from Muscat to Amman, the sprawling old hotel under spreading trees is a respite only from the heavy traffic of Jerusalem's overcrowded streets.

It retains four stars, one undoubtedly for its gracious open-air patio where, continuously from morning to late at night, guests can have their meals served outdoors on nice days, which are most days. The second star, perhaps, is for the wide range of prices, including "economy rooms" at only $50, including breakfast. However, I can almost touch the two side walls at the same time in my single room.

The third star may be for the old newspaper clippings, photographs and proclamations under glass along the walls that give visitors a crash course on the past 150 years of the history of the Holy Land. It begins with the arrival in the mid- 1 9th century from the United States and Germany of educators whose families were joined by marriage and whose numbers were augmented by Swedes and Swedish Americans from Chicago. They evolved into the "American colony," who chose to await the second coming of Christ in Jerusalem. Their communal residence eventually became the hotel, and the memorabilia trace the fortunes of their descendants through World War I, the Balfour Declaration that dashed the hopes of Palestinian Arabs for a state of their own, the British Mandate and the partition of Palestine.

The American Colony's fourth star, I suspect, is for simply not being in Israel. The prices are in U.S. dollars, the staff is Palestinian, and the clientele seems mostly to be journalists, archaeologists, academics, American visitors from other Mideast countries and U.N. personnel. The occasional Israeli seems out of place there.

Down the Hill to the Old City

The sun sets early in winter in Jerusalem, so I grab my camera and start out the door the moment I finish unpacking. A desk clerk warns me against going near the Mea She'arim quarter, where Orthodox Jews are rioting over what they call the desecration of ancient Jewish graves to make room for a new highway. However, I have no intention of going anywhere but down the hill to the Old City, which I haven't visited for 13 years.

I'm aware from reading the Jordan Times on the way to the border that Palestinian merchants are on strike, protesting a hand grenade explosion the previous day in which a Palestinian blacksmith was killed in front of his shop, one of his sons lost an eye, another suffered severe facial wounds, and six other passersby were injured.

On a narrow covered street in the Old City, where a vegetable souk blends into the butchers' souk, someone dropped the Israeli-army-issue grenade through one of many openings in the arched roof just above the blacksmith's shop into a throng of shoppers.

The incident occurred where "religious students" of an encroaching Orthodox Jewish yeshiva live in apartments above the Palestinian shops and marketplace. Two Meir Kahane offshoot terrorist groups already have phoned newspapers and news agencies in Israel and in New York to "take credit" for the act, which they call vengeance for the murder of their leader two years ago in New York.

The adult religious students living above the market claim they all were at prayers so no one saw the perpetrator. Rumor in the souk has it, however, that some Jewish children living above the souk, not so well coached, have told Israeli police who did it, and added that they were happy about it.

There are Israeli troops, border guards and police at the Damascus Gate and at regular intervals inside. The shops are closed but not all the padlocks are in place. Here and there a shutter is partially open and lights are on in the shop behind it.

Visitors are welcome, but the doors will be slammed shut at the approach of any Palestinian activists enforcing the strike. Side streets leading to the Haram Al-Sharif are deserted, but as I approach the Western (Wailing) Wall there are more and more people in the street, most of them Orthodox Jews or American Jewish tour groups.

The Israelis have pulled two iron grills across the street leading to the Wall, forcing visitors to squeeze by three automatic rifle-toting guards, who unceremoniously reach out to pat down bulky shopping bags or knapsacks. The huge open square in front of the Western Wall, once teeming with Arab houses, now is teeming with Jewish visitors. Male worshippers on their side, women on theirs, press themselves against the wall while an amiable swarm of tourists, soldiers, and local residents watch, take pictures or just mill around.

What is stunning to me is the building activity in the old "Jewish quarter" overlooking the square, which is being reclaimed by Israel. The guide book says the Jewish population in the Old City still numbers only 2.500 residents. But construction cranes are poised over veritable skyscrapers, some of them looking more like Beverly Hills ''Spanish" or Marbella modern architecture than anything from Middle Eastern history.

A tight line of perhaps 50 Israeli soldiers in one corner of the square throws me abruptly back to the segregated U.S. Army or French African units of World War II. With the exception of one woman officer at the head of the line and one male officer at the rear, all are Ethiopian Jews.

Apparently the problem of Falasha unemployment, said to run at about 60 percent, is being solved the traditional way. As they begin moving out behind the white woman soldier, I race ahead to get a picture of Israel's segregated colonial levies leaving the square.

Mission accomplished, I walk back to the square behind some tall American women and their yarmulka-wearing husbands. Two Israeli Orthodox beggars descend upon them, the man in his black suit and hat mumbling the name of the good cause for which he is collecting, the woman actually grabbing at the American women. The American men distribute shekels to both. Their wives recoil from the crone and duck past the protective screen of Israeli soldiers, who are checking handbags this time, at a gate that proclaims no begging beyond that point.

Intruding Signs

On the way back through narrow, nearly deserted streets toward the Damascus Gate I pause to photograph the intruding signs for Jewish religious bookstores, schools and housing cooperatives which pop up far from the "Jewish quarter" in areas that have, "from time immemorial," been Armenian or Christian or Muslim Arab. Many in these isolated Jewish enclaves are simply Jewish squatters or others who allegedly intimidated or tricked elderly Arab occupants into leaving.

"We meet again," says a cheerful voice. It's my New Zealand friend. He's now installed in a hostel inside the Old City. There truly are accommodations for any pocketbook, and the Old City is so small that surely every long-term inhabitant knows every other, by sight at least.

Up a side street is the shuttered blacksmith shop, photos of the dead owner conspicuously posted on the door and on nearby walls. Not far away is a Jewish vegetable shop, an Israeli flag on a pole projecting into the street. Its open door and three grim-faced black-hatted proprietors are conspicuous against the padlocked adjacent Palestinian shops on strike.

Well outside the old Jewish quarter, this is contested territory which is being taken over, shop by shop and house by house, by Jewish Israelis, many of them American-born. The walls are covered by graffiti, all prominently featuring the Star of David.

It's getting dark as I emerge into the relatively open area just inside the Damascus Gate. It is occupied by sidewalk peddlers apparently unafraid of strike enforcers. I'm startled by the sudden appearance of a dozen grim-faced, flak-jacketed Israeli policemen in blue uniforms, all carrying guns and batons and, at a quick trot, seeming to sweep the area before them.

The two tallest among them are propelling a heavy-set Palestinian boy of perhaps 13, his arms pinioned behind him, his face contorted by pain, fear and the effort not to cry. The police on the flanks are lashing out with their batons at a group of children, most no more than nine or ten, who are running along behind them. There are older teenagers standing in the open area and, as they realize what is happening, they set up an ear-splitting din of taunting, menacing whistles, so familiar to anyone who has seen a film about the intifada.

The phalanx of policemen propels its victim into a narrow, arched side street and one, brandishing a gun, pauses to warn the rapidly increasing crowd of children, now numbering perhaps 50, not to follow. They do, but at the first sharp turn in the ally, they waver, wanting to continue but afraid they will be met with a volley of bullets as they round the blind corner.

Assuming that elderly American tourists in Jerusalem are unlikely targets for Israeli police bullets, I plunge around the corner, camera poised, expecting either to halt a beating or get the last, best photograph of a lifetime. The surprised children follow, but the narrow lane turns out to be totally empty. Obviously the Israelis can disappear in the Old City as easily as their quarry.

The children hesitate, then begin to drift away. As I return to the open space, the peddlers are wrapping their meager wares and the shoppers are dispersing hastily. Three policemen reappear from the narrow street into which all had vanished. I snap their picture as they pass but they ignore me. They know and I know it's now too dark for the picture to turn out.

Adrenaline still pumping, I walk through the Damascus Gate into a twilight afterglow outside the Old City walls and look at my watch. It's 4:30 p.m.—just two hours after my arrival in Jerusalem, the city of peace.