7th September
East Jerusalem.
I spent all of today in Bethlehem, and found it quite a charming place. If I do end up teaching more in Bethlehem than anywhere else, I’ll certainly be happy to live there. The day began with my first public bus journey in Palestine so far – Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and it was fine – except for being stopped at the checkpoint for about a quarter of an hour while all the Palestinians on board had their passports checked. I gather that a quartet of an hour is a fairly short wait compared with what can happen. Yesterday one of the piano teachers from Nazareth was coming from Ramallah to Jerusalem and all the Palestinians had to get off the bus and physically walk through the checkpoint. That is normal for this checkpoint, but they held them there for an hour and a half out in the sun, ‘herding them like sheep’. Perhaps inevitably, arguments and fighting began to break out amongst the Palestinians.
I was very impressed by the standard of the students today. Even the young ones who were applying as total beginners took to it, almost without exception, like ducks to water.
To get back from Bethlehem after the buses have stopped, which is at about 6pm, you have to get a taxi to the checkpoint, then walk through and get another from the other side to take you into Jerusalem, or wherever it is you’re going. This is unless you happen to find a taxi in Bethlehem with yellow number plates, but most have the green ones that restrict them to the West Bank only and hence the need for a change when crossing over into Israeli controlled territory. Walking through an almost deserted checkpoint after dark is a strange experience – a bit like walking round a deserted dock, or factory of some kind. There’s lots of equipment around for dealing with hoards of people and lots of cars, and it all lays dormant with just the odd soldier here and there, to whom you say ‘Tourist!’. I wonder whether any actually believe me.
In my taxi from the checkpoint into Jerusalem the driver, and elderly Arab man was pointing out the age of the buildings as we passed them; ‘These houses are 100 years old, that Church is 300 years old – Israel is only 60 years old. These houses were built for Arabs. These walls were built for Arabs’, he said. As we approached another building, he said ‘that building used to be an eye hospital for Palestinians, it was an eye hospital’. And that building, just now happens to be the ‘Mount Zion Hotel’ – talk about adding insult to injury.
