Dennis Fox’s Weblog

I left my Ramallah apartment Tuesday morning at about 8:20, walked to Al-Manarah as a fitting starting point, and started walking toward my goal, Jerusalem’s Old City. It  took some seven hours to get there, but if I’d gone without my camera and without taking a few short detours, I think it would just take about three or four hours. The main highway is not especially hilly, and I ran into no significant problems. As far as I can tell, I walked about 12 miles in all, a couple of miles more than the direct route. For now, here are a few photos of the day’s highlights – things I particularly noticed for one thing or another. Eventually I’ll post a more extensive set in my photo galleries, and maybe write a more-organized account.

I want to say first I’m really glad I walked. As I expected, I did see a lot of details I routinely miss when I take the bus or cram myself into a shared service taxi.

The road from Ramallah to the Qalandia checkpoint was often crowded as it wound its way through Ramallah’s southern expansion, the abutting village of Kafr Aqab, and the busy Qalandia refugee camp. All along the was was an endless stream of taxis and buses, horns honking to see if I wanted a ride, people getting on and off. As I suspected, wilderness this was not.

With stops to take a lot of photos, it took an hour and 45 minutes from Al Manarah to Qalandia, probably about 3 miles. I bought water a couple of times along the way – the day was what most people consider pleasant and I consider hotter than Iike – and bought and ate a falafel sandwich while eyeing the graffiti on the Separation Wall just before the checkpoint.

A guy who saw me taking pictures asked me to take his.

I took photos along the way of several Jewish settlements, including Psagot overlooking downtown Ramallah, which I’ve posted photos of before, and one closer to Qalandia that I think is Kochav Ya’akov. Lots of other things, too….

I put my camera in my pack to cross through the checkpoint, to avoid giving the Israeli soldiers a reason to look through it. The checkpoint was pretty empty, very unlike my passage two years ago when it took forever. This time, I got behind a guy waiting at the turnstile for the disembodied Voice over the loudspeaker to tell him to move through. A kid came by trying very aggressively to sell me a pack of gum or mints or something similar. I said no, and no again, and no a lot more times. The kid wouldn’t give up, kept pushing the packs on me, and I kept handing them back, then threw one in a garbage can, and he kept on coming, even made kicking motions toward me. At that point the guy at the turnstile yelled at the kid, the two of them argued a little, and finally the kid moved away. I thanked the man, who told me to go ahead of him, but then he realized I was on the wrong line since I had a foreign passport. So I moved to a different turnstile — where the mints kid was harassing the two or three Palestinian women who were there. I think they then realized they were in the wrong line, because they moved out and I had it to myself. This was all very unsettling, and also very uncharacteristic in my experience in Palestine.

When the Voice told me to move through, I put my daypack, my smaller waist pack, my camera, my small camera-accessories bag, and my cellphone on the conveyer belt and walked through the metal detector. I had to hold my passport up to a glass window so the soldier inside could look at my visa. Then I gathered all my stuff, carried it all through another turnstile, and left the building. Outside, in the shade, I hoped I’d be able to walk in the shade as I headed south. It was not yet 10:30 in the morning, but I knew it was going to get hotter.

Fortunately, the shady side of the street was adjacent to the Separation Wall itself, which had a small walkway. Although I couldn’t see over it until I crossed the street a few minutes later, on the other side is the Palestinian village of E-Ram.

Across the street from where I walked is Jerusalem’s Atarot Industrial Zone. Yes, Jerusalem officially extends now all the way up to the Qalandia checkpoint, with pockets carefully included or excluded to suit the city’s interest in maintaining an 80% Jewish majority. According to a couple of my maps, parts of E-Ram and even Kafr Aqab on the other side of the checkpoint are part of Jerusalem even though they’re on the Palestinian side of the wall. I’ve read about this being a problem in a couple of Jerusalem’s Palestinian “neighborhoods” where Jerusalem residents no longer get city services and can no longer easily get into the heart of the city. Sounds to me like these are the neighborhoods the city would like to get rid of, along with their Arab residents.

A kilometer or so further south, past E-Ram, the wall suddenly changes direction by 90 degrees and moves straight eastward.

This detour incorporates into the Israeli side a neighborhood that soon blends into the Jewish settlement of Neve Yaakov, Jerusalem’s most northern Jewish section. Neve Yaakov is about halfway between Ramallah’s center and Jerusalem’s Old City.

A little further along is another Jewish settlement Israel considers part of Jerusalem, North Pisgat Ze’ev, which soon blends into Pisgat Ze’ev, East Pisgat Ze’ev, West Pisgat Ze’ev, and South Pisgat Ze’ev.

Most of these settlements have the look of Jerusalem neighborhoods rather than West Bank settlements – white stone rather than red roofs. Israelis do not consider these to be settlements. They are all connected by nice roads, and someday will probably all merge into one urban center.

On the other hand, some red-roofed settlements, like this one (I’m pretty sure it’s Geva Binyamin), remain on the Palestinian side of the Wall, down the hill from Pisgat Ze’ev in the foreground and what I think is the Palestinian village of Jaba to the left.

In Pisgat Ze’ev itself, where I went looking for coffee and ended up escaping the heat in air conditioned splendor, I saw lots of campaign posters for Jerusalem’s different mayoral candidates; the election was the day of my walk. Most posters were for Porush, the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) candidate who lost. I saw a few young people putting up posters telling people that a vote for Porush was a vote to “make Jerusalem resemble Bnei Brak” and other ultra-Orthodox cities. About a third of Jerusalem’s Jewish voters are Haredi (most Palestinian residents boycott the elections). At the end of the day, Porush lost, attributed by many to a split among Haredim.

After lunch, I headed on the road through the next Pisgat Ze’ev branch, which turned out to be more of a hilly slog than I had expected. But I’m glad I went that way, because I stumbled across something not on my very detailed Jerusalem street map: the Shuafat Refugee Camp, which my map simply labeled “Industrial Area.” It was easy to spot the camp alongside the road: It’s to the right of the Separation Wall, with South Pisgat Ze’ev on the left:

The refugee camp had two checkpoint entrances that I saw, one on the highway with no traffic at all and the other coming out of what seemed to be the commercial core, with a long line of traffic waiting for the Israeli soldiers to let them out. This was next to a huge construction area, then the highway westward to Maalei Adumim, and then Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood.

By now, about 1:45 pm, I was in the home stretch. I talked for 10 or 15 minutes with a couple of workers  on Jerusalem’s under-construction train project, who told me they were Arabs and that Barack Obama’s father was Jewish. I told them I didn’t think so, but they told me they were sure, everyone knew.

Traffic was very heavy here, with lots of impatient drivers trying to get on or off the highway. Here for the first time there was no good place to walk, but the adjacent railroad bed worked just fine.

I ignored the bus from Ramallah. Buses are for wimps.

Half an hour later I was sitting on a shady  bench in East Jerusalem, glad to be off the hot road. And at about 3:00 I entered the Old City at Damascus Gate, the main entry point for East Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents in this highly segregated city.

Wandered around, to and out through Jaffa Gate, the main entry point for West Jerusalem’s Jewish residents. The guy with the harp is not typical, though he seemed to be attracting tourists.

And my formal walk was over!

However, it was now not yet 4:00, and I wandered south outside the Old CIty’s wall to meet an old friend for coffee at Jerusalem’s Cinematheque. From the road above I looked east and saw the Separation Wall at Abu DIs just before sunset.

Trying to keep my photos here to an almost-reasonable number, I didn’t include some others that are also worth commenting on. Another time, or else in my galleries.

I will say, though, that just about everything I’ve described here is on the eastern side of the Ramallah-Jerusalem road. Across the road to the west, south of the Atarot Industrial Area near Qalandia, are the Palestinian villages of Beit Hanina and Shuafat, inside Jerusalem’s city limits. The bus from Jerusalem to Ramallah (a Palestinian bus – the regular Israeli bus doesn’t go there) drives through these neighborhoods, dropping people off and picking up others along the way. I took that bus back to Ramallah this morning; it took 45 minutes, about twice as long as a direct ride. But it seemed pretty quick as we sailed past landmarks that took me a lot longer to get past on Tuesday.

Technorati Tags: Abu Dis, checkpoints, Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish Settlement, Neve Yaakov, Palestine, photography, Pisgat Ze’ev, Qalandia, Ramallah, Separation Wall, Shuafat

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Israel/Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.