Getting back home was a long, and somewhat traumatic experience. There are a few days I still have yet to blog about, but I really want to share this before I back track.
On Monday morning, the IDF raided Qalandia refugee camp, killing three and injuring 15. This camp was only a mile or two away from where I was staying in Ramallah. For some lovely photos and reactions, see this blog from my friend from the delegation. It was surreal. Everything was shut down, everyone was mourning. Banners and posters of the faces of the martyrs lined the streets, and the usual sense of urgency and routine that Ramallah had for the previous days I had been there was gone. Stillness and grief was upon us all.
Since there were no buses or taxis allowed through the checkpoint, I got a ride from a friend's roommate to the checkpoint. After an emotional goodbye to a few folks from my delegation, I walked through hoping to find some form of transportation to Jerusalem on the other side. Though I had walked through once before with the delegation, I really had no idea what to do or where to go. Picture four narrow caged hallways with rotating doors at each end, voices shouting on the loud speaker and various stopping points along the way. A teenaged boy passing through kindly pointed to the last hall and said "wrong line!" I hobbled back down the narrow cage with all of my luggage barely fitting through and made my way to the front. I waited a few minutes, and a loud buzzer and flashing light signaled that it was my turn to go through. I showed the border control officers (seemingly younger than I am) my passport, sent my bags through the scanner and I was finally on my way with tears in my eyes.
A sigh of relief rose up inside me when I saw a bus waiting on the other side. I hopped on board and was off to Jerusalem. Since this was a Palestinian bus, it was allowed only to the edge of East Jerusalem. I got off at the last stop and walked to the restaurant where I had arranged for the shuttle to the airport in Tel Aviv. The shuttle is run by an Israeli company, so it would not go any farther into East Jerusalem for "security" reasons. The bus driver was visibly fearful when I boarded the bus. He did not look me in the eye, did not get out to help me with my bags and motioned with his hands to hurry it up. When we crossed over into West Jerusalem, his mood changed. He greeted the passengers, stood outside the bus to wait for them and helped them open the trunk and put their luggage away. Of course, this made me more than a little bit angry.
We arrived at the airport and I made my way to my gate. At the front of the line, a woman waited to check passports and ask a few questions. She looked at me, looked at my passport, looked at me again and furrowed her brow. "Pronounce your last name," she barked. The urgency melted off of her face when I pronounced it in the Anglicized form it takes when I say it. She asked me a few more questions Who were you here with? Do you have family here? Did you pack your bags yourself? Do you have family here? Did anyone give you gifts or packages while you were here/ DO YOU HAVE FAMILY HERE? My answers were luckily exactly what she wanted to hear, though she clearly was not convinced that my kind of brown was not the dangerous kind. I am asking you this for your own safety. She told me. Phew, I feel so much safer! is what I wanted to condescendingly reply with. Instead I moved on to have my bags checked after having a coded sticker attached to my passport. The code indicated that I was not particularly threatening.
I nervously approached the bag-checking area, knowing there were a few things in my bags they would not be happy to see. Sure enough my nervousness was founded. They saw my "Visit Palestine" poster and some keffiyehs wrapped in "Made in Palestine" packaging. The man checking my bag looked up disdainfully and called over his manager. When she arrived she scoffed and began another series of questions. Why are you here? Do you have family here? What group were you here with? Do they have a political agenda? I see you were in the Palestinian territories, where exactly were you? Who gave you these things? I answered honestly. It is not illegal for me to be in Palestine, there is no reason for me to be evasive. They already knew I was there, and that was threatening enough. They proceeded to question me and look through every single one of my items for the next 2 hours. They took everything out to be x-rayed separately. They searched my computer, went through my photos and email, and swabbed samples of everything. They took me into a separate room to be patted down, frisked, and swabbed by a White American woman who was apparently no older than I and was also apparently Israeli now. They took the olive oil and coffee I had purchased in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and wrapped and packaged it separately. "Don't worry, you don't have to pay to check this box." OH I AM SO RELIEVED NOW, THANKS FOR YOUR KINDNESS is what I wanted to sarcastically scream. Each of my bags and my passport was then labelled with a new code. The bad-girl code. I was finally escorted through passport control to my gate by security personnel.
Obviously this was incredibly annoying, frustrating and demoralizing (which is the point), but it was also strangely empowering. They obviously did not find anything that threatened anyone's physical safety in my bags or on me. What they did find was evidence of what I saw, and that scared them. I was not armed with weapons, but with ideas. I am armed with the truth, and I am ready for combat.
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