Israel was to be our 5th and final country – and a logical place to end the trip, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, budget airlines such as EasyJet and Jet2 provide regular services to the UK from Tel Aviv, reducing the cost of getting home and secondly, whilst you cannot enter Syria or Lebanon with an Israeli stamp in your passport, you are able to enter Israel with a Syria/Lebanon stamp. This sounds straightforward in principle, yet ended up involving interviews with the Israeli Defence Force and almost being strip searched.
We had left Petra at 5 that morning, and reached the bus terminal in Amman a few hours later. From there it was easy to find a taxi driver to take us to the border and a short drive to the border town. When we were about 1km from the Jordanian border post, all cars and taxis heading the opposite way were flashing their lights and waving at us. Our driver told us this meant the border would be closed, and that it could stay closed for a couple of hours if there had been an incident. As the only crossing point into Israel in Northern Jordan, we had no choice other than to carry on to the border and work out a plan from there.
We were deposited on the side of the road with our luggage, and walked past an enormous queue of coaches to reach a large metal gate, where hundreds of people were standing around in the sweltering heat. After about 20 minutes waiting, a border guard noticed that we weren’t Palestinians and quickly ushered us through the gate and into an air-conditioned building (oh the joys of a European Passport). We then joined a queue and relinquished our passports, then sat in the waiting room for over an hour, before our passports were returned to us and we were ordered onto a waiting coach. The coach, I later discovered, is used as a means of protection for people crossing the Allenby Bridge border (just in case the political situation in the region suddenly deteriorates and the locals get a little trigger happy). The coached moved toward the centre of the bridge at a snails-pace, stopping once to have our passports checked again by the Jordanian administration, and once to have our passports checked by an Israeli border guard. Eventually we reached the terminal at the other side where we again relinquished our passports, and our luggage was taken to be X-rayed and scrutinised. This, we would learn, was only the beginning of the trauma to come.
We were ushered into a queue marked ‘tourist’ – meaning we would not get the preferential treatment of Israelis, but would be treated a whole lot better than those in the ‘Arab’ queue. We were separated and asked to fill in immigration declaration forms – the usual ‘name’ ‘date of birth’ ‘country of residence’, but also ‘places visited’ and ‘places to visit’. We were then called out separately and quizzed not only on our own answers but on each other’s answers – corroborating our movements for the previous 3 weeks and ensuring that we were not going to be a threat (or Syrian spies). The Israelis were also deciding if we should be strip searched to look for propaganda. The IDF soldiers interrogating us were knowledgable about the cities we had visited in the region, presumably so if we said anything fabricated about them they would be able to pick up on it. Eventually it was decided that we were not going to cause any trouble, and we were reunited with our bags and passports (fresh with another stamp) and boarded a minibus to Jerusalem.
So far we had only managed to get from Jordan into the (then) Israeli occupied Palestinian territories. Jerusalem was a full hour away from the border, and by the time we reached Damascus Gate at the Old City, we had been traveling for over 14 hours. The next morning we walked the ramparts of the Old City – walking all the way round from Lion’s Gate to Jaffa Gate and trying not to be overcome by Jerusalem Syndrome (a medically recognised condition whereby visitors to Jerusalem are so overcome by the spirituality and significance of the city that they start to believe that they themselves are the second coming of the messiah). In the afternoon we visited a place I had always been interested in visiting – the Israeli Holocaust Museum. The museum gave a sombre yet fascinating insight into how the Holocaust played out across the world, with some gruesome artefacts and daunting statistics, but an overall sense of rebirth and hope. We then headed back to the city centre with a new respect and understanding of the importance of Israel to the people who call it home.
The view of the Old City of Jerusalem from the ramparts, including the Dome of the Rock in the background.
The next day we did the usual tourist sites of the city – the Wailing Wall, Via Dolorosa and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (alongside throngs of tourists, all high on spirituality). Afterwards we passed a military checkpoint and climbed Temple Mount and saw the Al Aqsa Mosque, and the famous golden roof of the Dome of the Rock. Unfortunately, the interior of the Dome is closed to non-Muslims, but the experience of being next to the staggering building was fantastic. Since my visit, I have read that it has become significantly harder to visit the Rock, given the situation in the region.
Sightseeing in Jerusalem – the Wailing Wall, Dome of the Rock and Church of the Holy Sepulchre
That afternoon we visited a fascinating neighbourhood of New Jerusalem called Mea Shearim, an area of the city reserved for Orthadox Jews to live and work. This distinct breed of Judaism is typified by the long curls and black robes of men, and the plain clothes of women. The neighbourhood was full of anti-Israel propaganda (the super Orthodox Jews in Israel believe the state of Israel is not legitimate until it covers the entirety of the holy land).
Jewish anti-Israeli propaganda in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem
We then returned to the hostel, overcome by the sheer volume of history in Jerusalem and making plans to travel into the West Bank the following day and visit Bethlehem.
L X T H R D G 