On this Monday, it was planned to go into the West Bank and spend the day in Bethlehem. The group was composed of A🇫🇷, R🇫🇷, J🇨🇭, L🇲🇽, R🇪🇸, J🇪🇸 and I. We met at 9:30AM at the Damascus Gate to jump on a bus that would leave us at the border wall between Israel🇮🇱 and the West Bank🇵🇸. When entering the new territory there were no control checks… but a lot of taxi drivers. There was a dozen of them who came upon us, each proposing a cheaper price to drive us to the center of the Nativity city. Because of Covid and its subsequent lockdowns, it had been more than a year since there was any tourists so they were very enthusiastic about us. But sadly for them, we had other plans.
We walked for five minutes and got to another part of the border wall where there was messages and drawings. Very nice drawings by the way. But a lot of propaganda messages trying to get to the sentiments of tourists by focusing on small details and failing to explain the broad picture. On that wall was a recurring message: Allah is your taxi driver. At first, we didn’t mind but then we actually met Allah… the taxi driver. At that point, we were eager to get to the city center. He asked for 80 shekels each for the ride, we offered 20. We talked it through and agreed on 40 shekels. Thank god for A negotiation classes and more importantly her personality. I would have accepted the 80 shekels, equivalent to 20 euros, as it seemed a good price for what was offered.
So Allah took us in his taxi van and took us first to see some of Banksy paintings. He was really nice and talked us through his vision of the conflict. As foreigners, we have the chance of hearing both sides and it is incredible how both sides are equally single minded and biased. For your information, Bethlehem is in Zone A of the West Bank, which means it is under the Palestinian Authority control and under its own armed forces, not Israeli forces. Then, Allah took us to the most important place in the city for Christians, the Nativity Church. Again, how lucky are we to be there without any other tourists. The place was basically empty.
After this, we walked in the Shouk, the market of Bethlem. You could again see that it has been a long time since tourists were there as every shop keeper was running at us and testing very languages he knew to try to sell us things. Some of them were saying: « Please talk to us, we have to practice our English ». All very nice people.
Then, Allah took us to a restaurant. On the way, he showed us his own restaurant, still in its building phase. Arriving at the restaurant, we didn’t really knew what we ordered but we received plenty of delicious plates … at a very cheap price. Good address !
Afterwards, we went to see another Banksy painting. Then, he took us to a UN refugee camp. It was inhabited by Arabs who had to leave Israel, some in 1947, some later. Again there, lots of messages, lots of names of casualties written on the walls. After this, he took us to get Knafe, a delicious cheese but sweet dessert. We all had a plate and in total it costed 50 shekels, which is 12,5€, again very cheap.
At that point, the afternoon was almost over so we decided it was time to go back to Jerusalem. We didn’t want to stay in the West Bank at night for our own safety. So we took another bus that stopped at the border. There, there was an identity check up. The procedure of the military people was to stare at us in a mean way and check-in at our identity papers. But beyond that, it was easy entering back in Israel.
That is pretty much it, a day in Bethlehem.