Palestine: First Thoughts

On the shared taxi from the airport, a fellow Aussie of a less political bent looked out at the apartheid wall running alongside the highway and, when we came to a watchtower, said: "That looks like a prison" - I wish he'd known how right he was...

It's certainly a surreal experience to land at Ben Gurion, pass through the infamous Israeli border control (I was so nervous approaching the counter I couldn't even make myself smile...) and to arrive in Palestine. Here more than anywhere else in the world you can feel the arbitrary nature of borders; occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank flow out of 1948 Israel within the space of a matter of minutes from the airport. Yet for this tiny historical division, millions are opressed, lives have been lost, and the world watches...






The surreal feeling was with me for my first four days in Jerusalem - especially when I went wandering through the old city, the heart of the conflict here since 1948 and for centuries before that, to look for a laundromat! It took a few days for it to really sink in that this was a place where people go about their lives. Indeed, Palestinians are resolute to go on living their lives in the face of this occupation... although from time to time, ordinary life is impossible here.

The Second Intifada began when Ariel Sharon decided to enter the Haram ash-Sherif (or Temple Mount, containing the Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock) via this bridge on September 28, 2000, accompanied by around 1000 soldiers.





This one REALLY needs no explanation...