Our driver picked us up promptly at 9:00 to drive us to the border. We were on the Jordanian side at 10:00. From that point on, it took us a full three hours to get through. George, who had been our driver in Israel and the Occupied Territories, was there on the Israeli side of the border at 11:00 to meet us. We knew that the Israelis would close the border on their side at 1:00, so the delays caused us some anxiety.
Once we were on our way home, we were eager to move forward, and we didn’t want to miss our flight, which was scheduled to depart Tel Aviv at 12:30 a.m. Because of the time difference (7 hours), we could leave Israel early Saturday morning and arrive in Detroit by mid-afternoon Saturday– if all went acording to plan. Fran had a backup plan for Sunday just in case–a supply preacher with a sermon ready.
We stood in line at passport control for a very long time and then answered a lot of questions about our itinerary. Later, when they x-rayed her bags, Israeli security pulled Sandy out of the line and took her off to a different room for questioning. What they had seen was her metal water bottle filled with water from the Jordan River. Eventually they let her go, and we rushed out to where George was waiting for us.
George dropped us back at the Gloria Hotel in Jerusalem, where we had stored some of our luggage. We were able to relax there and eat a light lunch of some food we’d been carrying around, while we recharged our electronic devices.
Then we set out to find the Arab Orthodox Women’s Cooperative (Freres St., near the New Gate), where they sell beautiful hand-embroidered items made by over 500 women in their homes to help support their families.
Several of us bought cell-phone bags, and Fran bought a vest made by a woman in Hebron. The special pattern has a theme of hope. It will be her “uniform” when she takes her Power Point presentations on the road.
Once again we were reminded that it’s a small world: the woman at the Cooperative wanted to know how we knew of their work, and I told her that it was listed in a book (Living Stones Pilgrimage: With the Christians of the Holy Land, by Hilliard and Bailey), and that our friend Carol Hylkema had recommended them as well. Of course the woman knows Carol, who markets some of their goods through the PalCraft organization.
The Cooperative also operates a Coffee Room and Pie House (Bint El Balad, “the Country Daughter” next door where we enjoyed mango slushies.
Back at the Gloria Hotel, we re-organized the contents of our luggage in preparation for the flight home, then went across the street for dinner.
At 8:00, George arrived to drive us to the airport. He was very concerned about the checkpoints, especially the one outside the airport, which seemed to be staffed by a civilian security company. (Fran’s observation: I continue to find young young people in civilian attire with big guns to be disconcerting.)
One of the learning opportunities of our pilgrimage was that of developing relationships with our Palestinian Christian guides and driver. George was our driver for all of our time in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
On the first few days of our time in the Holy Land, George was very prompt, pleasant, and courteous, but quiet, and we weren’t sure how much English he understood and spoke. He seems to speak enough Hebrew to function in his work. But our guide was doing most of the talking with us at that point and talking with George in Arabic.
During the two weeks, we got to know one another better. There were times when it became obvious how concerned George was for our safety and comfort. He was normally very calm, but the increase in his stress level was apparent as we neared the airport and he coached us on what we should and should not say to the guards at the checkpoint. Arab drivers, he said, are always pulled over at the checkpoints, and they and their passengers receive close scrutiny.
Sure enough, we were pulled over, while cars driven by Israelis sped on by. We sat and waited and waited, while George quietly fumed. Eventually a young guard with a big gun came and examined our passports and asked us some questions, and we were given permission to proceed. It could have been worse, so we were grateful.
This is part of the “matrix of control” that Jeff Halper and others describe (Jeff Halper, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, 2008), a system that prevents Palestinians from having any sense of certainty about being able to go through their daily lives as planned, to be able to travel to work, to visit family, tJeff o get to worship or school, or to access medical care. We can only imagine the toll it takes on Palestinians.
At the airport, the security was thorough, but we cleared the process faster than our group had three years ago.
Tired from the day’s travel and the stress of going through multiple security points, we waited to board our plane and hoped to be able to sleep on the flight across the Atlantic.
