Two Kilometers from Nablus, on the road to Ramallah, stands three, 100 meter long lines of concrete blocks running up to the Hawarra Checkpoint. Named after the detention camp set up there by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) during the Second Intifada, the checkpoint is more reminiscent of a cattle coral than any boarder crossing I’ve ever seen.
As you approach the checkpoint (on foot unless you have yellow, Israeli plates), you are funneled into a line where the IDF checks documents and searches bags. Standing in a 10 minute long line in front of a Palestinian couple who looked as if they were at least in their 70’s, I reached in my pocket and flashed the blue and gold of my U.S. passport. The Israeli soldier motioned for me to come forward. I told him I had been in Nablus to see the Church of Joseph’s Well. He waved me through.
In fact, I had been in Nablus at the invitation of an American I had met on Arab Bus 18 to Ramallah. Beau, a former marketing major and brewer from Rochester, has been teaching English in Nablus since mid-October with Project Hope. The only other non-Palestinian on the bus to Ramallah, we had ended up sitting next to each other, and when I told him I was heading to Ramallah to walk around and get a feel for the city, he encouraged me to come with him to Nablus. It took me about 20 minutes to work up the nerve to say yes.
Nablus is a city about an hour from Ramallah by service (ser-vees) taxi, although its actually only 30 kilometers. Once famous as a major producer of olive oil soap and the home of the Samaritans (a sect of Jews who intermarried with Gentiles about two-and-a-half thousand years ago), Nablus is now better known as one of the worst hit cities of the Second Intifada. It is a city that, until recently, has been outside the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), run by competing “Brigades” of “Martyrs” or “Freedom-Fighters.”
As we walked through the Old City—which is the base for these Brigades—the posters of martyrs and Brigade flags were a potent reminder of just where we were. Beau had given me an official NGO-looking vest to put on and had instructed me not to take pictures, lest I capture the ire of someone wanted by the IDF. After Beau pointed out the place where a predator drone took out a wanted suspect and two men who were with him in early October, we passed the site of a bombed-out soap factory, destroyed to make room for tanks during the Second Intifada (many soap factories were destroyed or closed with concrete as part of the IDF’s economic warfare during the Intifada). Up the road a bit was the place where a house had been bulldozed with the family inside.
Beau didn’t actually take me up there. Which leads me to a funny (kind of) storey. On our way into the Old City, we ran in to a friend of Beau’s, Barnaby—a Canadian with visa problems, running a tour company. Barnaby and his friend Greg, who will be studying at AUC next semester, were held, hands and legs spread, against the wall opposite the bulldozed house for about twenty minutes by a member of one the Brigades. When he went to go get either his gun or his buddies (they are not sure which) a few of the other Palestinians in the square helped smuggle Barnaby and Greg out of the Old City. Later, while sitting in Nablus’s hotel, having a drink, the commander of PA forces in Nablus came in to let them know that the man was “insane,” had been beaten unconscious, and taken to a mental institution in Bethlehem. The man then took Barnaby and Greg back through the Old City—a bit like getting back on the bike.
(That’s enough for one post. I promise another one very soon.)
Edit:
For an update on the situation check out thisBBC article about and IDF incursion into Nablus.
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