People milled around the hotel lobby, looking at Banksy originals with their calculators out, paying bills and waiting for cabs to take them back to the light.
I had been toying with the idea of going to Hebron. The unease felt in Ramallah was long in the rear-view mirror and I was feeling I could handle anything. Probably. I’d already heard Hebron is a kettle of fish. There are Israelis and Palestinians both living there and both sets are, by repute, hard. And we’re not talking football hooligan ‘you-spilled-my-pint’ hard. We’re talking hard. There are, apparently, roads that are split down the middle. In the lobby I got into a conversation with a nice British couple – their daughter was starting at Brighton Uni this year – and he said “I really advise you not to go to Hebron. I work for the UN and….” It’s OK. Let’s not go to Hebron. I had another plan anyway. something much less challenging.
When I realised that maybe Hebron wasn’t the place for me or my plaster, I decided to go back to Ruth’s. It was the first night of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and they were having a big family mean – 19 people at the table – and I’d had an invitation to make it 20.
Getting back to the Promised Land wasn’t hard. The checkpoint was abut 100 yards up the road – the guys who got the cabs were maybe given more of a roundabout trip. Just follow the line of the wall and you can’t miss it. It’s a big thing with loads of wire and soldiers all around it.
Smile easily and keep on walking. A series of gates and turnstiles in what looked like a make-shift corrugated iron barn, the checkpoint was effective if not particularly intimidating and,
thanks to my magic passport, surprisingly easy. A few soldiers, not many visible, probably more behind the scenes, but none of them were interested in me. I got lost, they helped me. I made a joke with a cute looking Israel soldier and she played back. It was easy. One person looked at my passport, and even then didn’t open it. Being white British, it does have its benefits.
As I reached the end of the path out, I saw the exit, a gate which was swathed in bright sunlight and, really, it looked like you were walking into the light. Just to rub it in, glossy posters from the Israeli Ministry Of Tourism covered the walls.
The contrast between one side and the other was huge – and I mean the Arab West Bank, not just the refugee camp. Bright, shiny, posters that scream “Come on in, the water’s lovely” on the one side, hot and dusty and a bit down-at-heel on the other. This isn’t “the Israelis are really rich and the Arabs are really poor”. This is more a difference in culture. Israeli culture is Western and it’s all about consumption and making things look good. Arab culture isn’t like that. Or if it is, it’s less organised.
Still. It was nice to get the plaster off.
************
Being the luckiest bloke around, it’s a serious head fuck. On Saturday evening at 7pm, I was in a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem, one of the grimmest, most uncomfortable places I’ve ever been. People living on two litres of water a day, a school with bullet holes in the door, curfews, rubble and nothing. On Sunday evening at 7pm, I was in a lovely house in a Moshav just outside Tel Aviv, having been invited to a family Rosh Hashanah meal. A big table, 19 people from across the generations from a freshly unwrapped baby to an 86-year-old woman from Stamford Hill who’d been here since ‘48. Traditional Jewish food I remember from my childhood and enough warmth to light up the national grid. Really lovely people welcoming me into their home, feeding me, talking about life, sport (of course) and what’s going in back in England.
Football is always the way in to any conversation anywhere – what’s going on at Manchester United? Why is Mourinho so miserable? And – always my favourite – “You’re a Spurs fan, but you still like Arsenal?” Opinions about why Harry Kane looks burnt out vied for attention with plates of chicken being proffered. “Fried fish or boiled?” “He needs a rest”. “He’s young, when I was that age I didn’t need a rest”. “Have some chicken. I make this recipe every year”. What can I tell you? It was home.
They’re fascinated by the turn in our politics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re not surprised. Antisemitism isn’t a shock here. It still is for me. Every time I turn on my laptop I read more extraordinary stories about life back home and Labour. The latest one involving a meeting where the Labour MP for Enfield North, Joan Ryan, was kicked out by her constituency party for expressing concerns about what she described as “naked, vicious antisemitism within the ranks”. Somehow Iran’s propaganda outlet, Press TV, which has been banned in the UK, had been invited to live broadcast the meeting. The same Press TV that Corbyn has, for years, been a studio guest for. Now it seems that Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury, is up for the chop. Her crime? Talking out against antisemitism in the Party.
It’s no surprise that the Israelis are interested in what’s going on here. There’s no sense of “Told you so”, no lectures about “Now you see the need for a Jewish state”. Just concern. A lot of the people here – the older people – have Holocaust stories and, while no one’s making comparisons, it’s no surprise to anyone that a seemingly safe country such as the UK is suddenly finding it expedient to single out the Jews. As I’ve probably said before here – and no doubt will continue to say – there’s never been a country that hasn’t, sooner or later, schtupped the Jews, and it’s historically ignorant or wilfully naive to think it won’t happen again.