Author: jednovick

The hotel bloke from last night was still hanging around the lobby and we exchanged smiles. It’s a curious thing. I could swear he looked a bit embarrassed, a bit morning-after-the-night-before. He had been a bit shouty, and he’d let his frustrations show maybe a little too much.

I can’t imagine what it’s like. Your name, your passport means you can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything, means you’re trapped in perpetual effective life poverty, and in walks this bloke, nice enough but his name and his passport means he can do anything, go anywhere.

I thought about having a chat, making a joke of it, but…no. I smiled, wished him a happy birthday and shook hands. Some get the golden ticket, some get schtupped.

Leaving Ramallah was very different to arriving there. All the trepidation had gone, all the unease eased. It’s easy to feel a bit embarrassed about feeling uneasy. It’s just a place, they’re just people, but it’s interesting how you can get caught up in the stories, in the narrative you’ve been fed. (And I could apply that to more than a few people back home with regard to Jews and Israel). A few days later, talking to some Israelis in Tel Aviv the feeling returned, but just me dealing with my own experiences and own my own feelings…

Ramallah was fine. It’s a big place, lots going on. Streets full of shops where you often see familiar names – Samsung, Acer, Apple – and some not so familiar. I’d be surprised to see Osama’s Pizza opening a branch in Brighton anytime soon. There are street markets full of the smells of amazing spices, colourful fruit traders rubbing up against stalls selling rubbish sweat pants and t-shirts with really funny slogans, fresh food and schmutters. Life everywhere you look.

Occasionally you get pulled up short. Like when you see a sign for “Pal Pay” and you remember that Paypal, our Paypal, doesn’t work in Palestine because (according to the Palestinians) Israel won’t give it access because through Paypal you can access international money. Restricting Paypal means money can’t get in and Palestine stays poor.

It feels poor but if you didn’t know the story it might not have felt or looked that odd. Another hot, dusty Muslim city. Being in Ramallah was very much old school travelling, all hustle and hassle and heat. The central bus station – a yard, really – was like the same as the rest of Ramallah: dusty, bustling and full of blokes smoking.

As the bus pulled out of Ramallah – and it takes a while to wind through the outskirts – the last two things I saw was a Jaguar car showroom (closed) and a KFC (open).

Next stop, Bethlehem. See if I can find somewhere to stay. After the hustle of Ramallah, it’ll be a relief to find somewhere more stable. Bethlehem. Stable. Oh, never mind.

When I was younger I went to Jamaica, stayed on this holiday resort compound. It was lovely but cut off from Jamaica. Could have been anywhere and it felt really uncomfortable, life as a posh tourist drinking overproof, overpriced rum, while the locals pressed their noses against the glass and maybe came in to do a bit of cleaning. A cheap holiday in other people’s misery etc.

But I don’t think I’ve ever felt as much a tourist as I did when I arrived in Bethlehem. Not so much when I arrived as when I told them what hotel I was staying at. The look the guys at the bus station gave when I said I was coming here. The looks of the guys outside the hotel as they try to sell schmutters and trinkets.

The hotel was The Walled Off Hotel. Banksy’s hotel. And if the purpose of this place is to make you feel uncomfortable then it succeeds big time. Getting out of the cab and standing outside the hotel, more buttons are pressed than in a button pressing factory. The hotel is on the outskirts of town and within touching distance of the wall. The wall we’ll get round to, but the hotel. The hotel is a temple to money. The name is lit up, there are bell boys outside, there’s a life size statue of a chimpanzee in bell hop dress, holding a suitcase. After coming off the minibus from Ramallah, arriving in Bethlehem bus station, negotiating a cab with the guys at the bus station – all in the dusty, hot heat – the smell of money coming off the hotel is nauseating. And then there’s the wall.

It’s difficult to convey the scale of the wall, the enormity. It’s bloody huge. Apparently, it varies between six and eight metres in height and that’s bloody high, but it feels a lot bigger than even that because – and I know this sounds stupid – it’s so vertical. You stand by the wall and look up and it just keeps going. You take a few steps back and it barely fits in your field of vision. Thick grey lumpy concrete. With a further wire ‘wall’ on top of the concrete.

Every so often, there’s a watchtower. And that’s even higher. Words like “Colditz” come to mind. Whoever had the concrete concession in Bethlehem, they did OK.

The wall is also covered – and I mean covered – in art and graffiti, some of it by Our Hero, some of it by people inspired by him, and some of it by a really nice local who’s got a shop just by the gas station opposite who can do Banksy better than Banksy. Wherever you look, there are kids with balloons and lots of slogans that would warm Roger Waters’ heart, you know, the sort of slogans you see on t-shirts in shops where they sell Che Guevara posters.

Just the other side of the wall is a Palestinian refugee camp. A yard this side, a yard that side. If it’s supposed to make you think, it makes you think. The camp’s been there since 1950 and there are tours…

Meanwhile back inside the hotel, the walls are the size of your credit card. The staff’s favourite phrase is “And shall I put that on your room?” Exclusive Banksy artefacts line the walls and hang from the ceiling. There’s a museum, a gallery and, of course, a shop. Ker and ching. To get to your room, there’s a ‘secret’ door. Next to the door there are some bookshelves, there’s a statue of (I think) Mary. You wave your room key in front of the statue; her nipples light up and the door opens. Something for everyone here.

The rooms are big, plush and expensive feeling. They feel expensive because they are expensive. $180. Full of tasteful artefacts – a leather trunk, a chaise lounge, a 30s standard lamp. It’s very lovely, undeniably very well done and comfortable, all posh pillows and power shower.

************

Bethlehem itself is a bit of a tourist town. There are coachloads of tourists, organised tours, tour guides everywhere. And shops selling Christ-related t-shirts, carvings, shawls and crosses, lots of crosses. The Old City is the usual labyrinthine hubbub, but it’s pristine. The buildings are clean, the stonework is white, it’s dusty but there’s not the usual litter everywhere. It’s interesting but it’s not why I came here. Going for a coffee, that’s much more what we’re looking for.

There’re tourist cafes but, this is more like it. The café is local. Formica tables and plastic chairs. A young lad would be serving if there would be anyone to serve. So I sit down and order a coffee – “Please, with sugar” – and before even the coffee comes…

“You play chess?”

A young lad, early Twenties, good-looking bloke, thick shiny black hair. His English is good, well better than my Arabic, and he’s clearly smart.

“Chess? Yes, go on then. But” I say, “you’ll probably win”. He probably sits there all day, like some trapdoor chess fiend, playing with the tourists. Odds the first game I win, then he’ll suggest making the next game more interesting.

So, after a quick check that the plaster’s still on my ear, I choose white.

He tells me his name is Victor – “Victor? That’s a Palestinian name?” – and, almost inevitably, we launch into a variation of “So what’s it like living here?”

Victor, it turns out, is 23 and a footballer. He was in the national team for his age group when he was 15 but knocked it on the head because “there’s no point, we couldn’t play anyone so there was no point”. Palestine isn’t internationally recognised, so it can’t operate as a recognised place can. No international football. No Olympics. No Eurovision Song Contest.

Some of the people he played with went to California – you can get a visa, and a work visa, but it takes a long tie and it’s expensive. And you don’t always get it first time.

“They work, and they live over there. They don’t make enough money to save, so they don’t get anywhere. It’s just every day, every day”.

Victor’s a bit disparaging about the whole California business, but then again, Victor’s visa application was turned down. Rather than tread water and put any money he had into another visa application process, he started his own shop. Not a bad location, just outside the Old City, it sells jeans and t-shirts and all that kind of stuff.

He’s doing alright – better than he’s doing at chess – and has a very Lidl approach to business. Sell cheap, move on. I asked where he got the stock, and that’s when things got a little Palestinian.

They can’t do international e-trade because – and I’ve no idea what this means or how it happens – the PayPal thing is blocked. There’s no port because there’s no access to the sea, and there’s no airport because there’s no airport.

To get stock, he travels overland to Jordan, gets a plane to Turkey – one of the very few countries that accepts a Palestinian passport – and does his shopping. And then he comes back the same way he went. The whole thing takes about a week.

There’s nothing like travelling to make you realise that carrying a British passport really is to hold the golden ticket of life.

Victor’s not hugely fond of the Israelis. Big surprise, huh? “This is our country, why have we got no port? Why have we got no airport? We can’t do business and we can’t make money”. Looking at Victor, you know if he could make money he would make money.

But why is there no airport? The Israelis stop them having an airport?

I ask the question, he smiles and we both light up another cigarette. It’s cool. It’s only the five thousandth of the afternoon (so far). Well, like all good questions, the answer depends on who’s giving the answer. There’s no doubt that the PA has been given lots – and lots – of aid over the years, and this guy knows that as well as anyone but…

“They take the money. They don’t care about us, they just look after themselves”. I tell him what Hotel Bloke in Ramallah called Abbas.

“Abbas motherfucker. Yeah. Abbas motherfucker. They’re all motherfuckers’.

There was only one point I felt a bit uneasy. We were talking about business and restrictions – he talked a lot about business and restrictions – and at one point said

“You’re from England. You’re Christian, right? I’m also Christian…”

I don’t know if I heard what he said after that. I fingered my ear – the plaster was still secure – but in my head I was dressed up like the Haredi in Shabbat chic, big fur hat, black coat…

Should I have said “Listen Victor, we’re mates now. Actually, I’m Jewish, but it’s OK cos I’m one of the nice ones”. At best it would make the situation uncomfortable. This is someone who uses the words “Israeli” and “Jewish” interchangeably. “The Jewish come here and take our land”. I kinda want to say, “Don’t worry about that so much cos the Jewish just took your bishop”. There’s no messing about with labels and identity politics here. At worst? Who knows. It could be like the final scene of “Invasion of The Body Snatchers” (the remake) when Donald Sutherland screams and points at Brooke Adams when she approaches him.

It’s probably time for another cigarette anyway.

We’re mates now, showing each other moves and offering advice, but two games done, and he has to go back to work. For what it’s worth, I won them both. Maybe a joke about the Jews beating the Pales… No, probably not. Instead…

“Victor, listen before you go. Where’s the best falafel place here?”

“Come, I’ll take you there”. He really is a nice lad.

“This car. How much would it cost in your country? Honda Civic, 1992”.

In truth, you’d probably get one in exchange for a bag of cheese’n’onions, but….

“I don’t know. Abut £500 maybe”.

“Here, about ten thousand dollars”

“What?”

“You can’t get cars in. You can’t get anything into Palestine – so everything’s very expensive’.

I tell you what you can get here. Falafel. And the place he took me to looked a bit rough’n’ready, but… Five shekels later and I’m one happy boy.

*************

Meanwhile, back at the Banksy hotel life is slightly less pressured. OK, you have to run the gamut of frankly poor people, but once you’re inside they’re very attentive and you can get a decent and quite generous G&T almost immediately.

“Shall I put it on your room?”

There’s a guided tour of the camp just about to start and, in for a penny. I know I’m going to feel like the worst white boy voyeur tourist, but if we’re going to do this thing… and if they can (somehow) cope with the degradation of the camp, I can cope with a little bit of white boy guilt.

There are two guides, one for the outside walk around the wall bit, one for the inside bit. The inside guy lives inside. On the outside we get the facts, the figures, the details about when it was built, how much concrete, the stories of fighting and the stories of the art on the wall. It’s fantastically depressing and the wall kinda sucks the life out of you. It’s so high and thick and oppressive. The only bloke who’s laughing is the Banksy-alike guy next to the gas station. He’s wearing a cool pair of shades and invites us in. “Just have a look. You don’t have to buy anything, just look”.

I feel, in truth, extraordinarily uneasy. It’s not only the voyeur thing. The guide outside has said, quite openly, that “The Jewish” aren’t welcome.

“The Israelis?” I ask him.

He looks at me like I’m mad. Like… the Israelis are going to come here? Probably not. What Israeli would come here? One with a deathwish maybe. No, he means The Jewish.

“Do you get many Jews coming here. I don’t mean Israelis. I mean, like, tourists. Foreigners”

“I don’t ask anyone if they’re Jewish and no one tells me”.

“What if someone who was Jewish came here?”

He didn’t say anything, so I let it go. Don’t want to sound… too interested.

It seems that the situation is like this. Israelis aren’t banned from going to Palestinian or Arab towns in the West Bank, but they’re advised not to. And if they choose to go one, they’re on their own. The Israeli government don’t step in.

“Would they keep hold of Jewish? Sure. If they have a Jewish person, they can exchange them for Palestinian prisoners the Israelis have got”

That’s actually what he said. This would seriously not be a good place for an ear plaster to fall off.

I don’t know why I went in, but I went in. Was I scared? I cannot tell you how scared, how nervous. I’d have been a rubbish spy in the war, the game would have been up right away.

“Hey, you. You with the plaster on your ear and the blue nail varnish…”

Or maybe it would be like in The Great Escape and one of them would say “Shabbat shalom” to me and I’d reply “Shabbat shalom” back.

The camp – Aida Camp – was, sadly, like you’d expect. It was fantastically grim. I went to the “Jungle” camp in Calais and it’s not like that. The buildings are solid, it’s not like a “camp” – all tents and lean-tos. But then again, it has been here since 1950. But it’s grim. Unbelievably grim. The buildings are grim concrete. The “streets” are narrow alleys. A few roads around the perimeter where cars can go, but not much. There’s no green. No grass, precious few trees. No water to speak of – the people there exist on about three litres a day. For everything. It smells of bad sanitation. And all around is the wall. High. Grey concrete. Oppressive. It’s unbelievably grim.

The camp is almost circular. The only bit that doesn’t fit is a (relatively) small kink where the wall comes in. This is because Rachel’s Tomb – a sacred, Holy site – is situated there and the kink in the wall allows for Israelis to come and visit, whereas if it were inside the wall… well, you get the idea. They might come and visit, but they might not leave so easily.

The camp’s been there since 1950. Think about that for a minute. Since 1950. That’s… how many generations? People living here, people living in. these conditions, having kids here… growing up here. It doesn’t bear thinking about – but it’s got to be thought about.

Whose fault is it that the camp is there? Why are the refugees still there? Well, like everything else here, the answer depends on who you ask.

Some Palestinians see it as the fault of the Israelis. They kicked us out of our homes and that’s why we’re here. There’s a lot of talk about “the right of return”. The right to go to the villages / places they were kicked out of in 1948. Across one of the streets in the camp is a large key – a kind of statue that goes across the road – that symbolises the keys the houses that were stolen. (And, in fairness, their houses were stolen from them, though I must admit, I do think 70 years is a long time to sit and wait)

Some Israelis see it as the fault of the ruling Palestinian Authority, the thinking that goes “They’ve had billions in UN aid over the years, millions in aid from Israel. These people could have been rehoused a thousand times. There’s a whole city that’s been built out of UN aid that the PA won’t allow to be used because it suits their political aims to keep these people in degredation. The longer the refugees stay refugees, the easier it is to show the world what bastards the Israelis are. (And, in fairness, that’s working because the world does see the Israelis as bastards)

Whatever… whoever… It is, as ever, the people on the ground who suffer. You’d have to be a really cold, hard bastard not to feel absolutely for these people. They’ve got nothing. No hope, no water, no nothing.

Did I feel uncomfortable there? Absolutely. As a human being, it was horrible. The whole “white tourist voyeur” thing, it’s horrible. Did I feel scared? As a Jew? In truth, very. I couldn’t wait to get out. I was fingering my ear manically, probably looked like a madman. I hate ideas like “You look Jewish” because, you know, I look like me. But I probably do look Jewish. And if there are such things as Jewish mannerisms, I’ve got them. We were inside the camp for 45 minutes and every minute I felt self-conscious and a bit scared.

We were taken to the top of one of the buildings – four storeys high – climbing up unfinished walls and unfinished staircases, so that we could see the extent of the camp, what was outside, the wall surrounding it and the sheer oppression.

I asked the guide, a nice bloke in his mid-to-late Twenties, what he saw as the future.

“Do you have hope?”

“You’ve always got to have hope”

He spoke good English, was educated and bright and very knowledgeable. Well, this was his job.

“I was born here but I’ve got to have hope. In the past, a long time in the past, we all lived together. A hundred years ago, we all lived together. We all went to the beach together. We all got on with it”.

The light was fading and we had to descend the building using the torches on our phones and when he said “OK, l’ll walk you back to the gate”, I could have bought him a bagel.

**********

The tour of the refugee camp done, we walked back, still alongside the wall but this time on the right side. The blokes selling schmutters and trinkets tried to grab us, probably thinking we’d be a bit vulnerable, burdened by the weight of white man’s guilt.

Guilt schmilt. There’s no time for guilt, not when there’s G&Ts to be had at the Walled Off.

Tonight, there were some really good local musicians playing live in the bar. The food at the hotel was good and the red wine they chose to with it, excellent. No, not being sarcastic. That’s all true. And the incongruity, the button-pressing never lets up. The windows on the ground floor are really quite big, so as you’re eating your food and drinking your decent red and listening to local musicians, all you can see through the windows is the wall.

The next morning, as coffee was being drunk and freshly squeezed orange juice was being freshly squeezed, there was only one topic of conversation.

“If I buy that original Banksy in the shop, what do you think it would go for at home?”

I never caught his name, the bloke at the Alhambra Palace Hotel in Ramallah. He was really sweet, very friendly, very good-looking, spoke good English. Thick, slick hair. George Michael stubble. Red shirt, jeans. It was the day before his birthday, when he was going to turn 36.

“Be careful, my friend”, I said to him. “I got married when I was 36”.

“No way, not for me. Not yet”, he laughed. “I’ll get married but not yet. I’ve got too much to do”.

Nadal v Del Porto in the US Open was on his computer screen and it was clear Nadal was in trouble. It was fine. Two blokes chatting. He’s Palestinian, I’m Jewish. Well, he’s Palestinian and I’m an English bloke with his ear wrapped up in a plaster.

“People are people, so why should it be, you and I should get along so awfully”. It’s always a bit of a cliché to say things like “But we’re just people” or “If it was just up to the people everything would be OK. It’s the politicians who get in the way”. But you know the thing with clichés, that they’re just oft-repeated truths.

On so many levels we were just chatting, He was super helpful, got me drinks, wanted me to have a good time. I took time out to go and get us some coffees from across the road.

“Black coffee, please”

“You want it strong?”

“Please”

Strong. The coffee here redefines the word strong. It’s nuclear strong. Sci-fi strong. I’d long passed the point of worrying about going out, of feeling uneasy. Stroll across the road, hold up the traffic, gesticulate at the cars, laugh with the kid selling the coffee. I can do all that. Little things you pick up, like not taking a lighter out so you’ve got to ask for a light.

Sometimes it leads to a chat when they hear you’re English. It’s easy to feel a bit embarrassed about feeling uneasy. It’s just a place, they’re just people, but it’s interesting how you can get caught up in the stories, in the presumed narrative. These people, they’re not just Arabs, they’re Palestinians. The people I’ve heard about for so long. The enemy. Heads wrapped up in schmutters, throwing molotovs, wanting us out, wanting us dead. They’re also the kid selling me the coffee and the bloke in the hotel who wants to live a life before getting married.

Back at the hotel, it was only ever going to be a question of when not if we started to talk politics.

“You know Abbas?” he said

“Yeah, sure. You like him? You think he’s doing a good job here?”

“You know his full name?”

“Mahmoud” (It pays to do your research first)

“No, that’s not it. His full name is Abbas Motherfucker. (pause) Motherfucker…. Abbas Motherfucker is a criminal. Corrupt. He’s in the pocket of the Israelis…. Sure. He doesn’t care about us. Motherfucker”.

Someone once said something about the Palestinians being the worst led people ever, the people who had been most badly let down by their leaders. He liked that.

I asked him about the future.

“Let’s not keep looking to the past, we’ve got to look to the future because it can’t keep going on like this. Do you have hope? Do you see a way forward?”

“What’s the future? I’ll tell you what the future is. Blow everything up. Everything. Start again because this is never going to get better. How can it get better? You think Israel will just walk away (from the settlements)? You know how much money they’ve spent, you know how they get people to go and live there? They’re not going to give that up”.

Hotel bloke was noticeably getting more het up, angrier. You could see it, you could feel it. But for me this is cool. I wanted to talk to Palestinians and I was talking to a Palestinian and as long as the plaster didn’t fall off my earring…

The more we talk, the more it comes out. What the Israelis are like. How the Palestinians are hemmed in, how they can’t travel anywhere, how they’re in prison, the Jews, why it’s all the fault of the British – “They gave our country away. It was our country”. He paints a picture of how Palestinians are the victims of what is effectively an international conspiracy. No one helps, no one supports.

“What about the other Arabs countries? What about Jordan, Lebabnon, Syria?”

“They’re also controlled by other countries. You think they are free? You think they can do what they like?”

Does what’s happening in Gaza help? The rockets, the fire, the bombs. Does it help to fight back?

“Hamas are motherfuckers. The same. They don’t care about us”

Interestingly, he had no kinship with the Palestinians in Gaza, they weren’t the same as him, they weren’t brothers. They were different. And their leaders were different. But they were also motherfuckers.

“But what’s going to happen? There must be a some hope?”

“Every time some kid gets killed, his whole family dies. What have they got left? What have they got? I’m very lucky. I’ve got a big family. Four brothers, sisters, everyone’s well, no one’s been hurt. I’m fine”.

“But you could get hurt. They could get hurt”.

“If anything happened to my family, would I press the button? Of course! Why not? What would I have to live for? I’d have nothing to live for. Nothing. That’s what they make us do. That’s what we become”.

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.

Another relaxing day at Ruth’s. I could get used to this. In the evening we went to some neighbours who were intrigued by my trip to the West Bank.

They were immigrants – of course – but seeing as they’d been here since the 1960s… we can forgive them that. They were intrigued because they define themselves as “Left” and in truth, probably “Very Left”. Everyone here defines themselves as “Left” or “Right” and the labels only seem to relate to their position re ‘the situation’. No one seems to talk about health care and the other stuff that we talk about when we consider whether we’re Left or Right. I got the impression that most if not everyone here agrees on that stuff, and everyone agrees on what we’d call a Left viewpoint. Of course there’s healthcare. Of course you look after the vulnerable and the elderly.

Maybe it’s just that there’s so much rabbit about ‘the situation’ that no one’s got any time or energy for anything else.

One of the reasons my friends are so interested is that, as Israelis, they’re not allowed into Palestinian places.

I remember a few days ago,I had a chat with a mate about how I couldn’t hire a car in Israel and take it into Palestine. Like the smartarse who thinks he knows everything, I made a joke about going from Stamford Hill to Bayswater. (Sorry – a bit of a London-centric joke) and said that I could go from Stamford Hill (very Jewish area) to Bayswater (very Arabic area) but “you can’t go from Bayswater to Stamford Hill”.

Kinda wrong on every level. I could hire a car in Israel and take it into Palestine. Insurance might be grief, but I could do it. And out here people from “Bayswater” can go to “Stamford Hill”, but people “Stamford Hill” can’t go to “Bayswater”.

Even in the space of a few days, the pre-conceptions get overturned and the assumptions are proved wrong. It made me realise that, while I hate using this word, if there is apartheid out here, it cuts both ways.

There are roads you can drive down. And there are roads you can’t. The Palestinians can drive down the roads the Israelis can’t drive down. And the Palestinians can also drive down the roads the Israelis can drive down. Mostly though, everyone stays in their patch, not through anything other than the fact that people are basically tribal. We tend to stick with our own. (I grew up in a Jewish “ghetto” in north London. That’s just the way it was). But also it pays to be sensible.

We spoke long and hard about what it was like out there, about what the future held (their prognosis wasn’t good), and about what could be done to help ‘the situation’.

Could there be a “two state solution”? They doubted it, not in the current political landscape anyway.

What about, as the guide in the Refugee Camp suggested, a “one state solution”? They doubted it, because while that might work, it wouldn’t then be a “Jewish state”, it would just be a country where Jews lived.

What about… I don’t know. They supported Meretz, the Left-ist party, and like most people I spoke to criticised every inch of Netanyahu’s being, but really there wasn’t a lot of positive knocking about. There was, however, some very fine plum cake. And where there’s plum cake, there’s hope.

If Tel Aviv was all about good looking boys and girls silently whizzing around on electric scooters with the soundtrack being expensive laughter and chat, Ramallah is very different. There are a few women on the streets but it’s almost exclusively blokes. Groups of young-ish men mostly in their twenties hanging out, older groups of blokes inside cafes smoking hookah pipes.

I touch my ear and set off. Touch my ear because I couldn’t get the bloody earring out – what am I going to do? Ask for help? – so I wrap up my ear with a plaster. Better to look dead stupid than stupid dead.

There’s no point in writing this if I’m not going to be honest and when I got here and went for a walk I felt a bit uneasy. OK, quite a bit uneasy. I’d gone from a place where everyone’s a Jew to being the only Jew in the village. I felt everyone was looking at me, that they were sizing me up. In fairness, they probably were. A white bloke where there aren’t any white blokes, his ear’s wrapped up in a plaster and he’s wearing blue nail varnish. Really, you can’t blame them.

Mid-afternoon went for a walk. The streets are kinda busy, not quite bustling because it’s just blokes hanging around, but busy. After, I don’t know, ten minutes or so I decide that, whatever, let them look, you know. Walk, stop in a café, walk, stop in a café. The only time I feel really a bit like “Hmmm, not sure about this” is when I venture into the Old City ad maybe because it looks a bit like a scene out of the Liam Neeson “Taken” films, I think twice about it. It’s and old city like an Arabic old city: tiny little alleys, crumbling buildings, people hanging out of buildings. It’s not quite labyrinthine but I’m not sure Google Maps is going to help if I lose my bearings. And what if the plaster falls off? Maybe I’ll leave the Old City for another time. Like probably never.

And so I go back onto the main streets and that’s when it all goes a bit… normal. It doesn’t take long to feel more comfortable and all those “Be safe” messages from home seem a bit over the top. The roads are packed with cars but the cars. It’s a curious thing, when I was growing up, the local black men used to drive BMWs – this is a bit after the days of the Cortina Mk 2 1600E (“the black mans Rolls Royce” as it used to be called) – and it’s the same here. Loads of BMWs, some new but mostly old-ish, mostly with fat exhausts tuned to make maximum noise.

I’ve been here about four hours and when those fat exhausted Beamers backfire, I’m still thinking “Bloody hell, gunfire” and then a car with four blokes hanging out of it rolls by. Maybe that’s why all the women are indoors; because all the blokes are acting like twats. Skidding off the traffic lights, or just stopping in the middle of the road only to do a tyre skid start. You get your pleasures where you can, I guess.

I’m a bit hungry and start looking for something to eat. Joe’s told me of a place – Ziryab – and I find it but it’s a bit posh, a bit proper. All mosaic stairs and stone carvings. Maybe later, but for now I just want a bite. After a bit I find a small shack, a falafel joint. That’s the deal. Exactly that. So I make to go in and there’s two groups of lads, maybe early twenties. They look like the kids you see on the news, heads wrapped in a schmutter throwing rocks. They probably are the kids you see on the news throwing rocks. Or they could be studying sociology at the local college because they look like that too, but it’s funny what you think when you’re a bit paranoid. But, you know, if I feel a bit uneasy, well good, cos that’s why I’m here, so let’s get a falafel.

I look at them, they look at me. They shrug, I smile. They’re looking at me and, like I say, that’s fair enough because you don’t get too many middle-aged white blokes here, and then it’s my turn. I point, try to explain, laugh embarrassed and get what I want. As I turn to leave, falafel in hand, the terrorist behind the counter calls me back.

“Hey”

I turn round and he’s holding out a small paper bag. I reach out for it and he smiles.

“For you” he says, and inside the bag are a few extra falafel balls.

The later the night gets, the more the streets come alive. It gets darker, they get noisier. Sleep’s going to be an interesting one. I wander around doing the familiar bloke in a city dance – walk, café, walk, bar – and slowly (well, actually not that slowly) start to feel more relaxed, less like the bloke who doesn’t belong. I want to talk to some people. There’s no point being here and just looking in from the outside. I want to have a chat, have a chat about the important stuff but I also want to talk bloke bollocks, maybe to see if Palestinian bloke bollocks is the same.

Well, that didn’t take long. I go to Ziryab and there’s a group of blokes there – some working, some hanging around – and from one of their phones comes a familiar, universal sound. He’s watching a Real Madrid game and… off we go. And yes, Palestinian bloke bollocks is just the same.

“Liverpool!”

“No – Tottenham. Come on, Spurs, you know”

You’ve got to love football.

Back at the hotel though, that’s when we parked the bollocks and got round to the important stuff. And that was kinda hard and difficult and… something I’m going to think about before committing it to paper. Let’s just say, as stupid as it might look, I was glad my ear was wrapped up in a plaster.

You know, you could pick almost any period in history and it would be the Jews who were getting schtupped. You could go to any year, any century – literally, any year any century – and the Jews are getting killed, put in a ghetto, murdered, kicked out of here, kicked out of there. Sometimes turned into a lampshade. (Yes, I know it’s not only the Jews. But it’s mostly the Jews). Right now, right at this particular moment, it’s not the Jews. It’s the Palestinians.

Do I feel sad about that? Absolutely. Do I feel guilty? Well, maybe. But only as a human being, not as a Jew.

I’ve been a bit caught up with what to do, how to plan it. This business of taking each day as it comes, not booking anything, making it up as we go along, this works in most places, but Israel, as we all know, isn’t most places. You can travel on Friday but not Friday evening because it’s Shabbat. And then the next two days it’s Rose Hashanah and you’re not going to go traveling then either. So you can make your pitch on Friday morning, put up your tent and stay put until the singing and dancing g is done and then do something else. Unless you’re in Palestine in which case… Rosh schmosh. Doesn’t matter. Which is how I came to be sitting in a café in Ramallah.

The West Bank. Palestine. The Occupied Territories. Settlements. This is where the confessional comes in. Before I came here, I didn’t really have a clue. Hamas. They’re in charge of the Palestinians, right? Well, no. Not here. They’re in Gaza. Gaza’s not here, it’s down south, on the coast. Here, the West Bank, is a big chunk of land roughly speaking between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.

I remember being asked why I wanted to come over here.

“I want to have a look, have a sniff, to see what it’s really like”

Well, OK. So now let’s do it.

We are the luckiest people that ever there was. No wars, no fears, maximum freedoms, no grief. And we won the housing lottery, which gave us loads of free money. And the luckiest people in that demographic are the Jews. We get all that – and no one hates us for being Jews. (Well, increasingly it seems that they do, but so far…). We’re so privileged, us with our red – soon to be blue – passports and mostly we don’t even realise it. Spending our time on social media mouthing off about stuff we have no idea about like we’re the most important things around. I don’t know. Who am I to talk about that?

But anyway, more than anything this environment makes you realise that we really are the chosen people. Us with our white skin and European ease. This morning I was all double espresso, freshly squeezed orange juice – hold the ice – and croissants on Dizengoff Square and eight hours later I’m drinking mint tea in a sidewalk café in downtown Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank and effectively Palestine.

As soon as you make to go, you move out of the Dizengoff bubble. The central bus station is as scuzzy as bus stations always are. But there are armed guards and airport-style X-ray machines. To get to the West Bank it’s a bus to Jerusalem, then get from west Jerusalem to east Jerusalem to the Damascus Gate and then a minibus to the other side.

I was going to hire a car, but decided to go by bus, to sit next to real people, maybe meet some real people and experience what real people experience. Also, you can’t hire a car.

I had a Facebook exchange.

“So you’re gone from Stamford Hill to Bayswater?”

“Exactly, except you can’t go from Bayswater to Stamford Hill”

We, the guys in Israel, can drive into Palestine but no car hire company is going to lend you a car to go there. Can you imagine the insurance? “And what excess would you like on that, sir?”

I’m sitting in an outside bar, having a drink and a smoke. It’s a beautiful evening, around 6-ish, and life is happening in a very Tel Aviv way. I’m reading a bit, thinking a bit, planning the next step – going to Palestine. Blimey, that’s exciting! – when…. My front tooth falls out. It’s a crown, I’ve had it since I was young – my teeth, don’t even ask – and I can feel it in my mouth, just not in the bit of my mouth it should be in.

Something like that happens, you think ”Bloody hell, this is the last thing I need” but then “I’m in Tel Aviv. This is the most civilised, advanced place in the world. If this had happened tomorrow when I was in Palestine…” I don’t know. Maybe they’ve got great dentists in Palestine – odds on, they’ve got better teeth – but still, I’m happy I’m in Tel Aviv.

About 30 minutes later, I’m with Avi, the 24-hour dentist, a lovely 59-year-old bloke who looks more like a proper Jew. So then we have the ritual that goes on at dentists everywhere. You lie there, on the dentist’s chair, mouth stuffed full of cotton wool and things and:

“So how long are you in Tel Aviv?”

“…………”

“You like it here?”

“………..”

It’s fine. Then, still as he’s drilling and prodding and dentisting, he says

“You said before you were going to Ramallah tomorrow. You might think about taking that out” and he touches my earring.

My earring. Hadn’t thought about that. Actually, haven’t thought about it either. In England I can often feel people looking at it. Sometimes people – Jews, usually – ask if I’m Jewish. Here, no one asks.

When Avi’s finished I ask him if he was serious about the earring.

“Sure” he says with a Jew shrug. “It’s not the same as here”.

The next day I’m in a cab in Jerusalem and talking to Adam, the cab driver. Adam’s from Syria, well his father is. Adam’s from Jerusalem.

I’ve thinking about what Avi said about my earring, and so ask Adam. He looked at me, half-smile, half-like he was talking to a child.

“In Israel it’s very nice” he said. “Here, maybe not so nice”.

It’s easy to get a bit romantic about these things. Look at this roundabout. It’s Dizengoff Square, one of the buzziest parts of one of the buzziest cities. All around the square are cafes that spill out onto the street, all full, all alive. Last night the square was a mess. They’d dug it up, the tarmac was ripped up, the bit below the tarmac exposed. Diggers and machines were running around like worker ants in a colony. This morning it’s almost finished. The road is made. The tarmac smooth. The work is done. Since we’ve been in Brighton they’ve been doing up the seafront road and it still isn’t finished. And we’ve been in Brighton since 1997.

I’m biased. Let’s be clear. I’m biased.

I’ve been here two days now and I haven’t scratched the surface, but all I’ve had are good experiences. A day and a night with Ruth, which was lovely and interesting. Tel Aviv, which is that familiar cosmopolitan city, plus the beautiful beach. People are very friendly, very smiley. There’s that American service attitude here, that “we’re here to help” thing. I don’t care if it’s all about getting tips, I like. And loads of people have got dogs. It’s my thing. I like places that like dogs. It’s my Lottery fantasy. You know those idle daydream chats you have with yourself abt what you’d do if you won the Lottery? Mine is dogs. If I won the Lottery, I’d set up a dog foundation. Well, I would after the travel thing was sated. So maybe about five years after I won, I’d get round to the foundation. But I like dogs. And here they like dogs. Walk on the street, loads of people are walking with dogs. You go in a café and, odds on, the people next to you have got a dog. The dogs are fairly laid back – it’s too hot for all that barking stuff, but then again, I haven’t seen any psychopathic geriatric spaniels.

What does Tel Aviv look like? It looks like a big, cosmopolitan city. Big wide streets – boulevards – with bright lit shops, lots of bars and cafes and restaurants. It’s a consumption city. Conspicuously. And it’s an outside city. The streets are alive with people sitting, eating, drinking, café-ing. Cars everywhere but the big thing here are the electric bikes and scooters. There are bike lanes all over and there are plenty of bicycles, but the electric bikes and scooters are everywhere – on the bike lanes, on the roads, on the pavements. And they go fast. They’re called scooters for a reason – they scoot. Silent and quick, whizzing around, people standing up silently scooting past.

I’ve walked around a fair bit of the city now, walked and, for the last couple of days, cycled. It doesn’t feel particularly big, already I’ve got a real feel for areas and districts, for different roads and routes. It helps that there’s the sea on one side because if you keep the sea in your mind, you always know more or less where you are. The sea feels a lot more present than, for example, Brighton. If you’re in Preston Park or Seven Dials you wouldn’t necessarily know that the sea existed, but here I’m aware it’s there. Is that because I’m a tourist and I’m viewing it through that prism? Probably. Sitting here in Dizengoff Square, we’re nowhere near the beach. I can’t smell it or anything, but I can somehow feel it. Maybe, and I don’t know, I’m thinking that because of how people are dressed.

T-shirts and shorts. Flip flops. I’m not sure how I’d cope here, no one’s wearing a suit. No one’s wearing a jacket even. It’s all t-shirts and shorts, singlets, not shirts. No one looked dressed up, no one looks like they’ve spent hours deciding what to wear tonight. The young girls – mid-teens, that sort of age – look like they’ve made an effort, but that’s all. But they all look good, cool and relaxed. Comfortable with their look, comfortable with their bodies. It’s a loud atmosphere, chatty, laughter – lots of loud laughter. And late. Writing this, it’s 12.20am and it’s the same as it was at 8pm.

Tel Aviv by night is as buzzy as it gets. The bars and cafes spill out on the streets, loud groups of people drinking, eating, being loud. They’re not afraid of being loud here. And again, everyone’s young, 35 max. They’re the same people who were on the beach – good looking, cool. The air is warm – it’s September, past the hottest time of the year, and there’s a breeze, but it’s still warm.

It’s so odd being here, writing this stuff while at the same time reading all the social media posts about Labour, Corbyn and antisemitism. There’s so much rabbit on here (as ever) about Israel, what it is, what it isn’t. It always amazes me that there are so many people from Hove and Stoke Newington and Wiltshire and places like that who absolutely know absolutely what it’s like. Well, I’m in Tel Aviv in a restaurant called Abu Hassan and if they were here it would blow their minds. They’d be like one of those robots in a 50s sci-fi film when asked the exact number of Pi. “Does not compute…. Does not compute” There’s so much certainty about what people back home say, and all that makes me think is of the disconnect.

I’ve written on three people’s threads – really politely and really respectfully – “Are you Israeli? If you’re not, when was the last time you were in Israel?” So far, none of them have responded. The more I see – and the more I see while I’m reading what I’m reading – the more I realise that a lot of it really isn’t motivated by anything going on here.

Meanwhile, back in Tel Aviv… I took a bike and had a good look around today. Away from the wide boulevards of Dizengoff because staying there, it would be like going to London and just hanging around Covent Garden. You’d have a great time, go to some fantastic places, meet really interesting people, but you couldn’t really come away saying you’d “seen” London. And so, even given that I’m only here for a couple of days…

There’s really some not so Covent Garden bits. There’s inequality here. Of course there is, just like there is everywhere. And it’s the same people who are getting schtupped up the tucchus as they do everywhere. I went to the bad area of town – well, that’s always the best place to score – and it quickly became apparent that it was a Sudanese enclave. Black guys hanging around. Women on the streets who I don’t think were waiting for a cab. It was a long way from Dizengoff Square and I’m not sure that I’d rush to take a night stroll there. But that’s no different to any other big city and it’s just a function of a big city in a melting pot immigration country.

Talking to some people last night, I was told that the Israeli arabs – not, note Palestinians – were moving into medicine and law, becoming doctors and chemists, curiously following the same pattern as Asians in the UK. Incidentally, it’s apparently a bit of a trend for some Israeli arabs to identify as Palestinians here, as an act of solidarity.

Actually those roadworks? That really is the romantic thing. Two days later and they’re still working. Maybe they’re not so different.

Sometimes it’s just nice to have a day off. Enough of the politics and looking behind the curtain and talking to people about what they really think about life here. Let’s just have a day off. So, we do.

Lovely Ruth and her house guest (that’s me) headed off for a day playing tourist in Acre. Or Akko. Same place, just depends what map you look at.

Right up the coast, past Haifa, Akko is a historic port, all old city and fortified walls. It’s probably full of churches we should go to and ancient monuments we should see and there are probably pages and pages of “Things to do and see” in that nice Lonely Planet book My Fine Wife gave me just before I left home.

Well, the things to do that we did included sitting in a waterfront café, sitting in a waterfront restaurant where they did some great hummus with za’atar, sitting in another waterfront café and getting a speedboat ride around the bay. I can’t remember if we then found another waterfront café. To be honest, it’s entirely possible.

Akko was lovely.

Later that night, we took a ride to the beach at Netanya – a place name I remembered because my parents went on holiday there a couple of times. A beach resort near Ruth’s, just up the coast from Tel Aviv, there’s not a lot to see apart from Ruth’s hairdressers and a jumping beachfront bar. We swerved the hairdressers and spent the night at the bar. The air was warm, the sea looked lovely, the music was bought-by-the-yard bar techno. Lots of boxes ticked. And they served cold beer, red wine and hummus.

As they say in the old country, what’s not to like?