We started early this morning, off to Nazareth and Haifa for the day and the first check point experience for this group. It was far from pleasant. Apart from the Israeli’s deciding to take our passports for a long time and make us wait, Nadin took a photo of the terminal on her mobile phone and was noticed doing so. I can understand why she did it. It’s such a weird experience and like nothing you will ever have experienced. The Israeli’s have put in a wall that mostly, but sometimes not (and when not, always in their favour and grabbing more land), adheres to the green line drawn in ’68. After the first and second Intifada the Israeli’s started to build the wall and restrict movement. Now, farmers that live in Jenin and work farmland on the other side of the crossing (which is also Jenin) spend at least 20 minutes crossing. The terminal itself is an eye sore – concrete and metal, cameras, gates and cattle pens (that’s what it feels like). So Nadin took a photo to memorialise the experience and be able to show it to friends. First her phone was confiscated, and then she was taken from the group. She was body searched, twice, and interrogated for 45 minutes as well as being made to wait in what can only be called a gaol cell for the remainder of the experience. She was repeatedly asked the same questions: why did you take a photo? Who asked you to take a photo? What was the photograph for? Where are you staying, who are you with, what are you doing here? They deleted all her photos and copied the numbers in her phone book.She was released after a while, clearly traumatised and stating that it was probably the most terrifying experience of her life.
We headed off to Nazareth where we had a walking tour of the city, saw the bath house where that famous geezer, what’s his name, oh yeah, Jesus, bathed. We went to one of the two churches that claim to be the Church of the Annunciation. Poor Nadin got barked at by a rude old man for not having her shoulders covered and so we left and decided that the other church had the true claim just because the old man was horrible to Nadin....like she needed more of that today. The old market was fascinating with lots of old faces in it. The faces of old Palestinians are so different to the old faces of the west. Where as our faces are full of fine feather lines and crows feet, Palestinian faces are creased with thick lines. Their skin remains smooth and supple, just furrowed with a thousand stories.
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