I arrived in Jerusalem yesterday afternoon. I’m here for work so won’t have much time to look around but I will write about my experiences.
Some people at work were quite horrified at the idea of going to Jerusalem, “what with current events.” One chap said he would have refused “point blank” to go, if asked. I was unconcerned. Hezbollah can’t get rockets this far south; there are no reports of unrest in Jerusalem; my colleagues here, who live here and would know, are unconcerned; and the Foreign Office is not advising against travelling here.
My journey here was uneventful. I got some good views across Turkey from the plane — very brown and very sparsely populated. I got a good view of Tel Aviv as the plane did a somewhat alarming left turn just before landing. I didn’t get any photos, in part because the cabin crew announced that it was forbidden to take photos of Israel from the plane. Just after landing I saw the only thing remotely military that I’ve seen so far: a Hercules transport plane taxiing.
Ben Gurion airport has some impressive architecure. To get from the plane to passport control you walk around a circular mezzanine above a huge marble rotunda, and then down a ramp in a marble hall, with another descending ramp coming the other way. I could have made all kinds of interesting photos but was paranoid about causing a security event. I was asked a few rudimentary questions at passport control, found my case, and found my taxi driver holding a sign with my name on the arrivals hall.
The driver was a friendly Arab guy, full of travel advice. He asked me what I thought about the situation with Israel. I was wary of being to opinionated with someone I didn’t know, and just made some comments to the effect that I didn’t feel qualified to have much of zan opinion, given that I have to rely on new reports. “It doesn’t look good, though?” he asked. I agreed it didn’t, but that it looked safe in Jerusalem. “All of Israel is safe,” he said. “Jerusalem, Tel Aviv. The trouble is only if you go up north.”
He said, “we are all idiots.” I disgreed, politely. “No, we are,” he insisted. He quoted some official he’d seen on TV complaining that if Isreal wanted to kill Hezbollah, they shouldn’t drop leaflets telling people to leave, they should just kill everybody. “Isreal is too nice,” he said.
The lesson I took from this is that Arabs living in Israel consider themselves Israeli too, and are just as outraged at rockets being dropped on their towns. The taxi driver pointed out Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods that we passed, and went on to tell me that there are many more restaurants than a few years ago, and that business is good because the Jews go to the Arab restaurants and the Arabs go to the Jewish restaurants. Everybody just gets along.
Israel looks a lot like any other mediterranean country. We drove on good roads with not too much traffic over rolling countryside of green fields and brown mountains. The city seems like any European city, just a bit browner. Part of the city — it looks like it might be the Old Town but I haven’t quite got my bearings yet — is on a big hill, so there’s a very three dimensional look to the place. Outside my hotel room are a few major roads with lots of traffic and the occasional ambulance siren.
People seem very friendly. Even a small boy started talking to me, and when I told him I didn’t speak Hebrew he smiled and said, “You are English?” A fellow in the lift commented on the haircut of the Orthodox chap who had just got off. “Why do they shave their heads at the back like that?” “I have no idea.” “Are you Jewish? Where are you from?” Etc.
People seem to talk about their religions like they do their hair colours. The taxi driver asked me if I was Christian. “Sort of…”, I said lamely. He replied, “oh, so you are Christian but not very religious?”
I’d like to report on the way the news is reported here, but so far I only have news in English from CNN and Sky. On the Israeli TV stations I can see talking heads in front of buildings with holes in them that I assume are Israeli buildings. I can also watch Fireman Sam dubbed into Hebrew, which is wierd. This morning I got a copy of the Jerusalem Post, an English language newspaper, under my door, so I’ll write some commentary about that tonight if I have time (or it might not appear until tomorrow depending on whether I can get Internet access in my hotel room).
More Jerusalem Travel: next day; Exploring the City