Seven Days in Palestine
Reflections of a visit to Palestine over Eid al-Fitr
Note: Some names have been intentionally omitted to maintain anonymity.
It’s difficult not to feel a certain sense of awe when you walk into Rami Nablusi’s antique shop in the Old City of Jerusalem. Though quaint and unassuming from the outside, its walls contain a spectacular collection of artifacts from historic Palestine. Many of them date back over a century. Among glass cases sit old maps of Jerusalem, weathered coins from the early 1940s stamped with the name “Palestine,” piles of religious texts, paintings, statues, posters, and an array of gemstone-capped rings crafted by Nablusi himself.
My friends and I, whom I’d met studying Arabic in Jordan, spent several hours in his shop over Eid al-Fitr: the three-day festival that concludes the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Our Arabic school’s Eid break gave us just enough time to visit Palestine, namely, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. I was especially excited not only to meet local Palestinians and explore the historic cities, but most of all, to experience Eid alongside my Muslim friends in Jerusalem, which to me was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Every Eid, hundreds of thousands of Muslims from all over the world travel to Jerusalem to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is believed to be the site where the Prophet Muhammad miraculously ascended to heaven in the early 7th century.
Unfortunately, many Muslims I know cannot make this trip. Most of the teachers at my Arabic school are not allowed to go because of the current Israeli law, which bars descendants of Palestinians expelled in the 1948 Nakba from re-entering the country. The history of this mass expulsion has been chronicled by Nablusi in the endless objects that he has meticulously sourced and preserved in his store.
“Wait here, I have something else to show you,” Nablusi would say before disappearing behind his desk to retrieve another object.
I was amazed to see that he had authentic keys to the homes of Palestinian families who were forced to flee their homes in 1948, which have since become a symbol of the Nakba. He also produced old passports, photographs, and maps as he told us stories of his mother, who was only fourteen years old when the Nakba took place. Among the most unique artifacts was a collection of records that showed eighty-year-old Palestinian shops that existed in the Old City before the establishment of the State of Israel. Today, there are few, if any, surviving records of these sites besides Nablusi's books.
Nablusi’s work is crucial for preserving the legacies of a people who have been gradually marginalized and erased over decades. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has erupted most evidently today in the form of a genocide in the Gaza Strip and an occupation in the West Bank, but it’s taken many forms in the past, including wars, occupations, settlements, expulsions, and legal discrimination. This erasure can be traced back in time to the establishment of the State of Israel, which has had lasting consequences on the region that we saw up close during our visit. I’ve included a historical preface to add context to what we saw during our trip, but if you want to just read about our personal experience, you can skip the next section.
History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
1900 BCE - 1948 AD: Before the State of Israel
The current Israeli-Palestinian conflict stretches back over three thousand years to the days of the ancient Israelites, who are the ancestors of present-day Jews. Over several hundred years, the Kingdom of Israel was conquered and incrementally destroyed, namely by the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, among others. In 135 CE, many Jews were killed and expelled from the land by the Roman Empire after a failed revolt. The Romans subsequently renamed the land “Syria Palaestina”. Contrary to popular belief, this was not the first mention of “Palestine”; the first reference to “Palestine” appeared four hundred years before in a book written by the Greek historian Herodotus after visiting the region.
In the early 1900s, the founders of the Zionist movement argued that Jews held a right to return en masse to Palestine because it was land that their ancestors had inhabited for millennia. Though Jews had long been present in the region, the scale of Jewish immigration to Palestine increased dramatically in the late 1800s. The reason for migration varied from person to person, but the majority of Jews came from Eastern Europe, who sought refuge from anti-Semitic laws and violence, for example, the pogroms in Czarist Russia.
As more waves of Jewish migrants arrived in Palestine, tensions between Arabs in the region and Jews steadily grew. This reached an inflection point when British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour formalized the idea of a Jewish state in his well-known “Balfour Declaration”, in which he proposed a British-backed Jewish state in Palestine. The declaration’s acceptance by the British government brought the heart of Zionism to fruition — an idea that had earlier been popularized by the journalist Theodor Herzl, who argued that a Jewish state would require government support to be successful.
The eventual birth of the State of Israel can be ascribed to the alignment of British state interests with the aspirations of Jews around the world. For Britain, creating and supporting a Jewish state in Palestine would win the support of Jews internationally, which it desired towards the end of WWI. Additionally, it would allow Britain to exercise control over land that held immense geopolitical significance. Palestine’s proximity to the Suez Canal, for example, would allow Britain to engage in trade with the East without having to deal with a potential Arab state. For Jews, creating a State of Israel would allow its citizens to live amongst each other without fearing anti-Semitic treatment or persecution by the government.
When British troops were deployed in 1917 to Palestine to enact Balfour’s words, unrest among Arabs grew even more, particularly because this directly violated a prior agreement that Britain had discussed with the Arabs. According to the agreement, the British would help Arabs establish an independent state in exchange for helping to overthrow the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, the discriminatory treatment that Arabs faced in Palestine contributed to the souring of relations — for example, how some Jewish-run businesses refused to hire Arabs.
Scattered fighting and protests continued for years until dissent erupted in the 1937 Great Arab Revolt. The British used brutal tactics to suppress the revolt, such as torture, executions, and destroying Arab homes. Most notably, some of the earliest documented uses of human shields emerged during the Great Revolt, as British troops commonly forced Arabs to ride in the front of trains to prevent railways from being detonated by rebels.
In total, roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed, while Jews suffered around 415 deaths.
In response to the revolt, the British met and later released the White Paper of 1939, attempting to forge a path for peace between the Jews and Arabs. The White Paper was a sharp departure from Britain’s previous stance as a supporter of the Zionist movement — instead, it attempted to appeal to the Arabs, proposing a strict limit on the number of Jews that could immigrate to Palestine each year. This angered both Jewish and Arab leaders, as the former felt betrayed by the British and the latter were unwilling to compromise on any amount of Jewish immigration.
Despite the years preceding the creation of the State of Israel being marked by intense violence, the notion that Arabs and Jews were diametrically opposed from the beginning is not accurate. In fact, early Arab and Zionist leaders were willing to compromise, such as the Nashashibi family, who rivaled the politically dominant Husseini family. The Nashashibis had more moderate views but appealed primarily to elites and moderates, thus persuading a smaller portion of Palestinians. On the other hand, the de facto Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, opposed the State of Israel and Jewish immigration to Palestine in general. Husseini also collaborated with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to spread antisemitic propaganda across the Arab world — an action which marred the international perception of Palestinians.
By 1947, British leaders felt that the cost of continued military involvement in Palestine exceeded its potential benefits. With the immediate financial and human costs of WWII weighing heavily on the country, Britain decided to relinquish its control of Palestine to the United Nations. The same year, the UN formulated a peace plan called Resolution 181. It proposed to partition Palestine into two states, allocating 56% of the land for Jews and 44% of the land for Arabs. While Jewish leaders accepted, the resolution provoked outrage amongst Arabs.
Similarly, some Jews felt that the peace plans proposed by the UN were not satisfactory. Yitzhak Shamir — leader of the far-right Israeli militant group Lehi and future Prime Minister of Israel — commanded the assassination of the UN mediator for Palestine in retaliation. Shamir wrote:
First and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play … in our war against the occupier.
On May 15, 1948, Israel declared its independence, and the day after, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon declared war on Israel. However, the war was motivated more by individual state interests than by the desire for Palestinian liberation, with each Arab country vying for a piece of the newly partitioned land. Transjordan, for example, came to an agreement with Israel that allowed Transjordan to annex territory allocated for the Arabs, provided that it didn’t attack land designated for the Jews. Although the Arab states outnumbered Israel five-to-one, Israeli forces outnumbered the Arab armies by roughly 10,000 troops and were better-trained, allowing Israel to defeat the Arab states.
By the time the war had ended, the Israeli army had violently expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. This is known today as the Nakba, which means “The Catastrophe” in Arabic. Besides those who were displaced, more than 15,000 Palestinians were killed, and 531 towns were destroyed. Palestinians were also subjected to biological warfare by the IDF, which put typhoid bacteria in water wells to drive them from their homes, which violated the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Many of these refugees resettled in either the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, while others went to Syria, Lebanon, or present-day Jordan. Soon after, the UN passed Resolution 194, which stated that refugees should be allowed to return to their original homes and be compensated for their property loss.
To this day, Palestinian refugees from the Nakba and their descendants are barred from re-entering Israel on the basis that the resolution is legally non-binding. By initiating the Nakba, Israel uprooted thousands of civilians, sowed the seeds for the following wars with surrounding Arab states, and created a refugee problem that is still a massive point of contention in peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine today.
1948 - Present Day: After the State of Israel
In the following years, Israel’s numerous conflicts with its neighboring Arab states continued to drive the wedge between Israelis and Palestinians further apart. In 1956, Israel, France, and Britain declared war on Egypt, again, to further state interests. All three countries aimed to lessen Egypt’s control of the Suez Canal, while Israel, in particular, sought to prevent a future war with Egypt as the Arab state had been quickly building up its arms capacity. The week-long war quickly came to a halt largely because of American and Soviet pressure, but it was enough to send a wave of anti-Zionism, pan-Arabism, and renewed interest in Palestinian liberation rippling across the Arab world.
Nine years later, in 1967, Israel again fought Egypt, which was this time allied with Syria. Egypt had received false information from the Soviet Union that Israel was building up its military along the Syrian border, and in retaliation, decided to move troops into the Sinai and close off a vital waterway used by Israel for trade. Gamal Nasser, the Egyptian president, saw an opportunity to demonstrate Egyptian strength amongst the Arab world by competing with Israel. Egypt, in alliance with several other Arab states, went to war with Israel. In only six days, Israel won a shocking victory over Egypt and its allies, conquering an unprecedented amount of land. The Sinai, Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights all fell under Israeli control.
The sheer dominance of Israel played a major role in advancing settlements in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, as many Jews interpreted the war to be a miraculous victory granted by God. For them, settling in the occupied territories was viewed as a fulfillment of the prophecy. In the Arab world, it led to the growth of Islamism, as many Arab leaders blamed the loss on a lack of Islamic faith. In terms of the war’s effects on foreign policy, Israel’s demonstration of military prowess attracted U.S. investments and military deals, laying the foundation for the U.S.-Israel alliance that continues to this day.
Directly after the 1967 war, the Arab states met and issued a resolution which stated their famous Three Noes: no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, and no recognition of Israel. Though hardline on the surface, the fact that Israel now held so much land meant that it could use it to negotiate for peace, even if official statements by the Arab states said otherwise. This is exactly what happened in the 1978 Camp David Accords, in which Egypt agreed to peace with Israel on the condition that it return the Sinai to Egypt. This “land for peace” model permeated peace deals in the future, in both future Arab-Israeli wars and negotiations between Israel and Palestine, such as the Oslo Accords.
From the mid-1970s onwards, the conflicts that Israel was involved in began to shift from traditional warfare with Arab states to smaller groups employing tactics such as guerrilla warfare and terrorism, as it became clear that Israel’s military was too strong to defeat with traditional warfare. This shift can explain how groups like Hezbollah and Hamas first came to power.
Hezbollah’s roots can be traced back to 1978 when Israel invaded Lebanon. At the time, Israel’s goal was to eliminate the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which had been attacking Israel from just north of the Lebanon-Israel border. The first week-long invasion failed to remove the PLO completely, although it killed over a thousand Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and resulted in the displacement of almost 100,000 people.
The second invasion in 1982 was much larger in scale and drew strong international condemnation. Government officials publicly justified the invasion by citing a recent attempted assassination of an Israeli ambassador. Despite Israeli intelligence knowing that the attempt was executed by an Iraq-based group, not the PLO, Israel invaded Lebanon to further the strategic interests of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. His interests extended far beyond the scope of what was understood by the Israeli public; in the words of Professor Dov Waxman, author of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
Sharon’s grand plan went even beyond this [defeat of the PLO], as he wanted to evict Syrian forces from Lebanon and install a pro-Israel, Christian-dominated regime … In short, for the ultrahawkish Sharon, the invasion of Lebanon was the means toward much greater ends — eliminating the Palestinian issue once and for all, ensuring a “Greater Israel”, securing its northern border, and establishing its regional hegemony.
The Israeli government deployed tens of thousands of troops to Lebanon, laid siege to West Beirut, and most egregiously, failed to intervene in the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. In these massacres, over 3,500 Palestinian civilians were murdered by the Phalangist militia, Israel’s Lebanese ally, as revenge for the war that had caused the death of their leader. By the end of the war, Israel had achieved its goal of eliminating the PLO, but had tarnished its reputation because of the atrocities it had incited and allowed. Furthermore, the war spurred anti-Israel sentiment and ironically opened up an opportunity for Hezbollah to take the PLO’s place. Israel and Hezbollah remain in conflict to this day.
The opposite is true for the rise of Hamas — it came to power not because of an invasion but partly because of a military withdrawal. After Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 due to international pressure, the Gazan economy tanked due to its large economic dependence on Israel. For example, many Gazans who had worked in Israel prior to the withdrawal had their work permits revoked, leaving them without a stable source of income.
The economic downturn in Gaza presented Hamas with an opportunity to garner political support among citizens. Their strategy was two-pronged. Firstly, Hamas operated many social, medical, educational, and welfare programs, among others, which benefited and appealed to local Palestinians. These programs undoubtedly helped propel it to an unprecedented victory in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. Secondly, Hamas violently suppressed those who supported its political rival, Fatah, which culminated in a battle between Hamas and Fatah. In the aftermath of the battle, Hamas secured its place as the ruling party of the Gaza Strip while Fatah retained control of the West Bank.
Many Palestinians credited Hamas and the Second Intifada for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, thus increasing support for using violence as a tool to establish an independent Palestinian state. However, not all Palestinians who voted for Hamas agreed with its radical ideology, which has notably called for the destruction of Israel and the killing of all Jews. A 2006 exit poll showed that over 60% of Palestinians who voted for Hamas favored a two-state solution. Waxman argues that in many cases, “Palestinians voted for Hamas despite its ideology, not because of it”. However, Hamas did not alter its uncompromising stance to cater to its voters once it assumed power.
Only several years after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, the current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, took office. In Netanyahu’s previous term, he had intentionally delayed the implementation of the Oslo Accords, which granted Palestinians the right to self-governance and guaranteed a gradual Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in exchange for the Palestinian Liberation Organization agreeing to peace. The parallel rise of Hamas’s radical ideology with Israel’s far-right and hawkish government primed the Gaza Strip for violent conflict. Israel and Hamas have gone to war several times in the past two decades, with the most recent starting in 2023 when Hamas killed 1,195 Israelis and took 251 hostages to the Gaza Strip.
Israel has since committed genocide against Gazans in response. The government’s military offensives and blockade of the Gaza Strip have resulted in the deaths of over 55,000 Palestinian civilians, with more than half a million residents facing starvation. The initial stated goal of the Israeli government was to eliminate Hamas, but Israeli officials have since admitted their intent to ethnically cleanse, destroy, and reoccupy the Gaza Strip. On May 6th, 2025, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated:
They [Gazans] will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.
Like Netanyahu, Smotrich has also made statements declaring that securing the return of Israeli hostages is secondary to achieving a military victory, which incited outrage amongst the families of hostages and the broader Israeli public. In general, Israel’s government has drawn immense international criticism for its actions in the Gaza Strip.
While armed conflict and peace resolutions are crucial to understanding Israeli-Palestinian relations, the real tension between the two groups is often more subtle and can only be seen by going to Palestine in person. This was one of the reasons behind our trip: to observe the deeply ingrained issues that no longer make the headlines because their novelty has long worn off.
Our journey to Palestine
On the morning of Friday, March 28th, I left my apartment in Amman with no clue of what to expect. When my friends and I told our Arabic teachers about our plan to visit Palestine, they were ecstatic but urged us to be careful. In the past, some students had been stopped briefly while others had been searched and questioned for hours. One student was even barred from returning to Jordan. Although we were skeptical of something that extreme happening to us, the mere fact that it was possible etched a spot of unease into the back of my mind.
It’ll probably be fine, I thought as we clambered into our taxi. Probably.
While my excitement built, the worries bouncing around my head grew louder as we inched closer to the Israel-Jordan border. I paid no attention to the lush scenery flitting past the window; instead, I stayed hunched over in the backseat, feverishly deleting messages from my phone. We’d been warned that our devices could be searched, and that any mention of Palestine, Gaza, or pro-Palestine protests could be enough to raise flags from Israeli security. By the time I finished cleaning my phone, the nearly two-hour journey to the border was almost up.
My real concerns had been for my other group of friends, whom we planned to meet up with in Jerusalem. They’d crossed the day before at the King Hussein Bridge, which sits halfway between Amman and Jerusalem. We’d chosen the other option: crossing through the northern Sheikh Hussein Bridge, which is about an hour further. We had several reasons: first, it would be easier to visit Nazareth in the north from there. Secondly, we felt that we had less of a risk of being arbitrarily stopped than at the busier King Hussein Bridge. Thirdly, we weren’t entirely sure how the visa process worked at the King Hussein Bridge in general.
The night before, we’d been half holding our breath, waiting for the other group to tell us that they’d gotten through the border. Being an all Muslim and mostly Arab group, we expected that they might encounter some problems on the way in. Thankfully, we got the news that they’d been let in, albeit being held at the border for five hours. What we didn’t know at the time was how poorly they’d been treated by the security.
One of my friends, who has prosthetic legs, was made to take them off, go through a metal detector four times, and undergo a pat-down search. She later described it as the most “degrading and ableist security check” of her life. Some of them had their phones searched, and they were questioned about the countries they had visited, the names of their family members, as well as if they had been to any pro-Palestinian protests, among other things.
By comparison, our experience at the border was relatively smooth. On the Jordanian side, we went through a short security check, got our passports stamped, and were promptly sent through to the Israeli side. For those who don’t want an exit stamp, you can request a piece of paper instead, which is useful for traveling to Arab countries that will refuse entry if they see evidence of having traveled to Israel, like Lebanon. On the Israeli side, we were asked similar questions but were never searched. The only hiccup came about when one of my friends was flagged by security because of his Arabic middle name.
He was made to wait for almost two hours, after which he was led into a side room for questioning via telephone. Over the phone, the security repeated the same questions we had been asked earlier, but this time they were especially curious about the origin of his name: was it given or did he convert to Islam? He explained that it was a family name, and after only a couple of minutes, the Israeli officials approved him for entry. With one of the most bizarre security screenings we’d ever been through out of the way, we were finally ready to start our trip.
A stop in Nazareth
When we arrived in Nazareth, it felt almost as if we were back in Jordan. The streets were lined with falafel shops, shawarma restaurants, fruit stalls, bakeries, cafes, and corner stores, whose signs were written in an eclectic mix of Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Though the atmosphere felt like a calmer Amman, one building in particular stuck out. Its sleek architecture made it a bit out of place standing amongst the other old limestone structures. Printed along the side of the building in bold, white lettering was one word: “Microsoft”.
Ah, I thought. Just what Jesus would have wanted.
Despite some curious new developments, the historic character of old Nazareth has remained intact to this day. The city holds a special religious significance, especially for Christians. Not only is it the city where Jesus Christ spent his childhood, but it’s also where it’s believed that the Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would give birth to Christ. Over two thousand years later, Nazareth is still home to many well-preserved churches, mosques, and other historic sites. Thousands of visitors stop there every year to visit and pray in its churches, such as the Basilica of the Annunciation.
Though our plan was to tour the religious sites, I was more looking forward to learning about Nazareth's populace, as it’s almost entirely Arab. This is partly because the Israeli government anticipated that there would be backlash from the international Christian community if thousands of Christian Arabs were forcibly expelled from the city during the Nakba in 1948. In fact, former IDF Chief of Staff Haim Laskov is quoted as saying that “we had specific instructions not to harm anything, which meant that we had to take Nazareth by stratagem.” The city was largely exempted from the Israeli government’s plan of ethnic cleansing in 1948, and as a result, Arabs constitute almost all of its population today.
On Saturday morning, we decided to spend our day wandering the city and speaking with locals whom we met along the way. We especially wanted to understand the experiences of local Arabs and how they choose to identify. Do they see themselves as Palestinian and reject being labelled as Israeli? What has their life been like living in Nazareth? How do they view the Israeli government?
The first person we talked to was the owner of a fruit shop downtown. He told us that the Israeli government treats Arabs well, and interestingly, that Arabs living with Arabs together wasn’t a good thing. He didn’t elaborate much (the fact that the conversation was in Arabic made it more difficult), but suffice it to say, we were a little surprised. On the way back from visiting the Nebi Saeen Mosque, we were told the same thing by a local baker: “Life as an Arab is good here.”
However, not everyone agreed. In Nazareth’s Old City, two university students in a community space told us that they felt stifled in terms of their ability to express their true thoughts about Israel and Palestine. One of them gave us the example that the Palestinian jewelry that she wears in Nazareth wouldn’t be acceptable where she studies in Tel Aviv. What I was quickly coming to understand was that there was no single Palestinian narrative, at least amongst those we talked to.
On our last day in the city, we decided to hike up Mount Precipice, which offers a stunning view of the land southeast of Nazareth. If it’s a clear day, you can even peer into the rolling hills of the West Bank in the direction of Jenin and Nablus.
A few minutes after we started up the mountain’s steep, winding path, a car rolled up beside us.
“You guys need a lift?” came a voice from inside the car.
In the driver’s seat was a man with short dark hair and a neat beard who was probably in his mid-twenties. We gladly accepted his offer and thanked him. Later that night, he graciously invited us to have dinner with his entire family, who are Christian Arabs. We shared stuffed artichokes and date-filled cookies while we chatted about his life, family, dreams, politics, identity, and more.
“Arabs here are born conflicted,” he said. “You’re Palestinian, but you live in Israel.”
Although he worked full-time to help run a family business, he was chasing a career as a writer and filmmaker. An avid Christopher Nolan fan, he loved writing sci-fi and thrillers, especially inspired by films like Inception and Interstellar. The wars over the past few years have made realizing success in the film industry much more difficult. He recalled how he once had to stop a film shoot that he was directing in the city of Haifa because there had been rocket fire in the area. Despite this, he said he had no interest in making political films. At the end of the day, he said, he just wants to live in peace and work on the projects that he’s truly passionate about.
I thought about his words that night as we packed our bags for Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of Muslims would be at the Al-Aqsa Mosque the next morning to celebrate Eid al-Fitr. I wondered how many would never make it to Jerusalem because they were turned away at the border or killed in the Gaza Strip, and how many people want peace and equality simply so that they can return to their hometowns in the West Bank or share an iftar with their families in the Old City. The unsettling thing about being in Palestine was realizing that we were no more than a two-hour drive away from a genocide at any given time. It was deeply sobering to consider. On the other side of the coin, the compassion we’d received from the people we’d met in Nazareth gave me a glimmer of hope.
Eid al-Fitr in Jerusalem
At the northern entrance of Jerusalem’s Old City, a seemingly endless river of people flowed from the three-thousand-year-old walled city. We’d just caught the tail end of the morning prayers on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, whose attendees were now streaming from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in droves to rest, buy food and gifts, or spend time with their families.
The street food vendors in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter were already hard at work. Though Ramadan is marked by strict fasting from sunup to sundown, Eid is the first day that daytime fasting is broken. Vendors near the gate sold fresh-squeezed juice, assortments of candy, and freshly baked bread. The smell of grilled lamb and charcoal wafted through the air. People sang and danced in the streets. Some children played with their new toys while others were busy wolfing down pastries and sandwiches.
It’s customary to wear your best clothes during Eid, but it was only when we finally met up with our other group of friends that I realized what “best clothes” meant. They were adorned in beautiful clothing, wearing elegant hijabs that matched intricately patterned robes called abayas. My friend and I had not packed anything of this caliber. I wore a grey sweatshirt and bomber jacket with a gigantic video camera slung over my shoulder, while my friend had brought a hiking backpack stuffed to the brim with both of our clothes for the week.
“Wow,” one of them had said upon seeing us. “You guys look like foreigners!”
I couldn’t disagree. We sat down at a cafe, where they told us about their experience crossing the King Hussein Bridge and how the final days of Ramadan had been for them. Having prayed for most of the night, they’d barely slept, but their enthusiasm for being in Jerusalem during Eid hadn’t diminished in the slightest. From what they told us, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound had been completely packed with people praying that morning, not just inside the Dome of the Rock, but spread across all of its walkways, courtyards, and gardens too.
Between prayer times, my friends were free to explore the Old City with us. For context, the Old City is divided into four quarters: the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Jewish Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter. We spent most of our time in the Muslim Quarter, exploring the bazaars and meeting shopkeepers just like we had done in Nazareth. It was here that we met Nablusi and saw his antique shop.
At one point while we were in Nablusi’s shop, we met a Palestinian-American woman who was helping to digitize some of the documents that he had collected. I began to realize how much of the history of the Old City, for example, I would never learn because much of it only exists in one place in the entire world. Digitizing every artifact in his shop seemed like an impossible task, but if nobody tried, all of it would eventually be lost to the sands of time.
The spirit of passing on Arab and Islamic history had not been lost on my friends. As we walked, they told us stories about their Arab heritage, the history of Islam, and explained what role religion played in each of their lives. We watched videos of musicians from around the world coming together in Jerusalem to perform traditional Islamic songs about the prophets, and we talked about the different prayers that my friends had devoted hours to performing over the past month. We learned about Taraweeh — a special prayer done during Ramadan which grants forgiveness of past sins, and Eid Salah, which celebrates the end of Ramadan and shows gratitude to Allah.
For me, the most memorable conversations were about each of my friends’ personal journeys with Islam. For example, some of them talked about how they came to the decision to wear a hijab.
“I wanted to be judged on the quality of my ideas and not on my body,” one of my friends explained.
For another friend, she’d felt drawn to wearing a hijab ever since she was in grade school. Even though she was singled out and looked at differently by some other students because of her choice, she refused to let them discourage her from wearing it as a symbol of her faith every day. I began to see just how different everyone’s journey with Islam was. Even though there are core beliefs of the religion that are shared across all Muslims, no two people are identical in the exact way that they practice or the way that they interpret the teachings of certain prophets.
As we walked from quarter to quarter, I felt that people of different religions throughout Old City behaved a bit like water and oil — overlapping but never mixing. For example, we were invited inside the house of a Moroccan family whose ancestors came to Jerusalem and settled in the Old City’s Moroccan district, which was demolished in 1967 by Israeli forces. Residing right next to the Western Wall, they explained how other residents don’t want them there simply because of their religious and ethnic background.
My friends also faced discrimination from Israeli security, who control entry to religious sites like the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the Western Wall. Once, when trying to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they were questioned and asked if the land that they were in was Israel or Palestine. One of my friends answered that it was both, which upset the security. Because of her answer, they were blocked from entering the mosque to pray on their last day in Jerusalem.
Fortunately, we got to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque together in the days prior. We toured the Dome of the Rock, the Qibli Mosque, and talked about their history while relaxing in the shade of the compound’s vast olive tree garden. The Dome of the Rock is nothing short of incredible. Built in only six years towards the end of the 7th century, Maghrebi explorer Ibn Battuta proclaimed in 1326 that “any viewer’s tongue will grow shorter trying to describe it”.
Teal and white grid-like patterns swathe the mosque’s exterior walls, which sit underneath a glimmering cap of gold. Inside, tessellating gold and maroon designs radiate outwards from the roof, almost resembling the petals of a gigantic dahlia. When I saw it for the first time, I remembered the words of another student from my Arabic school who’d visited a mosque in Iraq, who said that upon entering it, “I felt like I was in another world.” I think I understood what she meant.
Viewing the Dome of the Rock from afar was just as amazing. On the first night of Eid, we climbed up the Mount of Olives to see the sunset over West Jerusalem. The sky was perfectly clear that night. A cool wind blew gently across the mountain. We stood in silence and tuned our ears to the breeze as we watched the sun vanish behind the Jerusalem skyline, turning it pitch-black. The sky multiplied in shades as the minutes ticked by, transforming from a lone periwinkle blue to a dazzling gradient of deep yellows, oranges, and reds. Before long, you could see an ivory sliver of the moon barely peeking out against the night sky, like a fingernail that had been forgotten amidst the cosmos.
It was one of the most serene and breathtaking things I’ve ever seen.
Bethlehem and the road home
Before we had to return to Jordan, we decided to visit Bethlehem, which is only a 15-minute bus ride from Jerusalem. Although it’s in the West Bank, our bus didn’t stop at an Israeli checkpoint on the way in — only on the way back to Jerusalem. When we arrived, we were taken on a tour of the Aida Refugee Camp by Ali, a local guide and artist.
The Aida camp was established in 1950, when the West Bank was still part of Jordan. Today, there are over 7,000 Palestinian refugees living in the camp according to the UNHCR. Its proximity to the Israeli separation wall and two illegal Israeli settlements has provoked many violent clashes in the past, prompting the walls of houses to be covered with murals of refugees who had been killed by the IDF. Many of the victims were children. As we meandered through the alleyways, we ran into a group of kids playing with toy rifles. Ali explained to us that they played with guns because violence is all that they knew growing up.
Overt violence is only one of many problems that Palestinians living in the West Bank face. Systems imposed by the Israeli government, such as checkpoints, permits, and military courts, can arguably be just as harmful. Many Palestinians are not allowed to move between cities in the West Bank, and for those who are, it can be difficult to obtain the necessary permits to do so. The system for designating who is allowed to travel where is as convoluted as it is because of Israel and Jordan’s tangled history of occupying the West Bank. Decades of wars and peace negotiations have resulted in a reality where a Palestinian from Nablus born in 1950 might have a completely different set of legal privileges than one who was born after the 1993 Oslo Accords, for example.
Ultimately, Israeli security officers have the final say on who is allowed through checkpoints. This effectively means that Palestinians’ freedom of movement is subject to the day-to-day whims of IDF soldiers. Not only have these checkpoints and the West Bank separation barrier restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement, but they have also severely held back economic growth in the region.
We saw how disruptive these checkpoints could be firsthand. Midway through our bus ride back from Bethlehem, we were stopped by the IDF. As our bus slowed to a halt, some passengers glanced around nervously and started to collect their bags and passports. Looking out the window, I could see the unmistakable olive green fatigues of soldiers waiting patiently for us to exit the bus.
Perfect, I thought.
Part of me had naively thought that our bus might’ve coasted inconspicuously through the checkpoint like on the way in. I just hoped that the soldiers wouldn’t inspect my camera. They probably wouldn’t be too happy about the photos I’d taken at the Aida Refugee Camp, which included shots of anti-government graffiti spray-painted on the separation wall, Palestinian flags, and murals of refugees who had been killed by Israeli snipers.
As passengers steadily filed out of the bus, I fumbled around for my passport and tried to upload as many photos as I could to Google Drive. Outside, we formed a neat line and waited uneasily for the soldiers to start checking our passports. It took about ten minutes for the first passenger to be waved through the checkpoint. I tried to crane my neck around the queue to see if the soldiers were searching anyone, but thankfully, it didn’t seem like it.
Most people seemed to be going through with no issues, which was good given that our bus had a decent mix of Palestinians, Israelis, and foreign tourists. Right before my turn came, I stuffed my camera into my bag, readied my passport, and hoped for the best. The soldier who took my passport scrunched up his face as he flipped through it.
That can’t be good, I thought.
He looked up at me, back down at my passport, then back up at me. After pausing for a second, he waved me through, barely uttering a single word. Back inside the bus, I felt my shoulders relax a little. At worst, going through the checkpoint was a minor inconvenience for us. For a Palestinian commuting between the West Bank and Jerusalem every day, it could be the difference between getting to their job or not. It’s not uncommon for the IDF to arbitrarily deny Palestinians entry at checkpoints even if they have the proper documentation.
I was just thankful that there were no issues for my friends who had been questioned for hours at the border. Unfortunately, we’d have to go through Israeli security one more time before we left. Most of my friends planned to cross back into Jordan the same way they entered: via the King Hussein Bridge. To avoid getting a return stamp at the land crossing, one of my friends and I planned to take a connecting flight from Tel Aviv to Amman. We repeated the process of painstakingly cleaning our phones on the way out and getting rid of anything that could get us in trouble — the one exception being a fridge magnet with a photo of artwork on the West Bank barrier that read “Make Hummus Not Walls.”
In the Tel Aviv airport, my friend and I were questioned for almost half an hour. We were briefly interviewed together, after which we were split up and questioned individually. The security officer I spoke to was especially curious as to why I had chosen to study Arabic in Jordan, particularly now. I tried to play it off as merely a cultural interest, not mentioning anything about wanting to do journalism in the Middle East. My answer didn’t seem to convince her.
“But why Jordan specifically?” she asked me. “There’s a war going on in this region. Why come now?”
Of course, I didn’t say that this was precisely one of the reasons I had come. I went on a long spiel about how I liked Jordan’s historical sites, culture, people, food, dialects, and so on, hoping that she would find my rambling answer satisfactory.
“Yes, but why Jordan?” she asked again.
I was genuinely confused. Having just listed everything I’d grown to love about the country over the past four months, I was legitimately running out of things to say. The next few minutes consisted of me rewording the same arguments over and over again, like how one might when trying to reach the word count of an important term paper. Somehow, it worked. The security officer then asked me about everything else: my occupation, travel history, family, friends, trip itinerary, and more. I answered them all honestly, and after about thirty minutes, my friend and I were finally approved to board our flight.
My head was swimming on the plane, just as it had on the taxi ride up to the border only a week prior. However, the reasons were completely different. In the place of anxiety and excitement now stood a strange mix of anger, joy, confusion, and solemnity. The feelings that I hadn’t even known had been brewing inside me throughout the trip were finally starting to froth to the surface. From the stories I’d heard of displaced Palestinians being unable to return to their hometowns at checkpoints to my friends being rejected from praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, what bothered me more than the overt discrimination was the inconsistency of it all.
Questions swirled through my head. Why should an IDF soldier get to decide on whether or not Muslims can or cannot enter their own place of worship based on a set of arbitrary questions? Why should my friends have to worry about whether wearing a hijab will mark them as being a security risk at the border? When will we stop needing to paint murals of murdered children in refugee camps? I’d hoped that the trip would answer some of my previous questions, but if anything, I felt that I had more loose ends to tie than before I’d left.
I thought back to a lecture at our Arabic school given by Dr. Nadim Bawalsa, a Palestinian historian who specializes in modern Palestine. He guided us through almost five hundred years of history until the present day, and at the end of his lecture, a student asked what she could do to help, with tears streaming down her face. Bawalsa acknowledged that no single person could bring an end to the violence, nor could one person remedy all the injustices wrought upon the Palestinian people. But what stuck with me was the end of his answer:
Keep listening to us, keep visiting us, and keep telling our stories.
His words reminded me of a concept in Islamic law that my friends had taught me about while we’d roamed around the Old City: the waqf. It’s the name for something that’s been permanently donated for the benefit of the public, usually a building or a plot of land. After something is designated as a waqf, it can’t be given away or sold. A waqf can be a school, a mosque, a hospital, or many other things. Whatever it is, the original owner has invested in the betterment of generations of people whom they will never meet.
Preserving Palestinian history and culture is no different. Every Nakba story that you listen to, every Palestinian-owned shop you visit, and every book you read about their history and traditions is an investment in counteracting their erasure. As individuals, the impact can be hard to discern, but collectively, over the years, decades, and centuries, the efforts always compound. I encourage you to follow Bawalsa’s words and never stop listening to, reading about, or talking about the Palestinian people.
View our sources here.
I read the rest of your piece today. It seems you took a dangerous voyage and I’m glad you came out in one piece. I feel very sorry for the Palestinians all around the world. Their situation is very unjust and it is an embarrassment to me, as an American, the way Washington always sides with Israel in spite of the long history of apartheid there. It’s true for this administration and the last one too. I am not religious so I do not understand this concept of religious allegiance, nor the idea that in any land with so many people crowded together, a city should be partitioned by religion. I only ask this as a sort of thought problem: what if somehow it was possible to erase all of these religions from all the people’s minds? Would the world not be a better place?
I was excited to read this piece and I have to say, I am not quite done yet. I got as far as the Microsoft sign in Nazareth which made me laugh, maybe out of a feeling of emotional release, after reading of so many horrors and atrocities. I have to go out if a few minutes, but I hope to finish your entire article later. I think your regional history is really well-written and super informative. Thank you. I have been a little vague on all the historical details of this conflict. I just wanted to write a comment right away, and let you know that I really appreciate your work here.