Adventure or nightmare

Damascus Gate at night

Depending on how you see it ... I either had a fantastic advantage or a nightmare at Bethlehem checkpoint this morning. I was at the MC convent in Bethlehem this morning to celebrate Mass and give a bible talk ... but going home and waiting for the 231 bus to bring me back to Jerusalem  turned out to be a futile task because the buses were not running. I forgot it's the 3rd day of Eid al Adha and muslims still don't work. There was another well-dressed arab waiting for the bus ... a non-Bethlehemite for sure as he asked me of the bus was running. Funny thing was he started speaking to me in arabic ... as if he expected me to know the language. We waited for a quarter of an hour and then a passing girl told us we must go to the checkpoint because no buses are running.

The guy and I shared a taxi and we reached the Bethlehem-Jerusalem checkpoint. It was filled with hundreds of arabs and tourists, pushing and shoving to get through 2 narrow turnstiles. Tempers flared. A spanish woman lost her 2 daughters next to me. It was chaos. I was really sick of it ... suffocating in the crowd. Then I thought to myself ... this is how every arab has to go through every single day as they pass into Israel to work. That's their daily trauma ... and I am experiencing it for only once today. It was quite an adventure .... not pleasant but very real.

Once I passed the security check ... x-ray machines and body checks which I had to pass 3 times because my belt was still on and it triggered the alarm ... it was the Immigration check. Usually the Israeli immigration soldiers allow tourists to pass in a separate line without checks ... but today all had to line up with local arabs. I had to show my visa twice before she let me go.

And once out into the Israeli side ... it was a big sigh of relief .... into the sunshine and into a bus back to Jerusalem. Adventure or nightmare? a matter of choice. But enough of action for one morning. I'm exhausted ... need to rest.