Hebron

I had my first foray inside the West Bank yesterday in the town of Hebron. With the only buses running in Jerusalem to the West Bank, I decided to take advantage of my boredom and go there with a BritishBlonde I met at my hostel.

She is a small, polite girl but extremely adventorous and has traveled to Africa alone and stayed there even when she was held up with a knife. I'm not quite at that point yet.

In Hebron the Patriarchs are buried, but the town has become a ghost town because of the Settlers. The settlers there are apparantly the crazy kind, the kind that whack 6 year old Palestinan girls with glass bottles and belive in the phrase 'an eye for an eye'.

We took the bus from East Jerusalem, got dropped off in Bethlehem, then took a shared taxi. The driver almost ran off the road as he tried to adjust his mini TV screen, showcasing dancing and singing Arabic girls.

BritishBlonde is a toughy and refused to pay an extra shekel (even though we may have actually owed it) and pushed me out of the taxi to the sounds of the drivers insistent honking.

We walked through the market to the tombs and everyone was friendly. No one seemed especially poor, but the town was dirty (the fact that littering is bad is a msg that needs to be taken across the world..remember those commercials w/the bunnies on skateboards? Must broadcast them here!)

There was a clean, shiny, bright shopping mall, everyone was nicely dressed and there was very immodest clothing stores; though goodness knows who could buy them since everyone was in a hijab.

The mosque is where that crazy Jew shot a bunch of ppl 2 decades ago so there is a huge IDF presence now.

The catch is, is that, if you are Christian you can go into the mosque and the Jewish side, if you are Jewish you can't go into the mosque and if you're Muslim you can't go into the Jewish side.

The tombs are in the middle of both the sides.

However, you can only go into the Jewish side on Shabbat if you are Jewish.

So what was I do to?

When the soldier asked me if I was Jewish I just stayed silent. It's not as if I can say I'm not Jewish, that seems so wrong to me since there have been much better reasons for lying about one's Judaism then this one.

But of course the officer knew I was Jewish (hellllo so obvious) but feigned innocence and said I could go into the mosque.

I tried to put up a whole 'personal questions..so discrimnatory' speech, but he wasn't buying it and said at religious places different rules apply.

The mosque was pretty boring, not too pretty and the tombs where inside like square fences.

We had to put on these Jedi like robes to walk in. I'll put pics up soon.

Then when we left, we stopped by the bathrooms and pissed in the ground. Big diff btwn Israel right there...Israel actually as toilets. Here just has....a ceramic hole in the ground with a jug of water that you must use to flush. Also, toilet paper was missing.

But..When in Rome.

Then I started talking to the soldiers, basically b/c I have an obsession with Israeli soldiers.

Me and British Blonde spent over an hour talking to them. In between conversations they would check the Muslims entering the mosque and do the whole metal detector test thingi.

I spotted a hot, tall, scruffy soldier 10 metres away by his post and whispered to BritishBlonde that he was hot. She then felt the need to tell the solider we were speaking to. He then told ScrufySoldier, which causes chaos.

It was like a Checkpoint Matchmaking service.

Of course ScruffySolider didn't speak English. "Not that it matters" said another solider.

But again, I'm kinda into the whole talking thing.


The soldier that we were speaking to for most of the time doesn't understand why I don't like America, plans to travel there for 2 months, has been married for 3 months and is a fake rasict. He was making fun of the Black girl soldier the entire time in a shockingly friendly way.

Example "She can wear all the lipstick colours on her huge lips"

But they were best buds based on language that would get you sacked in Canada.

We finally walked back to the taxi stand in Hebron, but it was a great morning.

Also, we got free candy and a free strange prickly fruit from some vendors.

I've never gotten free candy in Israel....


On the bus ride back to Jlem we went through a checkpoint. i don't know why everyone complain about checkpoints. It was a breeze, the soldier was friendly and chatted to the driver. He just looked at the cover of our foriegn passports and waved us away.

Then, (for which I still feel really guilty about) BritishBlonde and me hopped off the bus at Jaffa Gate without paying.

The driver was honking and honking and honking, but he had forgotten to make us pay in the beginning of the ride.

Ugh poor Arab bus driver. We shouldn't have done that.


Then at our hostel we ran into 2 guys staying there, NewZealandSoldier and EvangelicalSoldier, and made a plan to try and sneak into a Hotel Pool.

It was a hot day and we were all reallllly tired and wanted to chill. In a pool. Jlem has no beaches and has no buses to Tel Aviv on Shabbat.

Our first attempt was at the David Citatel, where the pool guy had a list w/room numbers.

We planned better for our next try at the famous King David hotel starting from 500$/night.

I should really work for Mossad.

We walked in and then I went on a scoping mission. NewZelandSoldier found out that if you went around the back entrance to the pool, one could just jump over a hedge to reach the pool.

I went around first and found that if one walked far enough, there wasn't even a hedge to jump over!

I casually walked in the pool area, set my stuff down and surreptiously changed into my bikini under a towel.

Subtle...I know.


Then I waited and NewZealend Soldier came and sat down beside me.

Then we hopped in.


ahhhh cool, cool, chlorination.

But mission obstacle when the other two didn't....

They pretended that they were married and ended up having to spend NIS 150 to swim for the day.

So half the mission was a sucess.

Then I ended up talking to this couple from Toronto who has a son who I apparanlty went to Tamarack with who also knows my cousins. oooobvvviously. damn JGeo.

Then we went to dinner at Mikes Place and when I went back to my hostel was I was tired I just ended up passing out on the couch instead of going out.