The Broken Road to the Holy Land

I recently had the opportunity to travel with a delegation of Harvard students to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. My trip confirmed that only first-hand experience can portray the inherent injustice of military occupation. It is nearly impossible to imagine a human being more desolate and forlorn than one who waits hours in the sweltering sun and stench of garbage in order to be allowed by an 18-year old foreign soldier to reach his home, school or family. The Israeli government has justified its 40-year brutal occupation of Palestinians in the name of security and national preservation. Nevertheless, it seems that the sophisticated security apparatus the Israeli Defense Forces have constructed serves to block reality, rather than bombers.

When we arrived in Tel Aviv at around 9 p.m., we were greeted by a husky immigration officer who asked us what we were doing in Israel. Before we could even finish our explanation, we were escorted to a holding area while the immigration officer confiscated our passports and went into a private room. Soon, however, one hour turned into two, and two into four. The excuse we were given was that we had to wait for clearance from the Military of Defense. I walked over to the private airport security room and protested, “Why are you waiting for clearance? We are an official delegation from Harvard University and we are all American-born nationals.” The officer sharply retorted, “It doesn’t matter if you’re American; you’re in Israel now.” I managed to survey the security room and saw three TV’s, soldiers kicking back on couches, and a George Foreman grill with chicken breast simmering; a sophisticated security apparatus indeed.

After roughly five hours, we were finally escorted to the baggage security check area. Soldiers searched every receipt, shoe, and toiletry in our bags. We were then individually asked to lift our shirts and remove our pants while being patted-down by security personnel. I did not even have time to feel embarrassed or violated before I was whisked away with a man named Ari from the Ministry of Defense. Ari was very interested in my family, where they came from, if I had relatives in the West Bank, why Harvard endorsed such a trip, and what I was studying in school. He asked me almost a dozen questions about why I had visited Lebanon (to club and shop of course!) and remarked that the country “was a sworn enemy of Israel.” He interrogated me for about two hours and then proceeded to call my father in the United States to confirm my identity! Apparently, the passport, the three picture IDs, four credit cards, and the authorization letter from Harvard were not enough.

Finally, after eight and a half hours of waiting and interrogation at the airport, we were cleared to leave. Our commute from Tel Aviv to Ramallah was remarkably fast and easy. We encountered one checkpoint between the two cities, and we were cleared to pass as soon as the driver told the soldiers in Hebrew that we were American. We reached Ramallah in less than an hour—in stark contrast to the three hours it took to travel from Ramallah to Nablus (a distance of 30km) two days later.

Despite the tumultuous start to our journey, we were elated to finally be in the holy land. Palestine is breathtaking. The rolling green hills and olive trees seemed to quiet the land’s many years of suffering.

After giving a presentation at the “Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence” in Jerusalem, we witnessed the true face of military occupation. We were dropped off by our taxi at the Qalandiya checkpoint terminal, the only entrance or exit to Ramallah. We walked through a 20-foot opening in the massive concrete wall the Israeli government had constructed around the city. Side-by-side with dozens of men, women and children, we walked through metal barriers lined with barbed wire in a cattle-like procession. We passed by the window of a security-check area where we could see two female Israeli soldiers lounging with their feet on the desk reading copies of Cosmo. The apparent normalcy, to both the Palestinians and Israelis, of this institutionalized humiliation and apartheid sickened me. For the life of me, I could not justify the brutality of a giant wall littered with barbed-wire, electric fences and armed teenage soldiers. The massive concrete abomination simply steals the sky.

This wall has nothing to do with security. When we drove from Ramallah to Tel Aviv (departing for Cairo), we were stopped only once as soldiers merely glanced at our American passports. In other words, we traveled from Ramallah to the capital of Israel with no obstacle, yet it took us three hours to travel to Nablus, and nearly an hour to walk through the humiliating Qalandiya terminal to get from Jerusalem to Ramallah. Israel has built a wall not to keep others out, but to keep the Palestinians imprisoned within; it is a manifestation of sheer domination. The wall snakes through the West Bank perforating it into dozens of tiny prisons. If this was a “security fence,” it would have been erected on the Green line, which separates Israeli and Palestinian territory. Life in the occupied territories has become so unbearable that Palestinians either flee to other countries, or retaliate violently, thus giving Israel the “excuse of security” needed to justify its military occupation.

All in all, three American Harvard students clearly posed no threat to Israel, as any well-trained, efficient security force could have deduced. We, however, fell victim to the apparatus of subjugation Israel has craftily created. I guess $4.4 billion a year in aid is not even enough for a free pass to the holy land.

Rami Sarafa is a government and near eastern languages and civilizations concentrator in Adams House. He is the former president of the Harvard Society of Arab Students.