Israel and Jerusalem

Today’s news of further violence between Israel and the Palestinians has made my heart sink. Regardless of the rights and wrongs (and let’s face it, after such a prolonged history of violence, everybody is right and everybody is equally wrong) of the situation, I just wish that all sides could grow a pair large enough to agree that living in peace is so much better than dying at the hands of your neighbours.

Jo at the Western Wall with the Dome of the Rock in the background (10 September 2005)

I’ve only been to the area once. When I was involved in student politics, I was invited by UJS to spend five days in Israel with some of my comrades. It’s something they do every year – student politics is all too frequently dominated by one’s views on the Middle East and there’s nothing quite like muddying the waters when a bunch of kids have temper tantrums about a part of the world they’ve never visited. So UJS take a handful of people over, just to get a taste of what Israel is all about.

Five days wasn’t nearly enough – five hundred wouldn’t come close to bringing a clear understanding of the facts, let alone the emotions. In that time, we spoke to professors, students, politicians, foot soldiers in the IDF and a high ranking officer, members of the settlers’ council and ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. We spent time in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea. We drove across the country and flew above it in a helicopter. We visited sites of historical, religious and social significance. We looked, we listened, we let forth with a torrent of questions and found that the answers bred yet more questions. At the end of our short visit, we were exhausted but none of us regretted a moment of the trip.

Personally, I want to subject everyone in the region who has any claim to any kind of political, social or religious power / responsibility to a lie detector test and anyone who cannot truthfully answer that they would rather live in peace than doom yet another generation to violence should be banished and forced to spend a year, five years, ten years, as long as it takes, volunteering for humanitarian organisations across the world until they get the message that building a future is more important than the endless cycle of hate and destruction.

*sigh*

Still, if you can get over the necessity to have armed guards at the entrance to every market (and believe me, the look in their eyes is very different to that of the coppers outside Number Ten or the Queen’s Guard), it’s a wonderful part of the world. Arid and barren, yet turn the corner for the vivid colours of lemon and orange groves. And the food. Oh, the food. Every meal, a new experience that had my taste buds on their knees, begging for more. Everyone should visit Israel, if only for the mango smoothies you can buy at the foot of Masada.