Visiting Arafat
On one of my first few days in Israel, the idea came up between me and Ilana of going to visit some Palestinian area in the West Bank, partially because she would soon be becoming an Israeli citizen, and so legally forbidden from going there (without a uniform). In fact it would be my first time visiting anywhere in the West Bank (including Jewish areas). She had already been to Bethlehem in a group, so Ramallah was the prime option. We set it for Friday (1 June), when she wouldn’t have any work. Raf decided he would join us too… Although the day before he claimed that he would be too hungover from Thursday night’s parties to be able to join us, Ilana managed to convince him to take it back.
At first I wasn’t sure if it was actually going to happen. I didn’t dare tell anyone. Unlike Ilana, one of the few people I informed first was mum. She didn’t really react. I soon told Imbar and Shimrit (my cousin Harry’s wife of 3.5 years who I had not met till two weeks ago; and my brother’s fiancée who I met a day or two later) and they certainly did react, suggesting the trip was dangerous, crazy, and pointless. Well, just because I was warned, and just because they wouldn’t do it, there was no reason not to go. I even read up on travelling to Ramallah online, but, despite mention of possible hassle and delay at checkpoints, no one online seemed as concerned as my Israeli family. They did at least manage to have me reduce my risks by removing things that would identify me as Jewish, even from my pocket. In the end this was far from necessary… The chance of my being kidnapped and strip-searched, I gather was pretty small.
So Ilana and I met on Emek Refaim, and together we met Raf outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City. I’m sure this was my first walk into the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods outside of the Old City, but it wasn’t Ilana’s. At the gate, women with head-scarves were selling fig leaves and other goods; young men, or old boys, were occasionally entering or exiting the Old City gates with wooden carts; others were heading in through the gate for Friday morning prayer.
We walked up Nablus Road until we found buses, and among them the number 18 to Ramallah. The buses, run by Israeli Arabs, are often seen on some of Jerusalem’s roads. They carry maybe 20 people, and act somewhere between Israeli sheruts and buses. The ride didn’t take very long; there was no delay at the entry checkpoint. But it was bumpy. 
A lot of the roads were very rough and clearly unpaved. We passed by one of the concrete wall parts of the West Bank security barrier that included graffiti in Arabic, English, Hebrew and Yiddish.
So sooner than expected we arrived, and realised a few things: we didn’t really know what to do now that we were there, and it was Friday, so most of the shops were closed. There were a number of people standing around the paved area that was the bus station, and some offered to help us out, and try in their poor English to suggest places. It was easier, though, when Raf spoke to them in Arabic, although it seems he didn’t understand.
He did at least comprehend the directions to the Muqata. So we went for a walk to visit Arafat. (It seems there wasn’t anything much better to do anyway.) 
Along the way we saw the likes of posters with photos of shihada (”martyrs”), or of Arafat and Sheikh Yassin… The Arabic was a bit hard to read, but the visual content of these public signs seems to follow the Israeli generalisation of Palestinians parading suicide attackers. When a few days later, I saw a poster in Israel with the photo of a killed soldier, I wondered whether any comparison was fair.
Also along the way was definitely the funniest thing we saw in the city. 
At a prominent intersection containing a roundabout with plaster lions and some metal monument and descending strings of Palestinian flags, was also a cafe entitled “Stars and Bucks Café”, these words written in large white letters on a green background, alongside some circular logo. The imitation was amusing. Nonetheless, I don’t think the cafe was open for a Friday morning.
Still travelling to the Muqata we passed some Palestinian security personnel. Dressed in uniform, they looked not unlike IDF soldiers found across Israeli cities. The group of officers we first saw seemed to be doing not very much, some standing on one side of the road, others on the opposite. They greeted us cheerfully, and asked us where we were from, and our names. In the few encounters we had with Palestinians, names come a lot closer to the front of the conversation than they would with most English speakers, who would leave names until after they know a person for an hour. They didn’t seem to mind that Joel, Ilana and Raphael are particularly Jewish names either. (Raf had noted that they only know two types of Jews: settlers, and soldiers, and we looked like neither.)
Having checked with them that we were going the right way, we soon arrived at the Muqata compound. Not a particularly impressive place to the eye (not surprising considering its recent history), and is surrounded by a concrete wall for the most part. Inside, past security, who talked to us and guided us a little (to the extent that Raf could understand their Arabic), was a sparse plaza, with some form of monument and a large portrait of a smiling Arafat. 
Behind this was another concrete wall, and what turned out to be a building site: they informed us that we should really return in 15 months when the mausoleum (and adjacent minaret) should be complete. It’s impressive that their city works are paced about as slow as some of the projects in Jerusalem…
So after a look at the Muqata area, and chat with the guards there, whose job in practice seemed more like tour guides (despite not having much to tour), we started to head back towards the centre of town, where we could visit the shuk (or sook in Arabic; market either way). I payed a little more attention to the buildings and spaces around. 
In some areas there were piles of rubble, possibly from Israeli army operations there, although rubble can be left from other events; a number of the buildings were unfinished, just concrete shells, although it seems that Arab culture in Israel prescribes buying the house and building it while living inside, thus the building process taking quite some time. At points along the way one sees signs that look like street signs but instead have on them Islamic quotables, like “there is no God but Allah”. 
Until we reached the real centre of town the shops were nearly all closed. In the centre, though, everything from restaurants to shoe shops were to be found.
The market has portions that sell largely fruit, as well as other areas that deal in watches, toys, rugs, and other such goods. 
Among the market sellers and buyers also stand men with large shiny canisters (with colourful decorations), whose role is to serve drinks, somewhat different in manner to the kids running around with cups on platters in the Arab shuk in Jerusalem. Within the shuk area is also a large and very pretty mosque. Once we had reached the far end of the shuk, we realised we’d come to the end of Ramallah too. By consensus of just about everyone we’d asked, there wasn’t much else to see.
So we went back to the bus station, where people standing around (who were there when we arrived as well) told us they would inform us when a bus to Jerusalem turned up. We went into a shop for shade. Eventually, we were called out, only to be told we couldn’t board the bus: the driver had to do something, they explained in a stinted English, and with hand signs crossing their arms over their stomachs, and then raising them up beside their head. I thought the first sign might indicate the driver was sick, but Raf deduced that this meant the driver had to go pray. A Jew might illustrate praying by rocking back and forth; a Christian by clasped hands, so that was a reasonable visual description, if only I knew enough about Islamic prayer to identify it.
It wasn’t long before a bus did come to take us. We caught it, but the driver did not have us pay until after the Qalandia checkpoint, lest someone need to get out and catch another bus there. But there a soldier stepped onto the bus, briefly examined the IDs of the Israeli Arabs at the front, asked them questions, but didn’t really need a good answer to be satisfied. To us, at the back, and clearly not Arab, she commanded “passports?” from the front. I raised mine, closed, but she didn’t even look, and let us pass. Ilana decided she was probably in a bad mood.
The bus returned us to Nablus Road, from which we went to have a coffee just inside the Damascus Gate of the Old City—well, coffee for Raf, and juice for the others of us. Interestingly, before long, massive crowds began pushing their way through the market towards the gate. It must have been the end of Friday morning prayer at the Haram Eshsharif (Temple Mount) mosques, and the exiting crowds were reminiscent of those leaving a stadium after a major game. Trying to traverse through those masses, but in the opposite direction, was therefore an exciting challenge.
In the end I found myself in West Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon, with my head uncovered unnecessarily because, in caution, I had taken no kippah…