I chatted with the folks at the hotel desk in Tiberias, my resting point for the second night, after a long walk through the Golan Heights after discovering that I had caught the last bus of the day into the Heights. Wandering along the highway I arrived to a live firing range around dusk, rather shocked to see that the road cut through this field of military operations. I wondered if I would be a 'target of opportunity' for the day. UN buses whipped past me in the opposite direction, as well as larger buses which cart people around the kibbutzes free of charge.

I had been told that to get to Jenin from here was but a short hop to the town of Afula, where another bus would head to Jenin. Indeed Afula was quite simple to reach, but I was dumped on the opposite end of town, and had to walk to the central bus station. A taxi driver was hassling me; "where you want to go? Where?"
I was evasive at first but finally spat out, "Jenin."
"Oh, Machsum! Yes, taxi to Machsum!"
...Whatever Machsum was. Eventually I would discover it meant 'checkpoint'. A rather pricey taxi ride, but of course it was reasonably far away. A line of vehicles sat behind a set of concrete dividers and guard outposts; I exited the taxi and wandered up to an officer.
A young fellow met me and I showed him my passport. "Canadian," he said, smiling. "Why do you want to go to Jenin?", a grin on his face.
"Just to see, you know. I'm a tourist."
"You just come here to visit Jenin?"
"No, I'm going all over Israel."
He chuckled, and handed back my passport. "I hope you have a nice time!"

That was that. Yet, I seemed to still be far from the town. Walking along the side of the road, little had changed from before the checkpoint. Farm fields were everywhere, these ones just as green as the others. Indeed, I had thought the Palestinians were not doing too badly with all of this equipment - until I saw an Israeli bus run past me. There was an Israeli village up ahead, a near suburb of Jenin. These were their fields.

A Palestinian man pulled over and offered me a lift into town, which I gladly accepted. As we reached another checkpoint, the mood changed. APCs were situated on either side of a now dirt road, with soldiers standing on top, fully armed and wearing hard helmets. The narrow buildings that I had seen in other parts of the middle east peeked over the horizon. This would be the actual checkpoint into Jenin. We sat for several hours, me in the front with this man and a family of four children with their mother in the rear. The process was tedious and long; the soldiers were far less courteous than the previous checkpoint.

A group of foreigners riding in a bus were pulled over and ordered out, as the Israeli soldiers pored over their passports and searched their luggage. Some looked my way and smiled at me - perhaps I was obviously a tourist, or journalist, riding with the Palestinians. They appeared to be aid workers, or perhaps some sort of human shield individuals. These towns are by no means closed to foreigners - with one look at my passport, a quick search of my bags, we were ushered out of the roadblock and on our way into Jenin.






Culture shock would be one way to describe it; falafel stands galore, streets jammed with taxis, crowds of people, the scent of spices and heated garbage wafting through the alleyways and arabian beat music blasting from all directions, from any number of speakers. Jenin was not Israel; this was not Israel. This was Palestine, this was the middle east. While Israel looks and feels as though it is only one step away from the cool confines of Europe, this is indeed the middle east. I was the only foreigner around.

Posters promoting the Al-Aqsa brigade were plastered everywhere, portraying young teenagers with AK-47s. Sometimes being hugged by their grandmothers. I wandered around some more, through thick street markets and occasionally quiet commercial districts, and eventually found an internet cafe. The place boasted several dozen computers, nearly all of them surrounded by crowds of young boys as they played a game of CounterStrike - you know, that game which uses realistic weapons and pits a team of hostage-taking terrorists against a squad of counter-terrorists assigned to take them out and rescue the hostages. In other places this would be harmless, but here, perhaps, they are learning the tools for their own survival.

Jenin was interesting for an afternoon, but I was running short of time, having a rendezvous in Tel Aviv tomorrow. I decided on heading to Nablus and spending the night there. Little did I know what I was getting into.

Nablus



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