Going to Bethlehem

I made plans to meet with Rev Mitri today at noon. It took me a bit longer than i expected to rent a car and get down to Bethlehem's main checkpoint, which I last visited a couple of years ago. I got there around 1pm and was utterly shocked. I had heard about the new 'terminal' and had even seen pictures of it, but none of that prepares you for the sheer cruelty of it. It's a maze of one-way lanes, turnstiles, bullet-proof glass, x-ray machines, loud speakers, and soldiers and more soldiers, of every variety: bored, surly, patronizing, efficient, don't want to be there, Russian, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, blonde, brunette, goofy-hat-wearing and gum-smacking, you name it.

And of course, the heart-breakingly long long lines of Palestinians - young, old, tired, impatient, desperately-needing-a-cigarette, hazy-eyed, men, women, students, shoppers, workers.

There was no handicap access; so, only able-bodied individuals can get in and out of the prison that is Bethlehem.

It was even worse when I finally made it through the damn terminal. That menace of a wall..that evil cement iced with barbed wire that snakes everwhere in and around Bethlehem...it was so much more awful up close. Again, I knew the stories and had seen the pictures. But it's quite different to see how ominous it really is, with the round guard towers spread along its length. It's far worse than what I saw of the Warsaw ghetto. One cannot help but be reminded of the adage that history repeats itself.

I walked a bit down the main street, now split by the wall, and called Mitri to pick me up, as we planned.