The Camp and the Wall

by Jonathan Lott (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Palestine

So there I was. Bethlehem. Palestine. Winter. I stood at the bus stop along the chilly, hilly streets lined with busy residential buildings, each one a different shade of sand. I waved away the old taxi drivers looking for a mark and set off on foot towards the Church of the Nativity. But I was being followed. I heard a voice. "You want a guide, mister?" "No, no, I have a map," I insisted. "I have my phone." "I have the best price," the voice contended. I turned to address the guide. He looked about eighteen, younger than the haggard flycatchers waiting for tourists out of Jerusalem. Thin, cold, determined. I decided to give him a few minutes of my time to explain. He took me to his battered Toyota, where he unfolded a large map of Bethlehem and the surrounding area. His name was Hassan, and his English was clean, if a little unpolished. As an English teacher in Saudi Arabia, I was used to interpreting imperfect speech. Hassan was an unofficial guide, a stringer, looking to get a cut of the established business in town. And it was a slow day. On his phone he swiped through pictures of a few nearby places. The Herodium. Milk Grotto. Rachel's Tomb. But I was most interested in his final proposition, Aida Camp and the Israel-Palestine barrier. We agreed on a price, in Israeli shekels, and set off towards the camp, which had grown since 1948 to become a town of over 5,000 residents. It didn't look particularly dilapidated to me, although the beige, four-story buildings crowded close together, with a one-lane street nestled between them. "After the people were forced to leave their homes," Hassan told me, "they came here, where the UN built one room for each family. If the people here ever move out of the camp, they will give up any right to challenge them in court. Generations of people were born, and will die, in this camp." "Do you think they're ever going to be allowed back? What's this place going to look like in ten, twenty years?" "Who knows," said Hassan, sighing. "Nobody can predict our future. I want to show you the wall. Keep walking down this road, and I'll get my car and come behind you." I began moving down one of the streets, where little snack stores had established themselves, a few kids hovering near their entrances, eying me curiously, hopefully. In the distance stood a large concrete wall with a fence standing atop the wall. Seemingly abandoned watchtowers were erected about every forty meters along the length of the great barrier, dividing Israel from the West Bank. The wall stood almost three stories tall, with the lower half painted with endless layers of chromatic, rebellious graffiti. "Make Hummus Not War," read one. "A Tale of Two Cities," read another. "Welcome to the World's Largest Prison," read a third. Not far from the wall sat a pile of rubble and tires. A small garbage fire burned somewhere down the street. Hassan had reappeared, and we walked down the road together, the mighty barrier to our left. He showed me a large gate arching high across the road. Atop the gate stood a colossal icon of a key. "This key is the symbol of this camp," Hassan informed me. "Every family kept the keys for their old homes, in the hope that they will be able to return there one day. The locks may have been changed, but they can never change our history, or our minds. Look there." Hassan pointed to the gate. "That was Banksy." Holding the key up were three young angels in agony, struggling to keep the key aloft.