A sunset over Bethlehem

We leave our tour with Waleed and Nabil and I return to the Walled Off. Of all the emotions I’ve been through, the most pre-eminent is of oppression. It’s a feeling I’ve re-discovered at the height of the lockdown, in March and April, though worsened by the knowledge that this situation, in the West Bank, is permanent. I try and imagine what my life would be if my horizons were shrunk to the dimensions of the space that’s available to the average Palestinian and it’s not a nice thought. It happened before; it’ll undoubtedly happen again: I’m glad that the wheel of fortune of life has given me a passport with “European Union” emblazoned in golden letter on the top.

The weather has opened a little bit and I decide to go out for a late meal. Asparago restaurant is not only open, but it’s got a never-ending selection of small bites and Taybeh beer. I work my way through their entrée selection while I look over to the Jewish settlement of Har Homa. Meal done, with the skies clear, it’s time for a walk.





Bethlehem proper – the city of churches, of Salesian schools, with its souk and the various offices of so many different Christian NGOs – is just beyond the hill. I walk past shops brimming with clients, traffic so convulsed that the cops have given up trying to direct it and buses disgorging Russian pilgrims into souvenir outlets. The old town is quiet but for a truck stuck in a narrow lane, the backed-up traffic erupting into waves of irate horns.



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Kids play in Manger square and my spirit lifts. Lights turn on and restaurants open up for business: I’m still full from my feast at Asparago but the whiff of warm pita and the sight of bowls of hummus is enough to cause me to lapse again. It’s a good thing that I never dabbled in hard drugs I guess.

The next morning, after a sumptuous Arabic breakfast served over souvenir plates from Stratford-upon-Avon, I check out the Walled Off; before I leave the West Bank, though, I decide to do one last tour of the wall to check out the street art, which has found in this massive concrete dichotomy a ready-made canvas.



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There’s everything, from Rick and Morty to Mario Bros to Donald Trump kissing a sentry tower to a beautiful portrait of Ahed Tamimi, the teenager arrested for having slapped a soldier during a raid. But it goes downhill from there. Somebody has attentively, tenderly even, painted a young Leďa Khaled holding a rifle. Her claim to fame is to have hijacked flight TWA 840 for a terrorist organisation. A few meters away, on a the wall of a shut-down pizzeria, somebody has stencilled the profiles of two of the nastiest pieces of work in this region: sheikh Yassin, founder of Hamas, and Hassan Nasrallah, current secretary of Hezbollah.



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And with that I decided to leave, to do every time I’m ‘round here and I’ve reached my limit of stupidity. I head to Tel Aviv. To be continued.