Weekend in Tel Aviv

The checkpoints were not at all as intimidating as I expected, no hassles as to my travel purposes but completely depressing, especially the wall. The West Bank is intensly populated by Arab cities and villages with a few newer Jewish settlements of maybe 200-300 people in the settlement, sparsely found through the hills. You can tell they are settlements from a distance because the houses look like the ready made 'house-in-a-box' style set up in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. There are checkpoints throughout the Palestinian territories but the main gate at the wall of entry or exit has prison style turnstyles and metal detectors. SOme people coming in and out are denied or have trouble with their ID. As the American, the Scott and I passed through the turnstyle with ease I could hear the shouting of a older women who obviously was being denied. Once out of the security zone, the next stop is Ramallah, a bussling city that houses most the ministries and is a little bit more use to Foreigners. The main reason for the attention was probably because we were three younge women obviously travelling on our own. From here we take an but that drives to the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. The busses are separate, one station and set of buses for Arabs and another set for Jews. This was a strange concept for me as racial segregation is forbideen and punishable by law in the West, but it's one that keeps the peace. We met up with a friend of theirs from the Old City of Jerusalem. Abby was a 6th generation Greek guy living in a house four centuries old with his father. He came with us to Tel Aviv to check out the beach. Although Tel Aviv was a beautiful city, their way of life (considering the one I had just come from) broke my heart as they were at complete advantage and most of them had no clue as to the attrocities occuring in the West Bank. We used a well known site called couchsurfing.com typo find our accomodation for the evening and made it to a younge Israeli guy who had a huge apartment in Tel Aviv. After grabbing a bite we head back, listened to some tunes and met a friend of his who had just finished his army service in Nablus. Ofcourse, curious to see his reaction, I told him this is where we were doing humanitarian work and he told us how much he hated being situated in Nablus and how he would have rathered teach in Nablus. I could feel his sincerity and I felt hopefull for the future. I then remembered how forward Tel Aviv was suppose to be compared to the rest of Israel and regained consciousness. The next day, two other of his friends came to have dinner and once told the same thing, told us they knew nothing of Nablus. Amy (the American) had just came to Palestine from Bali and so asked the guys if they knew at least where Bali was. The young bearded guy with a long curly ponytail looked up from his plate to say "Isn't that a Muslim place". Amy giggled sarcastically and replied "No, it's mainly Hindu". I looked over to see her face was in disbelief that this person had just been in the Army and was obviously soo poorly educated. After going to the market, checking out the beach, being harassed by some creepy guys on the beach, and having a couple drinks we left the next day, earlier than planned. I couldn't help my feeling of yurning to get back to Nablus, a friendly and relatively peacefull society that is surprisingly very well educated considering the circumstances.