One weekend I left Kibbutz Dalia to spend Friday and Saturday in Jerusalem. I arrived in Jerusalem at about 2 pm on Friday, and on a whim I decided to cross the Israel/Westbank line into Bethlehem. I had been there once before on a tour, but they only took us to the church and then stuck us back on the bus. I wanted to go there and actually walk around and see an Arabic city in the Westbank. The Westbank is the name for the territories Israel seized from Jordan in the Six-day War of 1967. This includes East Jerusalem, but Israel annexed it so the Westbank border now is right around the edges of Jerusalem. I went to the Arab bus/taxi station to find a ride to Bethlehem. There were about 5 thousand Arabs there who also wanted rides to the Westbank. They had just finished friday prayers on the Temple Mount. Getting a ride was therefore pretty tough. I watched the Arabs cramming onto the buses and I learned some of their techniques for fighting my way in. I paid 2 shekels (80 cents), for the 20 minute ride. I was the only non-Arab on the bus, and it was so crowded that I had to sit on the floor (there's no bars to hold onto). I was a big attraction for them, with everybody testing out their 2 words of English on me.
In Bethlehem I walked around, looked at the views of the Judaen Hills, and watched the people. It's not an incredibly interesting town aside from it's history as Jesus's birthplace. All was quiet during this visit. My next visit to Bethlehem would be during a Westbank closure after a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Bethlehem was entirely sealed for Palestinians, so our taxi driver had to take us to Bet Jala where there was a big pile of rubble and concrete blocks blocking the road (to keep cars from coming or going). We had to climb over the pile and get into another taxi which took us into Bethlehem (a couple km). We were at Rachel's tomb, the only part of Bethlehem under Israeli control (the rest is under the Palestinian Authority because of the OSLO agreements), when we saw some disturbance occuring. Palestinian kids down the street were throwing rocks at the tomb and the soldiers guarding it. They were burning tires in the road (I think to screen the soldiers' vision), and some kids were shooting slingshots. Some of them wore a bandana covering their face. The soldiers watched carefully, and a few times ran closer to the kids and aimed their guns, but no shots were fired while I was there. The kids stayed behind a roadblock down the street. The rule seemed to be that the kids could stay behind the roadblock and throw stuff, but when they passed the roadblock and came closer the soldiers would have the right to fire. The soldiers were armed with rubber bullets, you can tell by the special barrel attached to the rifle. This situation was under control, and it looks a lot tamer in person than it does on television. After watching for a while, we walked about 100 metres, showed our passports at the checkpoint, and we were back in Jerusalem.
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