Have You Got A Weapon?

The following day, after our lovely evening with Ihsan and his family, it was time to move on to Israel.

I will be completely honest, I was not looking forward to this part of the trip anymore. This is because even though I spoke at length about it with Ihsan, and also with his friend who is living in Israel (on the West Bank and therefore at the heart of it all), the Australian government travel advice was not favourable for this region. Well, actually that's not quite true - the advice on travelling to Israel in general was "high degree of caution". To be honest, the advice for Syria was much worse ("reconsider your need to travel"), and as we'd had no major problem there, I kind of figured the rest of Israel would be ok. But the advice for Gaza and the West Bank (now let's be honest, no-one in their right mind would go to Gaza right now, and anyway, you can't as a tourist) was "do not travel". And I'd had a few emails from family saying that I shouldn't go. But the alternative then was to fly out of Amman, and I didn't have that amount of money (they wanted something like £400 one way - more than we'd paid for our original flight). Plus, and this was the big deciding factor I guess, Agnieszka was adamant that she was going, and therefore we'd have to split up - not normally a big deal, but hey, this is the Middle East, and although we'd met some women travelling by themselves in Syria (e.g. Sandrine), its not something I'd really advise anyone to do on their own.

So I felt that I didn't have much choice. It was a pity that I felt so apprehensive about Israel, because to be honest, to go to Israel was the main reason for the whole trip in the first place. And the reason for whipping through the other countries as fast as we did was that ultimately we would then have more time in Israel. So, praying hard, I grinned and bared it - and kept my fingers crossed - and we were off.

Ihsan drove us to the border crossing at King Hussein / Allenby Bridge. This was the weirdest border crossing I have ever been through. The "King Hussein" bit is Jordan, and "Allenby Bridge" is Israel. So at King Hussein we had to get our bags (including our main luggage) scanned, then we had to go pay our departure tax (5JD) - in another building - get our passport stamped, and then wait for the shuttle bus which would take us to the Israeli side. The shuttle bus goes like every hour or so, so we had a bit of a wait - and then we were off. Now there's a bit of a thing about the passport stamp. Basically, with the exception of Jordan and Egypt, no Middle Eastern country will allow you entry if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport. So what people do, is they get the stamp on a piece of paper, and then throw the paper away once they leave the country. Customs officials are getting wise to this, so they look for other signs that you've been to Israel - so it's pretty obvious if you have an exit stamp in your passport from the land crossing between Jordan and Israel - and then no Israeli entry / exit stamp - well, where did you go? How can you exit Jordan at the Jordan-Israel border, but not go to Israel? Therefore, the Jordanians, as a courtesy to travellers, have now started stamping their exit stamp on a piece of paper too - but then you have another problem. If you have an entry stamp to Jordan, but no exit stamp - then how did you get out? Obviously something fishy there - must be Israel. So we decided that, stuff it, let's just get the stamp in the passport - and not go to any more Middle Eastern countries until that passport is replaced.

The bus drove us to the Israeli border at Allenby Bridge, where we all filed out, and then - no joke - saw the swarms of people pushing, shoving and crowding around a counter - where the guys were taking your luggage, scanning it, and then sending it through to the other side for you to collect once you cleared passport control. This was pure pandemonium, people pushing and shoving to get to the front of the queue - and once you handed your bag over, you then had to fight your way back out of the whole mess.

After this was passport control. Again, long, long queues. And strangely, all the customs officials were very young women dressed in military like uniform. Maybe that's how they serve their national service, I don't know. Finally we made it to the front of the queue, and then, no joke, we were questioned for ages about all sorts of trivial things - like, "What is your father's name", "What is your grandfather's name", "Do you have more than one passport" and so on. I've never been asked these questions before (well, other than the "What is your father's name" one, which I've had to fill in on some visa applications). The woman also wanted my address in London, my address in Australia, an address in Israel, my email address, do I know anyone in Israel, why was I in Syria, how long was I in Syria, where did I go in Syria, do I have any Syrian friends, do I have any Jordanian friends, have I been given any gifts in Syria or Jordan to take into Israel...oy ve, this took forever. And then, when she finally reached the end of the questions, and looked like stamping my passport (and there's an issue in itself - more on that later), she folded up the paperwork (with my passport still firmly in her hand), got up from her desk, told me to take a seat and wait. So I did. I waited, and waited, and waited - and then got out my Zen and watched Star Wars.

We waited there for 4 hours. Turns out, if you've been to Syria, watch it. They'll keep you there absolutely ages whilst they check out every single, minute little detail. I felt sorry for one woman who had been in our bus, she was only going to Jerusalem overnight, and all she wanted to do was go and pray in the mosque at the Dome of the Rock - and she was still waiting when they finally let us go.

We finally went through to the other side of passport control, and were confronted by yet another LONG queue - well actually it wasn't really a queue, just a whole heap of people crowded around pushing and shoving again and making some vague sort of line - I swear if the woman behind me got any closer (these people have no sense of personal space), or pushed into me one more time, I was going to deck her.

When we finally got to the front of the queue, we had to present our passports again, and answer more strange questions, but the piece de resistance was:

"Do you have a weapon?"

You're kidding, right? And that's when it dawned on me - I'm actually in the Twilight Zone... doo doo doo doo...