The other side

Most of them don't have bullets

Bethlehem, Christmas Eve. I’m at the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square with Tariq, trying to get into midnight mass. We’re pushing and being pushed. Tariq has a big film camera and a Barbie-pink press card he got from God knows where. All evening we’ve driven round the town, a simple route made circuitous by roadblocks, and he’s flashed the press card, and mostly the soldiers have let us through.

I have never seen so much hardware in my life – feel like I should be packing myself. There are vans of soldiers in camouflage, police on every corner, some in blue, others in green with black woollen headgear, pulled down to their eyes and up over their mouths, keeping out the cold.

At the entrance to the church nervous men in suits talk into their jackets and have curly white wires coming out of the back of their heads. Then there’s us, and about a million awestruck tourists from all over the world.

People from Bethlehem don’t really come here for midnight mass, says Tariq, although they’d like to. You need a ticket to get in, and those are hard to get – unless you’re a visitor or a politician, like the Palestinian president Abu Mazen, who’s coming here tonight. But Tariq got tickets earlier today, and he pushes me ahead of him, waving them at officials who are holding back the crowd.

In the church lobby it’s kind of frenzied, with a step-through metal detector, like an airport check-in speeded up with guns. ‘No photos,’ a security man says, and Tariq has to hand his camera in. He gets into an argument with one of the guards, and I stand there trying to look relaxed, thinking, Christ, just one bullet and there’d be a Rambo-style shootout in this place.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Tariq, looking at me. ‘Most of them don’t have any – how do you call them?’

‘Bullets?’

‘Yeah – most of them don’t have any bullets. It’s not like you think.’ He goes back to arguing with the guard.

I look down and see a little guy with a moustache sitting in a chair. He’s one of a cluster of officials, just kind of hanging around. He has on a navy flying jacket and holds a metal detector in his hand, which he keeps running over his arm-pocket zip and giggling as he sets it off. He tries it out on the buttons, and it goes off again. I catch his eye and giggle. His superior barks out something stern, but stifles a smile as he turns his head away.

The service is packed so we stand in the corridor, which is lined with bodyguards sweating into their suits. Tall men in dark overcoats pace about. Each politician or important person has his own security detail, Tariq says, and there are some here to protect the priests.

A wave of people pushes forwards. ‘Back! Back! Get back! Do you understand English? Get back!’ shouts one of the overcoated men, pushing us up against the wall, and a troop of black berets marches someone down the corridor, hurrying him through a side-door, which is then slammed shut. This happens several times. Each time a different man and a different style of uniform.

Abu Mazen arrives. He's feet away, walking smartly, with snow-white hair. His men rush him into the room and slam the door. Minutes later it opens again and the Palestinian president is hustled past us, into the service at the heart of the church.

Israeli in Bethlehem

‘It’s complicated – where I’m from depends on who I’m talking to. If it’s an Israeli, then I say I’m from Israel and I live in Jerusalem; if I’m talking to a Palestinian then I say I’m a Palestinian, I live in Bethlehem, but I have a blue ID.’

Alex is explaining his identity to me. We’re driving in his pick-up towards the alternative Bethlehem checkpoint, where I might have to show ID – and strictly speaking, I’m not allowed in. That’s because I’m Israeli, and according to Israeli law, I can’t enter areas under Palestinian Authority control. It’s to keep us safe, they say.

We pass a red sign in Hebrew saying Israeli citizens not allowed beyond this point. Alex checks my blue ID – my Israeli identity card. He wants to make sure I don’t have an army number. I didn’t do the army, and I didn’t have any idea that a number on my ID would show it – but Alex does. ‘If you’re ex-army, then it’s really dangerous to come here,’ he says. ‘For Palestinians, you could be a spy.’

At the main checkpoint everyone shows ID. But not here. This one lies on a road connecting Israel to the settlements. Once Israel’s separation wall is finished, no Palestinians will have access to this road, and the checkpoint will be closed. Here, they only check you if they think you’re Arab. We drive right through.

Later, but only later, Alex tells me that none of his Jewish friends from the Hebrew University would ever come and visit him in Bethlehem, in his four years there. ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Too scared,’ he says. ‘Kidnapping. To some people out there, an Israeli is the ultimate prize. Did you see what happened to those two Israelis who got lost in Ramallah?’ He doesn’t have to fill me in. I’ve seen it – the footage of Palestinians waving bloody hands to the crowd after tearing the two Israeli reservists apart.

But that’s later. For now, he just says: ‘If anyone asks you, you’re only British, you have a visa. Show your British passport. Hide your Israeli ID. Don’t tell anyone here that you have any connection with Israel.’

I honestly think he’s exaggerating. But he lives here, and he knows.

At Alex’s house, we eat special Easter cookies, called ma’amul. The family has lived here always. They have a family tree going back 500 years. But Alex was born in Jerusalem – hence the Israeli ID. He’s allowed access to Bethlehem because he has family and property there. It is two days before Good Friday. His grandmother explains that the cookies are meant to remind us of the sponge the Romans gave Jesus on the Cross, to slake his thirst. The sponge was – what is the word? – we try to translate it from Arabic – saturated. Saturated with vinegar to stop the torture of his thirst.

The cookies are filled with nuts. I remember stories about Jesus from school. Jesus and Easter. It’s also Passover – Pesach. Ido told me the word in Hebrew for Easter – Pascha. Jesus’ Last Supper, I think, was a Passover meal.

‘How does it feel to be here?’ Alex asks.

A million miles from Israel, is how it feels. But I’m not sure I can say this, as his grandmother is sitting at the table, and I’m trying not to show anyone I have any connection with Israel, so I satisfy myself with ‘so different from Jerusalem’.

‘Yes, very peaceful,’ he says.

‘Isolated.’ I bite into the second cookie on my plate.

Outside the Bethlehem Bible College we meet Tariq, friend of a friend in London, who is going to show me around. Alex and Tariq are both Christian Arabs – which matters in this part of the world, where mixing is not especially popular, and it is of acute importance to which community you belong.

Tariq has lived in Bethlehem all his life.

‘What’s it like?’ I ask.

‘It’s the best place in the world.’

He drives around very fast pointing out Herod’s castle, where the shepherds were sitting when the angel came and told them Jesus was going to be born. The wall seems to be everywhere, covered in graffiti. We heart you Palestine. Your anger is a gift. I hate Israel. The graffiti’s mainly in English, a bit in Spanish, French.

‘It’s getting worse every day,’ he says 10 minutes later.

‘Why?’

‘The occupation. People can’t get into Israel – they don’t have permission, and so they can’t get there to work. They lose half their income, and the tourists don’t come any more, since the second intifada – they are afraid.’

Har Homa settlement, a clutch of bright white houses, stares right back at us from a neighbouring hill.

‘That land belonged to people from Beit Jala, Beit Sahor and Bethlehem,’ says Tariq. ‘They took the land – my family had land there. They took most of it, and the rest they will take soon. Well, they don’t just take it – they have a law in Israel, that if you don’t use the land for 15 years then it’s not yours any more. Then they stop you from getting to your land so you can’t use it…’

I ask him if the IDF still come. ‘They come whenever they want. According to the Oslo agreement, they shouldn’t, but they do. No one will stop them.’ He nods at a narrow alley – ‘two days ago it was full of Israeli soldiers…’ What do they do when they’re here? ‘Nothing – just walk around. Whatever they want.’ They also arrest wanted Palestinians, Alex later says.

We stop at the old city and get out of the car. There are pictures of men with guns in front of the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, pasted to the walls. I can’t read them but I know what they say. These are Palestinian men who died fighting Israel. They are called martyrs by the Palestinians. A young boy passing by sees us standing there and shouts shahid – the Arabic word for martyr.

Most of the pictures show blank eyes, posed with the gun before death. We pause in front of each so Tariq can translate: ‘He died in Bethlehem Easter 2006. April 9^th, 2006. He was from the camps in Bethlehem, I knew him.’ As we round a corner I see a picture unlike the others. They are all chilling – looking into the eyes of a man days before his death. But this one has an intimacy different from the rest. Surely a shahid is not supposed to look so sad and gentle? Where did all that toughness go?

The wall is everywhere, jagged diagonal blocks cut every view. ‘All the towns are surrounded,’ says Tariq. ‘Hebron, Ramallah… but in Bethlehem you see it.’

The oppressive atmosphere lifts as we enter the Nativity Church – the place where Jesus was born. Two Palestinian policemen hunch outside with the huge guns – no one does security in the Middle East without a big, fuck-off gun. Don’t the small ones kill just as well? Tariq says they’ll ask me where I’m from and ask to see ID. I prepare myself, but they don’t say a thing.

The church is nearly 2,000 years old. Orthodox chanting fills the air – a service is in progress under hundreds of gold lamps and coloured lights. Only 15 per cent of Bethlehem is Christian now – it used to be nearly 80 per cent, but the Christians are leaving to find a better life abroad. Bethlehem is mainly Muslim now.

Downstairs in the basement was where Jesus was born. An Irish woman with a plastic baby shows me where the manger was. She cradles the doll in her arms and kisses it. It has been blessed. You must kiss it, she says, holding it out. I kiss it. ‘Are you married?’ she asks. I tell her no. ‘God bless you,’ she says.

‘Ok lady, that’s enough,’ says a priest with a knitted woollen hat.

‘Thank you father,’ says the woman, handing him back the doll. He puts it away in a cardboard box.

Tariq’s family came here from Syria, 600 years ago. His grandfather’s grandfather is buried here in Bethlehem and he can visit the grave. ‘Usually, because we don’t have so much room, they move the bones. But my great great grandfathers were all, most of them, priests, so they’ll never move the bones.’

Outside, Tariq points out the entrance to the church – it used to be much bigger. From a wide arch it’s been bricked up to a stoop-down five-foot hatch. ‘Because the Muslims came,’ he says. ‘I don’t know when – 700? With their horses, to ride inside the church, to conquer the Christians.’

We eat falafel, for which Tariq pays with shekels bearing the words for the redemption of Zion, under the eye of Har Homa, whose white roofs hang between the church and the trees.

Tariq can not leave Bethlehem. He has Palestinian ID. Alex has Israeli ID and he can go where he likes but Tariq is trapped. When the roads are open, he can travel to Ramallah, Hebron, Jenin… Nablus. But they were closed for the first two years of the second intifada, and open to private cars only since Christmas. It didn’t used to be that way – they could travel to Tiberias, Jerusalem, Haifa – well inside Israel. Tariq remembers going with his father. But the second intifada changed it all.

Tariq will never be allowed into Israel. He’s blacklisted after time in an Israeli jail. He was 18 days inside, 11 in solitary in a six by eight-foot cell. They did not beat him. Someone he knew was selling weapons. After questioning, they released him without charge.

He does not complain, just tells me the facts. He doesn’t need to spell it out. Sadness saturates this air. Frustration, longing and loss saturate this place.

At the checkpoint on the way out, Alex throws a breezy erev tov at the soldiers, and we sail right through. As we head to Jerusalem on the darkening road, Alex tells me: ‘My father says the best time was under the Israelis, where there was no Palestinian authority. At least then we could move about and do what we wanted, go where we wanted. Yes, it was occupation, but things were orderly. Now it’s just a mess.’

This is when he comes out with all the kidnapping stuff, and about the Israeli soldiers that got torn apart. When I get back to Israel, I go to my neighbour Eyal. I tell him that I was in Bethlehem. Assaf and his fiancée are sitting there. ‘You’re brave,’ they say.

Each side is the other’s mirror: terror and the terrified. I remember Tariq’s final words, before we said goodbye: ‘They are there, the Israelis. They will never leave. They can do whatever they want and no one can stop them. And they do not want us here.’