Written By Gemma

After our routine breakfast of challah rolls, labneh, and cucumber slices, we board Yusefs trusty blue bus with large Hebrew letters sprawled on the side. Our guide today, a longtime member of Building Bridges For Peace climbs aboard and tells us what to expect as we pass through Kolandia, the checkpoint that passes through east jerusalem and Ramallah in the West Bank. Right away we are allowed in and we park our bus aroung the corner to get off the bus so that we all can see the sorting system that takes place there. As we approach the jungle of lines and gates someone points out how similar it is to the boarder crossing from Mexico. We walk one block north and we are at the Wall. Our guide warns us to be quick as we pull out our huge Nikon cameras and begin to snap pictures of the graffiti covering this large segment of the wall. "Imagine. War is Over." and "One Wall. Two Jails." are two of many lines that stick with me.

Following our guide's orders we scramble back on the buss and wind our way to the Palestinian Municipuality Building where we are greeted by our first Palestinian soldiers. After approaching Arafat's tomb and snapping some photos with the guards we get back on the bus and head towards Ramallah's old city. As we make our way around what seems like a very prosporous and attractive city, our guide begins to tell us about the controversy revolving this city, she tells us that many palestininans feel misrepresented by the look of Ramallah and that it being the largest all-palestinian city it doesn't show its many visitors the effects of occupation in the West Bank. At last we arrive in the old city and meet the guide who will take us on our hike. We begin at the top of a vast green valley and as we make our descent the guide begins to show us abandoned palestinian buildings that when 75% finished being built the IDF took them over. Our guide tells us that in the West Bank there are 3 types of control; A: Palestinian governed and controlled from security to social services, C: land and people militarily controlled by Israel, and B: some where in the middle. 60% of the West Bank is type C and only 12% type A. The construction of these homes that were meant to be a Palestinian engineer community were in type C. These mostly completed homes are now used as IDF training facilities. After an alleged 10 miles we arrive back at the cobblestoned old city where a feast of barbecue lamb and chicken awaits us.
It is ever amazing that so much beauty and hope can be intertwined with the pain and reality of the conflict.