The Road to Ramallah and a Long-Lost Cousin

After six hours, three cars, two buses, two border crossings, and the discovery of a long-lost cousin, I’m in Ramallah at my grandparents’ house overlooking a stunning view of the road that travels through the gentle hills from Ramallah to the university town of Birzeit.

My trip was long (it used to take 2 hours to drive from Amman to Ramallah before the borders were created by Western powers in 1948), but smooth in that I encountered no problems with my documents. It was the first in my lifetime’s worth of Israeli border crossings that I wasn’t asked a single question. Not why I am here, what I am doing, who I plan to see. No opening of suitcases or requests to have a seat and then three hours later receive some unpleasant news about my “status” in the occupied territories. Just a long, multi-step journey from one part to another of what was formerly one undivided land.

The day started at 10am when my aunt and uncle drove me to the bus station in Amman and I boarded a shared “service” taxi for the 30 minute ride to the western Jordanian border.

The Tabarbour bus and taxi station in Amman

Stuck in Amman: Stateless Travel

It’s been four days I’ve been in Amman and will be two or three more before I can travel to the West Bank. I hadn’t planned to be here this long, but I’m waiting for a DHL delivery from Washington with some travel papers I got from Israel on my last visit two years ago and left behind.

Any person of Palestinian descent living abroad, no matter if he or she has American or any other citizenship, will inevitably think twice about the decision to try and enter the land of his or her ancestors and relatives — the homeland, Palestine — because crossing the border is troublesome.

For me, even as an American-born, shiny blue passport holding American citizen, any trip to the West Bank takes several more steps of planning and worry because the Israelis who control the border look up my name and research my identity thoroughly. They know I’m Palestinian. They know who my grandmother is and what town she’s from, where my family lives now, where I went to school, and my history of visits to Israel and the West Bank. So although I am American, they disregard the passport and treat me as a Palestinian. I’ve heard it spat at me from many an Israeli military border police: “Khere you are not American anymore”

And if I am not-American, that means I am a stateless Palestinian.