Israel is a land of many narratives, and as a Jewish-American I grew up deeply identifying with the Jewish one.
But having made my way past the steel barricades and towering concrete barriers that separate Jerusalem from the West Bank, I find myself in a completely different Israel story and a completely different world.
On any other Friday the streets of Bethlehem would be crowded. Music would be playing, people would be dancing, families would be strolling, and the town would be celebrating the Muslim holy day of rest. Today there is only silence, save for the soft clap of black flags flapping in the wind.
“It’s because of Gaza,” says our taxi driver, as he winds along deserted avenues and desert hills. “Until the bloodshed ends there will be no celebration.”
This small town, better known as Jesus” birthplace, is only ten kilometers from Jerusalem, but it couldn’t feel further away.
According to our driver, my fellow travelers and I are only the second group of tourists to brave the system of taxi-buses and checkpoint security to visit today. Wars are bad for business, but it’s hard to think about business in times like these.
We roll by quiet, dilapidated houses that look exhausted and defeated in the weak late-afternoon sun.
In stark contrast to this scene is the IDF military base and the overloaded Hummer that passes us on the street. On the next hillside the driver points out the glinting rooftops of an Israeli settlement.
This is the other side of Israel, a side I had heard about before but never actually seen, never really understood.
My only other experience in this country had been with Taglit-Birthright, an organization that runs ten-day trips to the Holy Land for Jewish people. On that trip I made friends with Israelis, visited Judaism’s most important historical sites, and left with glowing memories.
But as I watch covered women shuffle alone through abandoned alleyways, as I listen to our cabdriver talk about his daughter, who had just graduated from the university with a degree in computers but was stranded unemployed on the West Bank, I feel those memories twisting in my mind.
Israel is a land of narratives, and on my first trip I experienced only one. No understanding of this country is complete without delving into the Palestinian side of things. Theirs is a story of loss and hopelessness, and you feel that everywhere you go. The desperation permeates the land and radiates in the dying January light.
Their story exists right next to the Jewish one, among it, and within it.
Israel is a land of intense emotion and ideology, and Palestinians and Israelis are separated by so much more than checkpoints and borders and concrete walls.
Narratives stand in the way of either side ever understanding the other.
Until these real and metaphorical walls come down, there will be no discourse and interaction between people in this country. And there will be no peace.
Taylor Chase is a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar from the University of Colorado. She is currently studying and teaching at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, Russia.
