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Voices From the Middle East:
Ala Uwainah
Ala talks about the difficulties of traveling as a Palestinian.
By Ala Uwainah
 Instead
of being sound asleep at four a.m., I’m writing. I could say it’s
because of inspiration, but it’s got nothing to do with inspiration, it
has more to do with mosquitoes and caffeine.
I’m writing about traveling to Europe this summer. In a
normal country, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal to go to Europe.
Well, if you’re a Palestinian, it is. If you’re a Palestinian, everything
is a “big deal.”
Here’s some background information on why traveling for
a Palestinian is such an enormous task (assuming you are financially able to
pay for travel from some remnant of the battered Palestinian economy!). If you’re
a Palestinian, you need a visa to enter almost every country on the planet.
If you’re going to a European country, or to the United States, the government
is always afraid you’re going to become an illegal immigrant, smuggled
in. Even worse, you might turn out to be a terrorist. After all, you are a Palestinian!
As for Arab countries, many don’t like the Palestinian Authority, so they
ban Palestinians from entering their territories altogether, like Syria and
Lebanon. The only countries that don’t require special permission to enter,
as far as I know, are Cyprus, Iraq, and under special conditions, Jordan.
Getting the visa is no easy task. Even if you do fulfill the long
list of demands and conditions required by the representative office of the
country you’re trying to visit and manage to get your documents through
all the checkpoints, curfews, closures, and what-not, there is still a chance
you won’t get the visa. Assuming the visa problem is solved, you still
have to get through the toughest part of the journey - the few kilometers from
your house to Jordan.
At the moment, Jordan’s Amman Airport is the only outlet
for Palestinians trying to travel abroad. Getting to Jordan involves initially
leaving your home (which isn’t always possible), leaving your town (which
is even more impossible), and entering Jericho, a town surrounded by a network
of checkpoints and army patrols. Once in Jericho, you have to go through a complicated
process including passing three independent and not very coordinated border
controls, with people who are more than happy to send you home. There is a good
chance you won’t get through the Palestinian authority controls, but if
you do, there’s a good chance the Israelis will send you back too. Even
after all that, the Jordanians check if you have the necessary documents to
enter Jordan. All that just to get to the airport!
But somehow, a few other guys and I made it!
It all started when I got this email from a friend telling me
about a “peace camp” that was calling for the participation of Palestinian
and Israeli peace activists. (I wouldn’t exactly call myself a peace activist,
but I guess I’m close enough.) Being a disillusioned idealist, I was very
skeptical, but I sent an application and a cover letter. A few days later, I
was accepted! They invited me to the camp, with a promise: they would fund my
trip.
Being a Palestinian, you learn to always expect the worst. I kept
expecting something to go wrong. (From my experience, there’s a high probability
that something will go wrong.) At first, things went smoothly. After exchanging
a few emails and sending them something vaguely resembling a resume, they sent
me the phone number of a guy in Bethlehem, who was invited to the camp too.
We kept in touch and made things happen. We took care of everything, which wasn’t
an easy task, and we were set (or so we thought.) We had our reservations. We
had a special permission to get through to Jordan. All we had to do was send
someone to Tel-Aviv to pick up our passports with the visas stamped on them.
Then all the problems started.
The visas were a week late. We missed the date of our clearance
to go to Jordan. We had to get a new permit to facilitate our passage to Jordan.
And we couldn’t find flight reservations.
We finally got our plane tickets three days later, and we relied
on pure chance to get through to Jordan.
I still can’t believe we actually made it! But we did…
I guess we were lucky! We had a very good time and met many interesting people
…but that’s a different story.
— Ala Uwainah is 20 years old and lives in Bethlehem.
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