When I began to imagine my trip to the Middle East, Israel and Palestine were essential parts of it. They were relatively peaceful and there was much to see. When Intifada Thania broke out, I did not believe it could last very long, and I kept hoping it would end before my trip began. Even when I realized it would still be happening, I was tempted to visit anyway, just to see what conditions were like, although it would be impossible to see everything I wanted to see. I think it was only after September 11 that I knew I could not go there, but even then I secretly hoped I could spend a few days traveling Jericho to Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I even took along with me flight information for Tel Aviv to Ankara, in case it became possible.
I left Aqaba in the midafternoon, after scuba diving on a coral reef in the morning, and took the Wadi Araba road north. This travels in a straight line from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Dead Sea, in the Rift Valley between the mountains of Negev in Israel to the west and the mountains around Petra rising rugged to the east. There were occasional Bedouin villages of concrete blocks or black blanket tents, but almost no traffic.
The Dead Sea surprised and delighted me with its beauty. I had expected something flat and featureless like the Great Salt Lake, but the Dead Sea is in the Rift Valley, and its east coast resembled more the coast of California. Cliffs plunged into the water, and the road was etched into the cliff just above the water's edge. The sea itself resembled the deep beautiful blue of Lake Van. The sun was setting, casting a yellow sword across the water, turning the mountains different shades of brown, red and purple. The sun set as I reached the bridge over the steep and intricate canyon of Wadi Mujib, and I saw the sun's last shaft of light into the canyon. I continued north to a resort at Suwayma, where I got a cute little bungalow for the night.
At the beachside snack bar a large group of Saudi men were talking about Palestine in Arabic. I would have loved to join them, but as I sidled up nearby, they all got up to leave. I did have a brief conversation with one man. They were all Islamic astronomers at a conference concerning the fine details of the motion of the moon and its relation to the Islamic lunar calendar. This man was a professor near Riyadh.
There were a number of towns whose lights were visible on the ``west bank" of the sea. I asked him if he knew where the border between Jordan and Palestine was. He wasn't sure, but he told me the bright lights and the large glow at the top of the ridge were the lights of Jerusalem. I was electrified. I was so close I could see it!
I had asked the Israeli hitchhikers I picked up in Cappadocia if it was safe to travel in Israel at this time. They said yes, but I still shouldn't come. There are too many police checkpoints. Too much hassle. Wait until the difficulties are over. And I had assured my family that it was unlikely that I would go there.
But now I was so close I began to consider the possibility. I asked the clerk in the gift shop if the border would be open tomorrow. With a rather sour demeanor he said it was, especially for an American tourist.
I began scheming. My Plan A was to get a refund for my Amman-Ankara ticket for two days hence, go to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and fly from Tel Aviv to Istanbul to Ankara. But notes I had brought from America said that that ticket would be $500.
So Plan B was to drive to the border and leave my rental car there for the day, take a taxi to Jerusalem, tour the Old City, return in the late afternoon, hoping I could get back into Jordan to return my car.
After dinner, however, as I read Lonely Planet on Jerusalem, I changed my mind. It would be a day of hassles and mishaps, with a chance of not getting back for my flight to Ankara and a Jordanian crossing point stamp in my passport that would preclude further travel in Arab countries, all for a fraction of a day in a city that a week would not do justice to.
The next morning at breakfast I sat with Marko, the Slovenian. He urged me to go to Jerusalem for the day, ``for the excitement". But the more he talked the more formidable it seemed. There were two ways of doing it. I could go through the border as an ordinary person. I might have to wait an hour for a bus to take me the four kilometers from the last Jordanian border post to the first Israeli one. I wouldn't be harassed myself, but I'd spend a long time waiting in line while the Israeli soldiers harassed the Arabs ahead of me. (He said he himself generally is made to wait two hours, because of his known Palestinian sympathies.) Once I got through, I could forget about a shared taxi--no one to share it with. So I'd have to take a bus to Jericho, and then another bus to Jerusalem. Buses take forever to get through the Israeli police checkpoints. It would take me all day just to get to Jerusalem, let alone getting back in time for my flight from Amman the next day.
The other way to do it was as a VIP. ``But I'm not a VIP," I said. He said a VIP is someone who pays $54 to be whisked through Israeli customs. He could call a taxi driver he knew in Jerusalem who would drive down and meet me at the border for $50 each way. By the time he was finished describing this option, it sounded like it would cost me $200 for part of a day in a city demanding a week. I decided against it.
So I didn't go to Palestine or Israel.
In the book of Deuteronomy we are told, ``And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain, that is the valley of Jericho the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar."
On my last night in Jordan before returning via Ankara and Frankfurt to California, twenty minutes before sunset, as I drove around Madaba after seeing the mosaic map in Saint George's Church, looking futilely for the Archaeological Park, which in any case was already closed, I spotted a sign that said ``Mount Nebo 9 km." and I thought what a wonderful place to watch the sunset from. Mount Nebo is but a bump in the escarpment just before the road plunges down to the Dead Sea. I did not have the special assistance Moses had, but my view was nevertheless impressive indeed. The lights and glow of Jerusalem could not yet be seen, but the sun set orange behind the hills of Judea beyond the glimmering Dead Sea.
I tried to convince myself that Israel is close enough to Europe that I could go there the first time I went to Europe after the conflict had died down. Or maybe even before it died down.