We decided to hitchhike. After a not-as-early-as-planned start, we got a bus from the centre to the outskirts of Jerusalem. I recognised the area as being where the bus from Ramallah passes through when it enters the city. We stopped in a layby to hitch, and we weren’t alone. We decided not to join the queue of religious-looking teenagers, who turned out to be at least mainly settlers. We instead waited further up near a couple of young women hitching apart from the crowd.
I had reservations about travelling in an Israeli car on an Israeli road through the West Bank to stop in an area of it which is almost entirely under Israeli control; that is to say, the Dead Sea. And sure enough, driving on those roads almost made it feel like like there was no Palestine. I can see how easy it could be for people in Israel to live in denial of its existence.
We waited a long time for our first lift. Mainly people just didn’t stop, though a few people pulled over who weren’t going in our direction, including an older smartly-dressed guy who told us to “kill some Arabs” for him when we got to the Dead Sea. In the end I was happy to wait the extra hour for our lift rather than spend any amount of time in a hot confined space with someone who could be so hateful.
We got there in two hitches, driving lower and lower below sea level. My ears popped. As we descended the air got thicker. The combination of the sheer rocky mountains towering on the right and the eerie mist rolling over the Dead Sea on the left made it look more like the moon than the West Bank.We got dropped off at Metsuke Dragot checkpoint and headed towards the water.
The area looked deserted, and the piles of litter around the rushes were the only indication that this was a favourite spot. We decided to swim in the last of the light before setting up camp, and were joined by a group of skinny-dipping old Palestinian guys and an Israeli making real efforts to speak Arabic.
I’d heard about the Dead Sea water when I was a kid and always thought I’d love to swim in it one day. I love water but usually I don’t seem to be designed for floating. Happily it turned out to be just as floaty as I’d imagined, and a lot more slick-feeling (apparently because of the high concentration of minerals). It’s really hard to actually swim though, because your feet kind of stick out of the water. We found a mudpile and smeared each other in Dead Sea mud, laughing and imagining paying for the experience at a European health spa.
There was a spring pool hidden by the rushes, in which we rinsed off the mud and, more importantly, the salt. We chatted in the pool with a Palestinian guy who is a lifeguard and swims in the water every day, who told us how much he loves that there are people of all nationalities that come to this spot and get along, and how especially pleased he was that all present spoke at least some Arabic.
During the night, the beauty of sleeping under the stars was somewhat diminished by being eaten alive by mosquitoes. No amount of citronella would deter them. The lifeguard came to find us in the evening to invite us for tea round the fire with a group of internationals, though we already felt quite settled and declined politely. He later came and kindly brought us spare mattresses to sleep on anyway, though at some point we gave up on sleeping altogether and just kept guard against beasties and played guitar.
The hot hazy sun rose over Jordan and the sea and we got up for a final swim/rinse off before leaving. My travelling partner encountered some different people by the pool, and asked them if they had been sat with the lifeguard the night before. “No, ” they replied, “we don’t sit with Arabs.” We declined their offer of tea.
We packed up camp and headed back to the checkpoint to hitch back to Jerusalem. We found also waiting some obnoxious teenagers, one of whom seemed intent on drowning out any of our guitar songs which weren’t in Hebrew. Luckily they were aggressive hitch-hikers and eventually got a lift by grabbing drivers as they were stuck at the checkpoint.
We eventually reached Jerusalem in two hitches. As we waited for our first ride we watched yellow number plate after yellow number plate pass through the checkpoint, and green number plate after green number plate turned round and sent away. This was a stark reminder of how much even what little is left of Palestine is not under Palestinian control.
