A luxury apartment complex outside Ramallah.
Built with money from Qatar, it is so far out that it has few residents.
During my visit to Israel, I was able to spend a day in Ramallah and the surrounding region. Ramallah is the largest city in the what would be a Palestinian state. It is close to Jerusalem in the region Israelis call Judea--the Judea part of Judea and Samaria.
T-Mobile deals with this ambiguity with a welcome message unlike the messages for any other border crossing. I wrote about that here.
I went from Old City Jerusalem on a scheduled city bus with my friend Cliff. The 9-mile trip took us about an hour. We were the only non-Arabs on the bus. There was a huge security area about halfway between the Old City and the central bus station in Ramallah. We did not have to stop there on the way over.
At the Ramallah bus station, Cliff's friend Michael picked us up. He lives in Ramallah and has a counseling practice for victims of domestic violence and trauma. He drove us around the city of Ramallah and the surrounding region.
He lives in the city with his wife and children. For him, a settlement of the question of Palestine could not come too soon. He is an Arab Christian. He wants to be an Israeli citizen. He hopes that can happen, but would like peace in almost any form.
He says that no one he knows takes the Trump plan seriously. The U.S. did not speak to anyone from Palestine. Michael thinks it does not take into account the reality on the ground. He drove us to an upscale shopping mall with an ice skating rink. A few miles from that mall are Israeli settlements and Arab villages.
A new mall near Ramallah.
The settlements and villages form a patchwork that will not allow an easy-to-define border. Unless the settlements and villages are torn down, the border will have to allow for passage of Arabs and Israelis between the places they live and the two states that will result from the Trump plan.
Michael wants to live a good and safe life and have a future for his children. He took Cliff and I to his home, gave us food, then took us to the bus station. The 9-mile trip back took more than two hours and included changing buses at the security checkpoint. Residents of Ramallah who work in Israel take these buses back and forth every day and have commute times as bad or worse than what we experienced.
Michael had no faith in the Trump plan, but hopes some plan brings peace to the region. I hope so too.
