Visiting Ramallah--Trump Peace Plan Looks Ludicrous

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.

Disposable Health Wealth

When I left Israel, I took a direct flight to Tbilisi, Georgia. I had never been to this country on the east end of the Black Sea with a civilization dating back more than three millennia. I had a vague plan of seeing Tbilisi then heading to Azerbijan and maybe Armenia before returning to the Georgian capital.  I stayed in Tbilisi for all of the four days I was going to spend in the region. A week ago I wrote about how much I loved riding here.

One of my recent meditations is on thankfulness. It occurred to me after I left the Republic of Georgia, that one thing I can be very thankful for is a ridiculous amount of disposable health.  Of course, the fact that I can fly to Israel and Georgia and ride also says I have disposable wealth, but the riding in Georgia in particular says I have disposable health.

Every day for three days I rode up a six-mile or a nine-mile hill and rode back down through switchbacks occasionally passing a car.  Even as I approach my seven decade with the body and mind I was born with (except for a few replacement parts), both still function well enough to allow me to ride a bike up and down a mountain every day, eat local food, explore the city on buses subways in addition to the bike, and then fly off to another adventure.

But as with all the healthiest people I know, health is not the goal. At various times in my life, I have obsessively worked out because I wanted to be a bicycle racer,  to be a soldier again in my mid-50s and then an Ironman. But I have never made being healthy a goal.  The result of being a soldier, a racer or an Ironman is health, a lot of health, disposable health.

I am so very thankful for the health that allows me to make a plan, then change the plan based on what is in front of me.

Welcome abroad!! The T-Mobile Service Message in Ramallah!

Today I got my seventh welcome to a country message from T-Mobile in the past two weeks.  Each one is the same except for the name of the country I am arriving in.  Today's message said:

Welcome to Turkey! Your T-Mobile plan......(benefits)

That is, except for the fifth message. That one said: Welcome abroad! No country listed.  The reason is that I was on a bus from Jerusalem to the largest city in the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority: Ramallah.  Although I passed through a massive security checkpoint going to and from Ramallah, I did not pass an actual international border.  So T-Mobile diplomatically said, Welcome abroad!

One reason to travel is to see and feel and experience the details of life in a given place.  The bus ride from Old City Jerusalem to Ramallah is less than ten miles, but it was one hour to get there, two hours to get back.  At the security area on the way back, we left the first bus and boarded another. It was the same bus route number, but a different bus.

Businesses, big and small adapt to the reality they find.  T-Mobile has, I assume, messages for the 193 nations recognized by the United Nations.  The territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority has observer status at the UN as does the Holy See in Rome.

Welcome abroad!