Israel Reflections – A Close Call

If you’ve been following the blog posts related to the Marquette-ASU Israel trip, you’ll recall the awful time we had getting back to the US.  Ben Traver didn’t have to endure this problem as he scheduled a couple of extra days in Israel to travel on his own.  Having a true sense of adventure and a natural curiosity, Ben investigates anything he finds interesting.  Not surprisingly, excitement found him in Jerusalem.  Here’s his description of what happened.

Last night thousands of young Israelis celebrated Purim in Tel Aviv drinking and dancing. The Israeli Palestinian conflict seemed so far away. Fourteen hours later in Jerusalem I descended the steps of the City of David into a narrow valley, at the edge of the village of Silwan. A nice Arab woman that lived next to the court yard I was entering told me not to go to the right, down the valley, or else I would get rocks thrown at me.

I did not take the warning too seriously and returning to that spot later with my new friend Kristen.  Things quickly became eerie. A Muslim family walked by and I said “Hello” but they scurried off. I noticed someone on a rooftop watching us. There was a fire in a dumpster thirty yards ahead. I asked Kristen to take my picture and as she did a firework exploded above my head. I thought they were being lit for some kind of celebration, but then realized that the noise could be a calling sign to alert whoever was involved in the stone throwing I was warned about. We decided to leave. As we walked through the courtyard to go back up the steps of the City of David, I noticed hundreds of random baseball sized stones scatted on the ground around us. The nice Arab woman who warned me was not kidding around. Two minutes up the west steps we heard multiple crashing sounds and I looked back to see rocks being thrown from between homes covering the east slope, landing right where we had been standing. Israeli police between homes on the west slope near us shot tear gas at the mountain of Palestinian homes to break up the stone throwers. Apparently we were standing in front of a holy building that the Palestinians lit on fire two weeks ago that they want to destroy.  The conflict now seems much much closer.

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