I Was Warned Not to Cross Into Palestine 🇵🇸

Two halves. The first is a day on foot in the old city of Jerusalem — the Western Wall, Al-Aqsa, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Green Line, which turns out to be invisible. The second is a rented bicycle and 10 km south to Bethlehem, through the wall, a checkpoint, a wrong detour and a puncture on a hillside with an hour of daylight left.

The framing he sets up at the start and pays off at the end: the Israelis he spoke to told him Palestinians would blow him up, the Palestinians told him Israelis would shoot him, and he went to find out. What actually happens is that two Israeli men stop for a stranded cyclist heading into the West Bank, change his tyre and refuse the money he offers.

This is the day before the Bethlehem-to-Hebron ride in The Side of Palestine the Media Doesn’t Show You 🇵🇸; he says as much at the hotel.

Obs: the video carries a read-aloud eSIM sponsorship at [13:36]. The provider is not recorded here; nothing in the read is travel information.

Obs: Harry says on camera that he read two books before coming, is trying to get the history right, and apologises in advance for mistakes. Everything historical below is recorded as his account, and the contested claims are attributed to whoever said them.

Key moments

• [00:00] The cold open: a puncture on a hillside between Israel and the West Bank, no plan, an hour of light. The day’s route — Jerusalem to Bethlehem, a road pilgrims have walked for 2,000 years, now running through an 8 m wall and an Israeli checkpoint.
• [01:11] Why the city is what it is: holiest place on earth for Jews; where Christians hold that Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected; and home to Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, where Muslims hold that Muhammad ascended to heaven. All of it inside a few kilometres.
• [01:42] Street signs in Arabic, English and Hebrew. A city he has wanted to see since he was a boy, though not under these circumstances.
• [02:18] Breakfast — flatbread with za’atar, 10 shekels. He rates it 9/10 and still puts Lebanon and Syria above it: thicker, less crusty bread.
• [02:53] An Israeli in the food shop, who moved from Vancouver a few years ago, did four years in the army and is now studying tourism. He is carrying a gun, says he feels safe and is treated well, and that an Israeli passport is very easy to get if you are Jewish.
• [03:26] What he says about the conflict, in his own words: extremists exist on both sides, most people day to day are fine, he has no problem with Muslims or Palestinians, and two states would be fine by him — which he says is a controversial thing to say. He tells Harry to go and see both sides.
• [04:31] He is on his fourth call-up of reserves and can’t start his studies. Harry puts a figure to him — that 70% want one state — and the answer is that it is higher since 7 October than before (from video – unverified; the figure is Harry’s and the reply doesn’t confirm it).
• [06:04] A friend travelling with him on what daily life is like: he had seen nothing abnormal until the previous day, when he saw clashes for the first time. Areas under full Palestinian control were calmer than Jerusalem.
• [07:08] Turned away from Al-Aqsa at the Muslim entrance. Non-Muslims have to go in through the Western Wall side instead.
• [07:39] Airport-style security to enter a religious site — a first for him, he says, including at the pyramids.
• [08:18] The Western Wall: the holiest site in Judaism, split into male and female sections, the surviving remnant of the second temple destroyed by the Romans over 2,000 years ago. He goes no further in than the edge, and says he doesn’t feel the need to.
• [09:49] The route in for non-Muslims: exit the Western Wall, come straight back in another way, up a wooden walkway above it. They don’t make it easy — it’s like a video game.
• [10:25] A group of religious Jewish visitors making a point, trailed by police. Harry is told to keep away from them and does.
• [10:59] The explanation: non-Muslims may enter between 7 and 11, and some of those who come want the mosque replaced by a third temple on the site of the first two.
• [11:29] Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina — and the same ground as the two ancient Jewish temples. Muslims once prayed towards it before the direction changed to Mecca.
• [12:31] Completely empty. He calls it beautiful, says it is sad that there are no tourists, and that he feels lucky to stand somewhere many Muslims will never get to.
• [13:01] Who is missing, and who replaced them. His friend’s account: before the attack, large numbers of Palestinians worked in Israel; now they cannot cross at all, and the labour in the Jerusalem area is done by workers from India, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.
• [13:36] Sponsor read.
• [14:42] The Green Line, which he can only locate on a map. It split East and West Jerusalem from 1948 — west under Israeli control, east under Jordanian — until Israel took East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.
• [15:16] The point he draws from it: every famous religious site is on the east side. Before 1967 Jews could not visit the Western Wall; since, Palestinians struggle to reach Al-Aqsa.
• [15:49] His reaction, and he flags it as a personal one: religion was supposed to bring people together and this is the opposite of that. I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.
• [16:21] The disclaimer: two books read beforehand, trying to be factual, sorry for any mistakes.
• [16:53] Tourism has gone. In a day in the old city he counts one tourist.
• [17:29] A shopkeeper who recognises him from the Lebanon and Iraq videos. Business is very bad. He gives Harry dates, halva and tahini and won’t take money for them.
• [18:44] The languages he has picked up off the market floor — Sinhala, Tagalog, Hindi, Polish, Italian, Romanian — and his ranking of tourists by spending: Americans first, the French good, the English reluctant. Harry agrees about the English.
• [21:29] A stall giving away cold drinks, run on a donations box.
• [22:38] A Filipino caregiver, twelve years in the city.
• [23:06] The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Six Christian denominations share it and famously argue over control, so the keys are held by a Muslim family as a neutral party.
• [24:54] The summary of the whole morning: three religions have fought over one piece of ground for thousands of years and still are.
• [25:02] The bike. Rented in Jerusalem; he doesn’t mention where he’s taking it, and thinks that’s for the best. Bethlehem is 10 km south and the light is going.
• [25:28] The symmetry he came to test: each side warned him about the other.
• [25:58] The ride is much harder than expected — the hilliest place he has been, and traffic he rates as bad on both sides of the line.
• [26:37] First sight of the wall, and the scale of it.
• [27:40] Lost at the checkpoint. Guards send him on a driving detour that adds 6 km; a taxi driver tells him he can simply walk through.
• [28:42] The walk-through fails — he can’t take a bicycle through the pedestrian crossing — so the 6 km detour happens anyway. He deliberately doesn’t film the crossing.
• [29:45] The puncture, immediately after saying the thing he’s known for is resilience.
• [30:16] Two Israeli men stop within minutes. One drives him somewhere quiet, changes the tyre, and refuses the money Harry offers — around $30 — saying they do good deeds around here.
• [31:26] A road sign marking a Palestinian village that Israeli citizens are prohibited from entering.
• [31:58] Into the West Bank with no checkpoint and no security on that road, and he is honest that he is unsure which zone he is in.
• [32:31] How different it feels immediately — Lebanon, Syria, Egypt; he says he’d have no idea he had crossed anything if you dropped him there.
• [33:06] The first Palestinian flag, and the call to prayer.
• [33:39] More developed than he was led to expect — clean streets, good restaurants, closer to Beirut than to the picture he’d been given.
• [34:10] Bethlehem lives on tourism and has had none for two years.
• [34:43] The other side of the same wall he stood at earlier: graffiti, cameras, and a sci-fi quality he can’t get past.
• [35:18] The verdict of the day: the ups and downs are the point, two Jewish men helped him within five minutes, and Palestine has met him with nothing but kindness.
• [35:51] What he says the news leaves out: the businesses with no income and the jobs lost by people who had nothing to do with any of it, purely because of where they live.
• [36:23] $50 for a four-star family-run hotel with zero tourists in two years, whose name and location he puts in the description. Tomorrow is longer.

Extracted pages

• Tip: Ask someone who drives for a living

• Countries: Palestine, Israel

• Places: Jerusalem, Bethlehem

• Tips: Talk to both sides, Judge a place for yourself