by Wisam Salsaa, Manager of the Walled Off Hotel, Bethlehem
Growing up and living under military occupation is not something you ever get used to. I wake up each day wondering if there is water in the tap so I can wash my face or take a shower seeing how our water supply is controlled by nearby Israeli settlers who often shut it off, and especially during the hot summers. I then think about the checkpoints I need to pass through to take my kids to school and then go to work and hope that the soldiers will be lenient and not humiliate me in front of my children. When I get to the Walled Off Hotel I worry about confrontations between the kids and Israeli soldiers because a protest means that we could be engulfed in tear gas outside and inside the hotel, making it impossible for anyone to visit us. Worse, things could escalate, and a child or young man might be shot or killed.
I hadn’t any such worries when I was younger. During the second intifada, I often found myself in dangerous situations – though they didn’t scare me at the time – and I remember how my friends and I spent nights doing barbecues and drinking Arak and whiskey as we watched rockets and clashes nearby. But ever since my first child arrived, my anxieties have grown. Now, I lie awake at night thinking about what I would do if settlers attacked our neighbourhood, or if a war broke out.
One Saturday morning, I woke up early to take my son, Daniel, to school. My daughter Sarah was already in Ramallah, about 25 miles away, for a Model United Nations exercise. It was her first overnight stay away from home. As usual, I started my day by making coffee and listening to Fairuz’s morning music, then sat down to check the news and read my emails and messages. The first one I opened was from a friend. It showed a map of Palestine and Israel pockmarked with red dots, and read, “So far, over 500 rockets have been launched from Gaza toward Israel.” This must be a joke, I thought, but as I turned on the TV, I saw it confirmed on the news. My first thought was of Sarah and her classmates. The news showed settlers attacking Palestinian cars on the main roads that Sarah would be traveling along, and I tried repeatedly to call her but her phone was off. She made it home safely.
I considered it too dangerous to stay at our home seeing how we lived near settler roads and far from the nearest big town, and asked my wife, Rasha, to pack a couple of suitcases with essentials. The next morning, I met with the staff at the Walled Off Hotel and told them that I had decided to close the hotel until the end of the war. We would to relocate any remaining guests to hotels in East Jerusalem. I didn’t think it safe for employees to come to work, given our hotel’s location and how it is surrounded by watchtowers manned by snipers.
A few sleepless nights later, I heard that the borders with Jordan had reopened. At 01:00, I made several calls to arrange our departure without telling my wife or kids. The plan was for a car to pick us up at 06:00. However, only a few hours after making all the arrangements, I was overwhelmed by worries that we might not reach the border in the Jordan Valley near Jericho because of all the checkpoints and how soldiers would be on high alert, and because of potential confrontations with settlers. I call our driver to cancel the arrangement, but his phone was off. I left him a message, assuming he would see it.
At 05:45, a car horn sounded outside our house. The driver hadn’t received my cancellation request and, regardless, he encouraged us to go. I knew he was afraid —traveling to the crossing on a day like today would be risky — but then again, the fare for today’s trip would be triple the usual plus any additional generosity from me.
The drive felt endless. We took unpaved paths to avoid checkpoints. I counted every car that passed us in either direction — only five all told where normally there would be thousands. We sat in silence. Even Sarah who would normally complain during and bicker with her brother, was wonderfully calm.
Having arrived safely in Amman, we decided to make our way to Athens, where our older daughter, Leah Ann, had just begun her studies. It means that unlike our family and friends in the West Bank, my kids are safe, as is my wife. As am I.
But of course Athens isn’t home.
