But back to how I ended up in the West Bank in June 2009. I remember cause I wished my mum a happy birthday from the Holy Land. Bought her a wonderful Christmas stall from an Arab in Jerusalem. Yes, with the customary haggling theatrics. I managed to feel good about paying too much.

This Belgian NGO told my girlfriend they could arrange a visit to the West Bank. Via their contacts there she would be able to visit pretty much every major city in the West Bank and work with doctors in hospitals there.

I think her motivation was twofold. Am sure she cares about anyone in need. And am also sure she thought ‘going to what is still very much a war zone and working in hospitals there does not look shabby on a resume!!’

Where do I enter?

She didn’t want to go all alone. The area being something like a war zone and all.

Am a cynic, but a romantic at heart, so what did I do?

I turned down a full-time job as a highschool teacher, even though we had probably less than 3,000 euro in savings between us, bad prospects of finding any other job – I had a master’s degree in Eastern European Languages and cultures which is akin to career suicide on the Belgian labour market, especially in the wake of the 2008 bank crisis – and yes, I bought Lufthansa tickets. I have already mentioned the pitfalls of relying on memory, but I think a return ticket to Tel Aviv cost about 400 euro. A lot of money for me at the time, even today it’s still a hefty sum.

At Palestinian Solidarity Organisation Intal they trained us for our covert mission behind enemy lines.

Here is what I remember they told us 100 percent for sure:

– there will be an undercover Mossad agent on the flight, mum’s the word!

– do not tell anyone you are going to the West Bank

– they will ask you questions when you land, so tell them you are engaged and the two of you are going to go shopping for an engagement ring in Israel (this seems to go against the steps of traditional wedding proposals…)  

– when it’s time to show your passport at the airport choose a male official. Israel is a deeply macho country and the women react by being extra tough to be accepted in this macho dominated culture. The women will be tougher, the men will let you pass quicker (this turned out to be spot on…)

– do not be nice to any soldiers asking for your passport at checkpoints. They have no right to be there and by greeting them or saying thank you they get the signal that what they are doing is ok.

Am always very polite and always thank people even during the most routine exchanges, but I religiously stuck to this new commandment. I didn’t even react when one IDF soldier enthousiastically greeted us and gave me the thumbs up for being Belgian… Though I did wonder what made him so enthusiastic. Did he love chocolate that much? Was this IDF soldier also a Belgian?

To prepare myself for the journey that would surely get me killed according to the parents of my Iranian girlfriend – some wishful thinking on their part mixed with prejudices towards Israel – I read a book by a Belgian historian Lukas Catherine. It described the Naqba as a terrible massacre where the Israelis cut off the breasts of Arab women and hung them on their saddles and made sure every Arab skedaddled and left his or her home for new occupants. I honestly don’t remember if Lukas Catherine mentioned anything about radio broadcasts by the Arabs themselves urging them to temporarily leave their homes… I still have the book back in Belgium and will check as soon as I can.

My preparation work did not do much to find any affection for the state of Israel or for Israelis.

Because my girlfriend had been born in Iran I had also been reading books on the history of Iran and the CIA organized coup against Mossadegh and the puppet regime of the Shah was another factor in my view that the people in the Middle East routinely get screwed over.

Intal started setting up meetings for me with some of their international visitors. The idea was that I got to talk to interesting people and they got interviews to put on their website. Unpaid. Promises for reimbursement for transportion costs were given, but never honored. I interviewed an activist from the Phillipines, a cardiologist from Iraq and a woman from Afghanistan. This third interview I refused to write out cause I got tired of working for free.

Around the same time I attended a lecture by the very impressive Nawal El Sadaawi. The Egyptian born author even took issue with the very name of the region, ‘Middle East’. What kind of colonizer mindset comes up with such a name?