Through Damascus Gate and into the Old City of Jerusalem

(sharing journal entries from trip to Israel/Palestine in December, 2005.)
Israel has grown enormously in the past three decades. Gone are the days when villages, towns and settlements punctuated large swathes of countryside. Now the opposite is true: urban areas punctuate small strips of countryside between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem/Yerushalim/Al Quds. (I’ll use the Anglicized city name “Jerusalem” for brevity but keep in mind this is a city shared by many religions. While the division is most marked between Al Quds (Islam) and Yerushalim (Judaism), Jerusalem – especially the Old City - is important to Christians (including Arab Christians)).

The coastal plain along which Tel Aviv/Yafo (Jaffa) is located gradually climbs inland towards Jerusalem amid gorgeous rock strewn hills and extensive urban settlement. Monuments to Israel's 1948 War of Independence/Palestine's Al Naqba (catastrophe) – rusted hulks of military equipment destroyed during the Israeli push into Jerusalem – appear to be receiving yet another level of enshrinement with the construction of protective walls and platforms designed to elevate these nuggets of Israeli history for better viewing.

While my cynical side is often skeptical about memorials to war, I’m thankful that the monuments are still in evidence along the highway to Jerusalem as they clued me in to how close I was to the city. Without them my overwhelming impression was that I was traveling through a huge conurbation …which, in fact, I was. Jerusalem has been settled in a BIG way….
I was carrying what felt like a lot of luggage (especially after having it thoroughly searched again) plus winter gear and I was tired, hot, and disoriented. (Europe and Israel is supposed to be in the winter season….not so, the heat was amazing and I was overdressed.)
Debarking the bus, I decided to take a taxi to my destination of Ecce Homo in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. This Convent of the Sisters of Zion is on the Via Doloroso and the entrance is across from the Antonia Palace where Pontius Pilate greeted Christ with Ecce Homo(i.e., "Behold, the Man”) before the sentence of crucifixion. It can be reached by car via the Lions Gate (aka St. Stephen’s Gate) on the Jerico Road near the Mount of Olives.
The first taxi driver I solicited for a ride to the Old City simply groused loudly and refused. I tried another and he was somewhat amenable but refused to drive me through the Old City. He barely drove me to my back-up drop off point at Damascus Gate then yelled at me when I expected change from the large note I’d handed over in payment. This, as I’ve already mentioned, was unfamiliar behavior from taxi drivers who were, in "the old days" sources of all sorts of information and more than willing to share it.
Later, after several more unpleasant episodes with Israeli taxi drivers I complained to someone who told me the Israeli taxi drivers won’t drive into the area of East Jerusalem or the vicinity of the Old City as they fear reprisals from Palestinians. One Israeli driver had even been killed by a gunshot to the head. This helped explain some of what I was experiencing from Israelis: there is a sense of having abandoned East Jerusalem and washing their hands of it and anything having to do with Palestinians. The whole issue of different colored number plates on cars plays into this: yellow plates = Israeli or Israeli Arab licenses, white, blue = Palestinian, red = Israeli police/authorities.
I schlepped my luggage through the Damascus Gate and, lo… all was exactly as I remember it from almost 30 years ago. Except…I took a right turn instead of a left turn (perhaps an unconscious memory of buying and enjoying delicious Knaffa from a pastry store nearby….). So I wandered around pulling a bag, moving my camera case and backpack from one should to another and asking, “Via Dolorosa? Via Dolorosa?” Finally I ran into a young Dutch Christian who was also trying to find the Via Dolorosa (the Stations of the Cross thread along the Via Dolorosa). We joined forces and I like to think that, when we eventually found Ecce Homo, she found something unexpected in the Convent and enjoyed her visit to the Lithos upon which Christ was supposed to have stood when sentenced by Pilate. This, like many holy places in the Old City, is not extensively advertised to tourists and easy to miss. (I’d been there before my marriage as one of the priests involved in our mass lived there and he’d shown us around.)
Ecce Homo is simply lovely, peaceful, calm, clean, surrounded by significant sites: the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque on the temple mount, the Holy Sepulchre, and many others.
I had a 2:30pm appointment with Sirham of Palestinian Counseling Center located in Beit