Jerusalem June 25-29

On June 25 I returned to Jerusalem. I traveled with Yorke Rowan and Morag Kersel, long-standing colleagues I first met at the Albright Institute years ago. We decided to cross at the north Shaykh Husayn bridge. That required an hour and a half taxi trip to the Jordanian side, a 45 minute wait for the shuttle bus across the bridge and over an hour on the Israeli side. We took a taxi to Beth Shean and then a bus to Jerusalem. We arrived after a seven-hour trip that cost about twice as much as a trip across the Allenby Bridge. That was the first time I had crossed the Shaykh Husayn bridge since the late 1990s.

I stayed at the New Palm Hostel near Damascus Gate. It is the lowest priced accommodations in Jerusalem that can be booked over the internet, and is a case where you get what you pay for. It was not possible to stay at the Albright Institute, where the renovation of the hostel building is in full swing.

A workman in one of the Institute windows

Room Three, where I spent three years and three and a half months between mid-December 1994 and the end of March 1998, which I think is the modern-day record for continuous residence in the hostel.

I came to Jerusalem this time to participate in a one-day conference about pilgrimage to Jerusalem that was held on Friday June 26 at the Swedish Studies Center, just inside Jaffa Gate and organized by George Hintlian. The conference was focused on Christian pilgrimage, although I gave a presentation about some general features of Muslim pilgrims in the Ottoman period.

On Sunday June 28 I went to the Islamic Museum on the al-Aqsa mosque compound to do some more work on the Arabic inscriptions with my colleague Khader Salameh. My pass from the Muslim waqf authorities to be on the compound had expired in April, and Khader had felt that the hassle involved in renewing the permission was not worth it for just one day, and so I had to enter through the tourist gate. The Israeli police officer who has been there since I started going to the compound in the mid-1990s immediately spotted me in the line and wanted to know why I did not have permission from the Muslim Waqf authorities. After some discussion, he finally let me on the compound after I explained that I was only going to the museum for one day. That same police officer had let me pass without ever any questions for years in the 1990s. That is just one indication how much more tightly the Israelis are now controlling and restricting access to the compound.

On Monday June 29 I went to Bethlehem to visit Iman Saca, an archaeological colleague whom I had not met for years. She is a Palestinian-American with a PhD in anthropology who is now teaching at St. Xavier University in Chicago. Her mother runs a Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem. Crossing through the checkpoint into and out of Bethlehem went quickly.

Iman Saca and her mother Maha at the Palestinian Heritage Center.

Later that evening I went to Ben Gurion airport, where I hung out for some hours, until my early morning flight to Frankfurt.