I have been writing a few travel pieces and reading a lot of them since I moved to Israel. So I wanted to try an experiment for this particular trip. Then, two weeks later, I will revisit the same spots after learning as much as possible and see how my perspective changes also, I would see how wrong I might have been about certain assumptions.
But I know no Arabic nor am I knowledgeable about Palestinian or Islamic culture in any meaningful way. I also am a bit of a bumbler when I travel and have a tendency to under-pack, so despite my love for fitting in with downtown street cultures, I tend to stick out from the crowd. This time I forgot to bring underwear and I only had a couple of shirts that would keep me cool in the heat.
One of them was a Hawaiian button up. Folks were surprised to see me. So that is my first trip to Ramallah with an afternoon in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. I will be going back again next weekend after I study up by reading Wikipedia pages and other articles, obviously. Ramallah is the only capital city I have ever visited where I have been offered drinks, dinner and tours for free by folks who came up to me on the street.
Even though I look Jewish compared to residents of Ramallah and accidentally slipped into Hebrew from time to time, I never once felt unsafe. Of course, now that we are in the full heat of summer, things might be different next time. But I have full confidence in the five-second friendships I made during my first visit to be enthusiastic about my second. Like Like. A Know-Nothing In Palestine. Last weekend I visited Palestinian West Bank for the first time.
Here are my first impressions of Ramallah, roughly in the order I took them: Ramallah only became a de-facto capital of Palestine after Yasser Arafat made it his headquarters in this I knew.
