A couple of weeks ago I spent a week in and around Jerusalem on a university fieldtrip. The module the trip was part of is called Territory & Geopolitics and it basically functioned as an opportunity to apply the theoretical material we had spent the year learning in lectures. It was an incredibly packed but fascinating and hugely enjoyable week, which I'm documenting here so make sure I don't forget anything! Be prepared for a long read...

View over Silwan from the City of David

My friend Alice and I got the train down from Durham to London on Sunday and checked into a hotel near Luton airport as our flight was leaving early Monday morning and it was impossible to make the whole trip in time on the day. We got to the hotel in the afternoon and spent most of the rest of the day watching a three-part documentary about Jerusalem that I got on DVD for Christmas to get us in the mood - it certainly worked and we got super excited about the trip! The next morning we took a bus to the airport and met up with the rest of our group. We pretty much spent the whole day travelling as the flight was nearly 5 hours and there's a two hour time difference between Israel and the UK, so we only arrived at the hotel in the evening. The hotel was located exactly between East and West Jerusalem and turned out to be really handy for getting just about anywhere.

Day 1

On the first proper day of the trip we did a coach tour of the West Bank. The first stop was in Beit El, an Israeli settlement where we met a guy living there who told us his life story and how he came to live in Israel, as well as his vision for the future of Israel-Palestine. It was interesting but as he was the first speaker we'd heard it was hard to make any critical judgments straight away. He also took us on a brief hike of the surrounding hill areas and pointed out some religious sites that apparently appear in the Bible.

The final stop of the day was another Israeli settlement, Dolev. Originally we were a bit confused as to why we were stopping as it was already dark, but it turned out that we were actually visiting our lecturer's brother's house and meeting his family. It was slightly weird because all his nephews and nieces were there and it was a bit of a family reunion with all 34 of us students just sitting there but it was actually really nice, and his sister-in-law had prepared some snacks for us all. After that we piled back on the coach and headed back to the hotel for dinner and an early night after a tiring day!

Day 2

On the second day we did a guided walking tour of the Old City and visited the major religious sites, including the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was one of the hottest days of the week and for a lot of it we were walking, sitting or standing in the sun, but because we were going to the religious sites we also had to dress modestly which meant covering our legs and arms. Our guide talked a lot at every stop and we all took a lot of notes, but most of it was related to the history of the sites and their relevance to Biblical history which was all interesting background information but the detail wasn't vital to our geopolitical perspectives. As an atheist I think I potentially lacked a genuine appreciation of the holiness of the sites, but I did my best to try to understand the meaning of each one and how they fitted into Jerusalem's story. I did however appreciate the beautiful architecture of the buildings, especially the stunning Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was a fascinating building full of nooks and crannies and rooms leading off at unexpected angles. Before we went in we sat in an open area surrounded by buildings near the Ethiopian church in the Christian quarter, and it was only when we were standing in the Holy Sepulchre that we realised the small domed building we'd been sitting next to - which had looked like some kind of shrine - was actually the domed roof of one of the main chambers and we had been sitting on top of the Church! After the tour we wandered around the Jewish quarter and Muslim quarter, where we had lunch in one of the souks and had some free time to browse the various stalls.

Day 3

On the third day we visited a range of sites but the main theme was archaeology. The first stop was across the road from the hotel which actually formed the green line which divided the city from 1948 to 1967 and which the light rail now runs along. At this point I managed to smash my knee into a fence at full force and ended up spending most of the next couple of days hobbling along at the back of the group, which wasn't ideal. We then walked to Mamilla Cemetery, which is a Palestinian cemetery near the Old City that has largely been constructed over with a park, erasing the evidence of the historic Palestinian presence in the area. Here we met with an archaeologist who became our guide for the rest of the day and took us around the City of David, one of the most extensively excavated sites in the world where findings from particular historical eras are used to justify the Israeli presence in the area today. The City is now mostly a tourist site, and people come from all over the world to see 'where it all began' and are even able to taken part in the excavations themselves.

Day 4

The fourth day was the last day of tours and site visits. We took the light rail to Mount Herzl and spent the morning going round Yad Vashem, Israeli's official memorial to victims of the Holocaust. The tour was more of a 'counter-tour' as it was led by our lecturer rather than an official guide and he presented a much more critical geopolitics take on it that was highly relevant to our course. We also walked around Israel's national military cemetery at the top of Mount Herzl. Despite the hot weather it was a sobering morning still really interesting.

Days 5 & 6

Saturday and Sunday were our designated research days where we were completely free to work on our group project. My group actually did some fieldwork on the Friday as there was an English-language tour that was perfect for our project but only three of us went on that, myself not included. Our research was into collective memory and memory activism in the abandoned Palestinian village of Lifta located on the north western edge of Jerusalem. Lifta is unique in that it's the only village that wasn't either repopulated or completely razed after 1948 but it now stands pretty much in ruins and is all overgrown. Another important aspect is that since the 2000s there has been a plan to demolish the village, develop the site and build a luxury neighbourhood and hotel in its place. Our research basically involved three separate trips to the site, the tour, a couple of interviews and some informal chats with people we encountered walking around the village or sitting by the spring. I ended up not going there until Sunday which was the final research day but it was so worth the wait! It was such an adventure to explore the buildings and head off down overgrown paths with no idea where it would lead. The rest of the time was mostly spent at the hotel reading, discussing and putting together our presentation. There were 8 groups in total so we basically took over the hotel's conference room with our laptops and ended up working really late - my group went to bed at about 2:30am but some groups got barely 2 hours sleep! The presentation was worth 20% of the module mark though so it was worth putting in the time and effort.

Day 7

On our final day in Jerusalem we had the presentations in the morning which took over 4 hours as they were half an hour long. We were all absolutely shattered from the night before but we pushed through and everyone did a really good job. There were some really interesting projects too, so I did my best to pay attention even though I spent the first half frantically reading over notes for our bit and the second recovering from the experience of public speaking. Then at about 2pm we left the hotel and got on the bus for the airport, stopping along the way for some lunch. We got to Ben Gurion airport in plenty of time for our flight but somehow with the many layers of security and the difficulty of doing anything with a massive group we made it to the plane with relatively little time to spare, really just enough to buy a sandwich and find the gate. We arrived back in the UK at midnight so once again Alice and I stayed in a hotel near the airport and got a train into London the next morning (after the best lie in ever). 

And that's it! I think I've managed to remember all the important details. It really was an amazing week and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to go on this trip, even though parts of it were physically and mentally challenging. Now all I've got to do is write up the project field report...