First Post from DAvid

Hi everyone, I've arrived. It is 1.40 pm local time Sunday 5th July, which is 11.40 am London time. I have just been sleeping off my jet lag.
The journey was smooth and without the hassle I was expecting. At Heathrow there were two heavily armed UK policeman guarding the line at the El Al (Israeli airlines) counter. A lot of questioning of each traveller before we checked in our luggage, which was quite friendly but was the kind of questioning you usually get when you arrive somewhere ('What is the purpose of your visit?' 'Have you been in Israel before?') It is easy to see that security is high priority in this part of the world. I didnt have any trouble though, even though in my luggage I was carrying an X box that was given to me by the son of my friend in London to take here and give to one of the children here. I also got through security at Israel's Ben Gurion airport amazingly without difficulty. A couple of questions and that was it. Maybe my surname Solomon helped and was always going to mean I was going to have less difficulty than some others. The only thing the immigration officer was surprised about was that I hadnt been here in Israel since 1968, when I was 16.

Outside the airport, I took what is called a sheroot, which is a kind of shared taxi. The taxi waits until it is full and then sets off towards a particular town or city and stops at different places agreed by the passengers. The smallness of the country is amazing. I was heading for Jerusalem which is less than an hours journey away, the distance between London and Stansted. From what I could see landing in the plane (it was 5.00 am local time) and driving through the suburbs, Tel Aviv is a modern and prosperous city, as developed as anywhere in Europe. The road to Jerusalem is hilly and the countryside is very dry. Reminds me of the landscape of Australia, a kind of washed-out green very dry rocky and hilly. Most of the buildings are built of a pale yellow sandstone brick. The official language of Israel is Hebrew and Arabic is the second language, so you see street signs and notices in Hebrew and Arabic and sometimes in English.

There is a sort of motorway that leads up from the coast to Jerusalem. The taxi went through suburbs. Historically there were three parts of Jerusalem: the ancient city, which has got all the religious sites and has got a wall around it with a number of gates pointing in different directions (the Jaffa Gate, Damascus Gate etc), very much in the way that all cities had in the past; the new city in the west that was built by Jewish immigrants during the twentieth century, and the modern city in the east that was originally mainly Arab. After the 1967 war, Arab new Jerusalem was incorporated into Israel proper, an action whose legality is very disputed, and there has been some Jewish settlement there, making the area more mixed. I will talk about the politics and the day to day living conditions in the area in a later blog as I get to learn more about it. All I can say at the moment is that it is incredibly complicated: what is known as the West Bank or Occupied Territories, is a mixture of different legal zones, types of authority and settlement, where people have different rights or lack of rights, restrictions and freedom or lack of freedom of movement. This is only my first day after all and I want to stick to what I know and what people tell me.

I noticed that the first suburbs of Jeruslem the taxi went through are largely Jewish, with secular Israelis and religious Jews. As we went East towards the old city, there are Palestinians. I was put down at the Damascus gate, one of the gates of the old city, where there are a lot of buses that go to different parts of the west bank. I was due to meet a taxi driver there who would drive me to Abu Dis, the village where I will be teaching.

More Later