I cross the border between Jordan and Israel about twice a year for business purposes; I have done this for the last 5 years. Being a keen mathematician, by my reckoning, this makes roughly 10 crossings one way and 10 more the other way. I use my British passport, which is supposed to make it easier for me than all the other huddled masses of Palestinian nationals who are treated, shall we say, with less courtesy than any other border control treats any entrant from anywhere else in the world.
As my trips were business ones, I used a fast track service called ”V.I.P” whereby a $100 will afford you special privileges such as being driven at high speed through no-man’s-land; queue jumping ahead of the fit, sick, infirm and resentful; quick passport processing; cold or hot refreshments in a small waiting room; and the eternal hatred of hundreds of envious non-V.I.P passengers. However, when it came to security matters, due process applied to everyone equally. Like all previous occasions, my last encounter with Immigration predictably went like this:
Officer: You want to enter Israel?
Me: yes
Officer: what is the purpose of your visit?
Me: I have meetings at our company in Ramallah
Officer: Do you have relatives in Israel?
Me: Yes, I have a sister in Jerusalem
Officer: Will you visit Jerusalem while you are in Israel?
Me: No
Officer: will you visit other parts of Israel?
Me: No
Officer: You have to wait while we make checks
I returned to the V.I.P waiting room to join my travel companion, let us call him “My Colleague S”, drank water and watched National Geographic film about deadly wildlife animals including crocodiles, river snakes and such like.
45 minutes later, we switched places with all the other non-V.I.P travellers who seem to breeze through while “My Colleague S” and I waited for “checks” on me to be concluded. Non-V.I.P travellers were the smug ones now and we, the two envious lonely persons sitting in not so important lounge sipping water but with a degree in wildlife zoology.
Finally a security officer the rank of “Junior Sub-Private” of no more than 17 years of age turned up and in a very uncertain manner collected the same information from me, as on every previous occasion, about my contact details in Ramallah, where I intended to stay while visiting the city and any documentary proof that my hosts were expecting me at all. He scribbled in Hebrew, thanked me for my cooperation and promised not to take long.
He took long!
45 minutes further, as I was putting the final touches to my PhD thesis on Wildlife Psychotic and Deadly Animals, the thin voice of my Junior Sub-Private inquisitor (J.S-P) called out:
J.S-P: Ashraf?
Me: Yes, I am here
J.S-P (now suspicious): No, I am looking for Ashraf
Me (snapping back to reality): Oh sorry!
J.S-P: I finished you, I put “ok” for you on the system
Me (elated with my ok status): Great, thank you
J.S-P: wait here your passport will come soon
“Soon” turned out to be twenty years later; the young V.I.P employee who had been plying me with water all afternoon, came back to walk me through a few further obstacles brandishing my passport in her hand which by now was full of stickers that would take intricate surgery to unstick; an entertaining activity that would take the best part of a winter’s evening and equivalent in amusement value to plucking your eyebrows with a pair of rusty pliers.
My V.I.P guide navigated me safely through the final hurdle and reunited me with “My Colleague S”, who re-named me on the spot as Ashraf and was thinking seriously of making the name change more permanent upon our return to Jordan.
