So now on to the trip itself. The first peculiarity we noticed was that we could not find a flight to Israel that did not arrive at 3 or 4 in the morning, which means you are exhausted when you get there and still have to pay for a hotel without getting a full nights sleep. When I asked in the airport, I was told this was for security reasons, but no one seemed to know what the reasons were. I speculate it may be that if someone hijacked a plane, they would not be able to see a particular building to fly into, but I don’t know. I was also told there were some arrivals late afternoon, but perhaps they are only from certain countries? Anyway, it is rather inconvenient.
The city wall and the golden dome of the mosque, called the Dome of the Rock.
We arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, which is a huuuge airport and obviously built to impress. It has a large central hall that has a ceiling like a UFO about to land and huge ramps that you have to walk on to get in and out. There were lots of other arrivals, so long lines for passport control, which took about an hour. Then on to the car rental, which quite frankly asked us more questions and wanted to see more ID than passport control. But the real surprise (and my reason for going into this detail) is the issue of the map.
Okay, so we are at Hertz, which is a world-wide car rental company, which I expected to have the same policies everywhere. Yet in Israel, things are a bit different. First of all, you have to pay more for insurance, you have a $650 deductible which they take off your credit card and the insurance doesn’t cover the tires or anything else on the underside of the car. I knew ahead of time that there are diverging maps of Israel. Some show both the original Israel and all the territory that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war as one area, while others clearly mark the occupied territories that the Palestinians claim as theirs. I had also read ahead of time that the car rental companies would not allow us to drive into the Palestinian territories except on a few major roads.
So the rental agent hands me a map showing no markings of Palestinian areas, and I naturally ask him whether that means I can go anywhere on this map of whether I have to stay out of Palestinian areas. He answers that I cannot go into Palestinian areas, and I naturally ask, “So how will I know where NOT to go when you don’t mark it on the map you are giving me?” His answer came with a very angry voice: “Well, it’s OUR land, so we are not going to mark it!”
I was a bit shocked, but managed to answer back calmly, “Hey, I don’t care about the politics; I just want to know where I can drive in the car you are renting me.” His answer was, “Well, when the soldiers stop you, you will know you can’t go there.” Thanks, that made it a lot easier to plan my trip!
Obviously, this was very early in the morning, so I didn’t really think about it. But the next day I realized it was a rather bizarre episode. First of all, this is an international car rental agency, and I think I have a right to expect professional treatment, which I didn’t get. However, I also started to realize that in Israel there apparently is no way to separate political issues from every other part of life—not even business. This was something I had not expected but which was clearly reinforced later in the trip.
