Jordan/ Israel Border:
Here, the armies of the world’s most famous mortal enemies, the Arabs and the Jews, face off across an old two-lane highway bridge over a trickling irrigation ditch.
Good Lord! This dinky structure is the historic and renowned Allenby Bridge and this slimy irrigation ditch is the celebrated River Jordan!
This IS a VAST disappointment; but only the first in a long line of disappointments in this accursed “holy” land of myth and legend.
Nothing moves. The heat is intense.
On both sides of the “river” Boredom seems to rule the sandbagged machine gun nests and camouflaged tanks pointing their cannons at each other.
I cross over Jordan as the song says and...
Officers in the Israeli customs building make a most thorough check of all my belongings. Every container is opened, smelled and tasted. All my paper articles are taken away for careful scrutiny.
Thank goodness I had the sense to toss out the Palestinian’s letters—even if they were innocent personal notes, whatever they said might have thrown me into prison here!
But I am clean. My passport is stamped and I am permitted to sojourn for a while in the Promised Land.
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