Touring in Stereo

Tomorrow I go on what will be the first of two official tours of Bethlehem and Hebron. Visiting these places and seeing the historical sites and the current situation for myself was a priority of mine when I came here. This was complicated by the hullabaloo over Beit Shalom (a house in the Arab outskirts of Hebron that was bought by an American Jew for Israeli Jews to live in, and because no one takes the idea of residential heterogeneity particularly well here, the Arabs got upset back in late October, the government agreed and told the Jews to leave, the Jews rioted, hilarity ensued, or something to that extent). Now that my time here is running low, I finally made plans to do it. I wanted to find a non-political trip so I wouldn’t be bombarded with whatever propaganda. No such luck. There are no non-political trips. Each has is its own unassailable agenda. Then I had an idea: I will take two tours and get both an education in the history of the region and of the perspectives of the respective groups. Tomorrow I take the right-wing Jewish tour and Thursday is the Palestinian tour, with still-in-flux Christmas plans Wednesday in between.