Travel | Border crossing | Nation-States

The Ridiculousness Of Border Crossings

Experiences of a Tour Leader: Crossing the Imaginary Line between Israel and Jordan

I’ve always liked border crossings. I’ve also always wondered why though. At borders, we are able to observe how a nation-state tries to present itself. There is a fine line between a warm welcome on the one hand and a warning on the other.

In May 2019 I crossed the border between the state of Israel and the kingdom of Jordan twice. This border symbolizes so much more than just stepping over an imaginary line (river in this case). Did we cross a line during our two border crossings? According to the customs officers present, we did during both occasions.

After we said goodbye to Khalid our Arab Palestinian bus driver, we walked through the Israelian customs hall. The border crossing between Beet She’an in Israel to Der Abi Saeed in Jordan was dominated by the geographical line of the Jordan river. The authorities prohibited walking across. Border crossers were confined to transportation by bus to the other side. It was busy and there was only one bus going up and down.

Upon arrival on the parking lot on the Jordan side, our local guide Nadal told us to sit down. “This could take three hours”, Nadal carefully mumbled to me. We had to get our Jordan visa on arrival and Nadal would signal when it was our turn. We established ourselves in the shade. Half an hour passed. An hour passed. One and a half hour later Nadal signed. Two and a half-hour after we waved Khalid goodbye I counted eighteen people sitting in our Jordanian bus. Two were still missing.

As I reentered the security check room of the Kingdom of Jordan, a place I had hoped to not see again two minutes earlier, Jan’s gestures and body language expressed aggression. Netty’s body language was all about supporting her husband. Jan’s aggression was pointing towards the customs officer, who was holding a Menorah.

Due to the context given I thought Netty kind of looked Jewish and she is from Amsterdam, but the situation did not allow for more thinking on this subject. The outer features of the three Arab custom officers versus Netty’s looks definitely made her look Jewish.

Jan and Netty were both ready to reach over the counter, grab that Menorah, and run towards the bus. As a tour leader you want to avoid trouble, especially near local authorities you want the people of your group to behave. Please do not do what you are thinking of Jan, I thought but kept the words to myself. The three Jordanian custom officers standing on the other side of the table crossed their arms clearly saying ‘No, not happening’, to Jan’s posture.

“What happened?” I asked Jan while I knew that it was a lost cause from the start. I tried asking the three officers to give the Menorah back in my most humble and humane voice and act.

“Give it back!” Jan interrupted. “Give it here!” Netty backed her husband. The emotions involved on the Amsterdam side did not help. I was forced to act. “Can you please go to the bus? I will handle it from here”, I asked in such a tone that Jan and Netty took my question as an order. No disobeying of Ralph’s questions here please. Reluctantly Jan and Netty left for the bus. I asked the officers if they could return the Menorah to the Israelian side. I would drive past the same border crossing with the next tour two weeks later.

“Why is the Menorah not allowed in?” I asked Nadal.

Even Nadal looked confused. Nadal talked to the officers. The vocal sounds of the Arabic going back and forth sounded sweet in my ears.

“A new law prohibits religious artifacts which are not Islamic to be brought into the Kingdom of Jordan.” Nadal said. “How old is this law?” I asked. “A month”, Nadal said.

I sighed. Nadal sighed with me.

“This will take a while longer every one. Please, have some patience.” I told the by now twenty passengers waiting inside the coach. Going the extra mile for your group is never a bad idea and the frustration expressed by Jan and Netty pushed me to try and find a solution.

Nadal and I followed the custom officer into the building. Seated behind his desk was the highest chef of the customs operations on the Jordanian side. The man was on the phone, acting all busy.

“This is just of today”, Nadal said. This law is clearly new and directed against anything made in Israel, judging from the amount of Menorah’s placed on the table. One, two, three, I counted eleven Menorahs in total on the chief officer’s desk. Nobody was even made aware of this new law, not even with a sign at the border itself.

I left my name, phone number, address and date attached to the Menorah on a piece of paper. The officer promised me the Menorah would be brought back to the Israelian side. Three and a half hours after we had entered the Israelian customs, we drove into Jordan.

I never got that Menorah back.

Fast forward five days later when we left our tent camp in the Wadi rum and headed for the border crossing at the Red Sea. A first glimpse of the Gulf of Aqaba gave rise to enthusiasm inside the coach. As we got closer to Eilat, the Gulf rose to greet us in its full glory. The imagined lines of our nation-states have developed in such a way that only three places exist where four countries meet on the face of our earth. The Gulf of Aqaba is one of them. The borders of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi-Arabia connect here.

Before we reached the border crossing from Akaba to Eilat I explained the border crossing described extensively in my notebook twice. “Do not take any pictures, make sure you don’t have anything related to religion in your luggage”, the last thing I wanted was to have another discussion with a border patrol guard over a souvenir and lose precious time. We had a long day of traveling ahead of us to get to the kibbutz, where we would stay for the night.

The weeds in the pavement showed a structural lack in maintenance, as the rusty fences, which used to be white, did. The soldiers checked our passports.

Everybody was quiet, people were tense because the last border crossing was still fresh in our memory. I paid our exiting tax to the Jordanian officer and as I was the last of the group, I was happy that we left the Kingdom of Jordan without a problem. We were allowed to walk to the other side, over that same infamous Jordan river. Although the term ‘river’ credits too much honor to this humble body of water. A final passport check by a Jordanian soldier to see if we had the correct exiting stamp. The third passport check-in two hundred meters.

“Do not take a picture!”, I warned somebody. It was indeed a nice view, on top of the bridge, seeing Aqaba and Eilat, left and right of the border, the Jordan river. As we crossed the bridge and entered the other side, the Israelian fences succeeded in making us aware ‘that you are entering an organized, disciplined and prosperous state.’

The flags of Jordan and Israel waved at each other on either side, just like they had done on our first border crossing. The black, red, green and white of Jordan and the star and blue and white colors of Israel looked like they were in a constant squabble of which flag is more beautiful, which one is better.

The three layers of fences on the Israeli side reached up to seven meters in height. On top of the fences layers of encircling barbed wire preached. The stretches of lawn in between the fences were full of security cameras perched on top of two-meter tall poles. The steel spikes pointing downwards protected the cameras from people reaching for them.

The spikes looked like the pointing index finger of an angry owner of a dog. The message was clear. ‘It is impossible to trespass here’, is what it said.

“Place your bag on the belt, empty your pockets, step through the metal detector”, a woman dressed in black told the first person. Ten Israelian border patrol officers occupied the room. I felt like we had entered their private space.

One member of our group emptied his pockets next to the metal detector. As the man walked through, the border patrol guard looked at his passport. “Ah, you are from the Netherlands”, the officer said out loud in such a way her colleagues could hear it. The officers visibly relaxed. The clouds had suddenly disappeared. “I thought you were Germans”, the customs officer said directly after. The sky was clear.

One, two, three, four members of our group got through security without any delay, into Israel. “This looks like it’s going smoothly”, I said. Two broad-shouldered gentlemen, both wearing black t-shirts, black pants and black sunglasses, observed us while muttering in Hebrew.

Our views had crossed as I entered the security check room and they both nodded to me. I nodded back. They understood who we were, what we were and what I was to the group. The gentle nod somehow confirmed that we would be okay. Carefully observing their behavior and posture, you could easily tell these were heavily trained and disciplined men. They must be members of the infamous Mossad, I concluded.

For the fifth and last time I handed over my passport. As I got back my second passport -the Iranian visas in my first passport prohibited me from entering Israel- I left the last four people of my group in the security hall. I assumed the situation to be perfectly fine, maybe due to the earlier little nod I got. But rule number one in tour leading was about to pop up in neon sign flickering.

Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.

Our bus driver was waiting on the Israeli side of the border. He too was fasting because of Ramadan although he did drink coffee with heaps of sugar. Fifteen, sixteen, yes, almost everyone is here. John came through, number eighteen. All of us gazed through the diamond squared fence over the green lawn, following the concrete path towards the white office building.

“Where is Nanda?” I asked John.

“She was right behind me”, John replied.

“JOHN!” Nanda’s scream came from the office building. Alarmed by Nanda’s tone of voice, I walked back with John towards the gate through which we exited two minutes earlier.

Nanda walked up to the gate. An officer behind Nanda told the patrol guard at the gate something in Hebrew. John was allowed in, I wasn’t. Number nineteen of the group walked outside as number eighteen and twenty walked back in. “Something with some books in Nanda’s bags”, number eighteen said.

“Nothing we can do but wait”, I explained as I sipped some sugary Palestinian coffee brewed in the shadow of the luggage department of the coach.

Minutes passed and the longer the wait, the larger the question mark grew behind the question of why John and Nanda were still inside? Everybody was present, except for them. Fifteen minutes later John and Nanda exited from the white office building and walked towards the gate. I put away my plastic cup, stood up and walked towards John.

“So what happened John?”, “Oh, well, I had a stack of books which Nanda carried in her suitcase. I never thought about it. I walked through, but as Nanda’s suitcase was scanned, the officers wanted Nanda to open her suitcase. They found several books and a magazine and the magazine was the problem. On our way to Israel I bought it at Schiphol airport, it is a historical magazine and its theme is about the nazi empire in the Second World War. Because it is in Dutch, I had to explain why I carried something like it with me.”

Since we were in a hurry, I told John I’d like to see the magazine later.

An hour after we said goodbye to Nadal we were on our way. The second border crossing had been a lot faster than the first. Days later John showed the front cover of the magazine and only then did I fully understand the weight of the situation at the border.

The front page was completely black showing two top Nazi figures, one of them Hitler and the other one Himmler, the main architect of the Holocaust. Around Hitler and Himmler the front cover was decorated with one, two, three, four, five, six, seven! Seven nazi flags. Seven red flags with the black Nazi swastika in the middle of it.

Oh lord, can you imagine?

Eight Israeli border patrol officers and two Mossad agents listening to the English of a Dutch couple in their seventies, who are trying to explain “There is nothing on the hand!”, meaning ‘It is okay’.

I swear I would’ve paid money to have a glance at this situation.

Someone in the group made the joke a couple of days later that John had placed the Nazi magazine in his wife’s suitcase on purpose because he wanted to get rid of her.

Sadly, John would have to leave her soon. He hadn’t planned to leave her at the border though. John had been diagnosed with leukemia and was currently under heavy treatment, including chemotherapy. I was impressed John was able to join the full program, every single day.

After John had crossed his end of the line, Nanda would have to overstep her boundaries and start a life without John. If only the Mossad agents had known about John’s illness, they would not have even bothered. Later I realized how emotional Nanda’s outcry had been, it might have been one of her last outcries to her husband. She grabbed this last opportunity with both hands to scream out her desperation at the love of her life.

Birds, plants and other wildlife do not differentiate between the states of Israel and Jordan, people however, do.

From a geographical and biological point of view, the two sides of the Jordan river are exactly the same. Economically and culturally speaking, the two sides couldn’t be further apart.

The litter on the ground, the quality of the roads, the children without shoewear and holes in their clothes. It gave rise to the impression that Jordan families living alongside the road, were poor.

The quality of the roads, the traffic lights and signs, the vehicles, the agricultural sector visible from the roads in Israel all looked like Israel was prospering.

The people on the streets in Israel, including the Arab speaking Muslims, looked like they had access to a better quality of life. The imagined lines we drew over the world the past two hundred years may not be visible, the difference in what they separate however, clearly is.

The border crossings painstakingly showed it. A chandelier and a magazine exposed how history has a substantial influence on the present and therefore the future in this region.

Where else in the world would you see three angry adult men -state officials- fighting with two tourists over a chandelier? Where else would a wife desperately scream for her husband’s help with explaining the front cover of a magazine to ten border patrol guards?

Whenever you’re crossing the border between the Islamic and the Jewish, the Arab and the Hebrew speaking, the poorer and the richer world, think of what you bring across.

I envy the world of birds and animals, it seems to be without borders.

Thank you for reading this article. Ralph Deckers is a Dutch historian. He holds a BA in History and a MA in History of International Relations of the University of Amsterdam. Ralph has studied at the National University of Singapore. He’s been traveling and guiding for years and has explored over 65 countries. Due to the corona crisis his tour leading work evaporated and so he decided to start writing on Medium. He is recognized as a Top travel writer and is a publisher at Noteworthy, Illumination and ONE PIN.