Two Israeli citizens recently entered the ‘Palestinian’ Authority administrative center of Ramallah with the declared goal of promoting the concept of a regional federation, fostering peace, and engaging with their ‘Palestinian’ counterparts. However, for their message to be received without incident, one minor detail was best kept out of the conversation: the fact that they were Israeli.
The two toured the city with a local fixer because, as it turns out, the road to cross-cultural harmony apparently requires someone on hand to advise where one may walk and where it is perilous to do so. In the course of their visit, the pair arrived at the mausoleum of Yasser Arafat—because what could be more natural when building bridgeheads of peace than paying respects at the grave of the former ‘PLO’ chairman who orchestrated terror campaigns that claimed the lives of hundreds of Israelis?
At one stage during their excursion, the local guide explicitly warned them to downplay and conceal their Israeli identity. After all, there is seemingly no better way to demonstrate genuine coexistence than by ensuring nobody around you discovers who you actually are—considering that had locals known they were Israelis, the encounter would have almost certainly concluded in an entirely different manner.
This surreal encounter unfolds even before addressing the legal reality of how they reached the city in the first place. Ramallah is classified as Area A, where the entry of Israeli citizens is strictly prohibited under standing IDF military injunctions, barring exceptionally rare, officially sanctioned exemptions. Had the situation turned hostile, it takes little imagination to determine who would have been required to breach the perimeter to rescue them: IDF soldiers, who would have been forced to put their lives on the line to extract the pair from mortal danger.