Occupied Palestine, a child's journey. Day one.

I was nervous. We all were. The other crossings into Occupied Palestine aka Israel, that I have negotiated in the past, have ended either with outright failure, several hours interrogation, or merely a day of humiliation and misery alongside Palestinians whose treatment was always inhumane. Yesterday morning, we left Amman, Jordan, for a crossing into Israel that is known to be tourist friendly. This means that whilst Palestinians wishing to go home are shunted to the hellhole that is the Allenby crossing, Israel's tourists, go through, the more polite version further North. Here at Sheikh Hussein the barbed wire and the guns are not in evidence. All but myself were waved through in minutes rather than hours. Incredible! However, my passport with its Gaza Port stamp, it's rejections for exit marked, 'Rafah crossing', and numerous stamps bearing the legend 'PA authrority' drew giggles from the child at the passport window. The file on me that came up on their computer, drew tuts and much head shaking. There was on the other side of the passport window, something of a sense of anticipation.  A young man,  GI baldness, bull chested, wide legged (clearly watching American action movies is part of their border training programme), urged me in a low hiss to step away from my bags, to take a seat alone on plastic chairs at the end of the hall. I sat there, with the sole ex pat Palestinian man in for the same, no,  certainly worse treatment. The young guy, tall, dressed in Eurozone pony tail, had an American accent. He was on his way to visit his mother in the West Bank, and had been asked by the pretty girl at the passport window for his mothers mobile number. He had provided this and was now waiting, waiting. Checks were being made into his 'story'. I was asked my father and my grandfather's name, as Alex cycled around the empty arrivals hall. I tried not to communicate my anxiety.
‘Come onnnn Mu-um, the others are going, give me your passport and let’s go!’  
‘I don’t have it. They want to ask me a few questions, won’t  take long.’
They didn’t and it didn’t. Passport handed back to me, a paper stamped with a visa to enter the Holy Land we are, for now, free to travel onwards. And, it seems that Israel's border authorities are on somthing of a PR alert post ‘Gaza’ and that this is almost as urgent in the current climate as their day to day security alert. Thus, the adulescents in their uniforms of white polo shirts and Fourth of July shades who man the Israeli arrivals gate, looked on our melee of bikes, backpacks and cheer with only half their usual sneer. Where we could have expected harrassment and questioning in months gone by, instead, we wheeled our bikes outside into the late afternoon sunshine of what had once been Palestine, I shuddered.
‘go on Mummy it’s okay to cry now’ soothed Alex ‘You’re here now, everything’s okay.’