Today is my last day in Israel before heading to New York and back to work this week.
Yesterday was a long and interesting day spent in The West Bank, the city of Ramallah and the massive real estate development called Rawabi.
I have a lot of strong feelings and opinions about The West Bank and Gaza but will leave them out of this post and just focus on what I saw.
Our tour into The West Bank was run by Rami Nazzal a journalist and entrepreneur running Beyond Border Tours. Israeli’s are not allowed into the West Bank so we had a whole new team of Palestinian guides and guards spend the day with us.
The West Bank is as complicated geographically/politically as Jerusalem. Have a read.
Our first stop was inside the wall which Israel believes is crucial to their protection and the Palestinians think is crushing them. I admit that I was very nervous during this part of the trip. This area of the West Bank (area C) is considered lawless. Here is our group picture with Rami as well as a Banksy original (girl releasing balloons)…
Next we headed to 1 of 18 refugee camps in the West Bank called Amari. It has about 10,000 people and because of the lack of municipal services was a mess. This is a 3rd generation refugee camp. As a group we felt that these people are being used as pawns by the Palestinians (30 minutes away is the brand new and mostly empty city of Rawabi), but obviously this is complicated. It is sad to see children live in such chaos and poverty but still easy to make kids smile …
In the afternoon we headed up past Ramallah to the massive $2 billion city (the first ever planned Palestinian city) still being built high up on a hill by Palestinian entrepreneur and billionaire Bashar Masri (funded 90 percent by Qatar money). The city is called Rawabi and it felt like one of those empty Chinese cities.
We did meet with Bashar who was very forthcoming with the financial information and partnerships. Our crew had several large Phoenix real estate developers, so the grilling was intense.
Personally, I don’t see it working and am going to try and have Bashar on my podcast soon. He told us that 60 Minutes is running an interview with him about his businesses and this project in a couple weeks so I am looking forward to see how they cover it. He let me do a selfie with him as we left…
This 15,000 person outdoor amphitheatre at the centre of the development was crazy and I crushed a few jokes for a small audience of Palestinians…
Back in Jerusalem with the sabbath over and the streets alive with people, music and food I enjoyed a fantastic falafel spread at Houmus Ben Sira and spent the rest of the night with the crew buying cocktails for young Israelis and a little Hookah…
PS – a very special thanks to our guide Doobie Sabbo who was a wealth of knowledge, infinitely patient and smart and also a spitting image of Shrek. I did not know that in Hebrew Doobie means ‘Teddy Bear’.
