Thanks Lama for sharing this. It's important to remember that the easiness with which great part of the Western world travels is not allowed to many other people.
Thanks for acknowledging the difference Guiseppe, I really hope thar changes and people here can travel easily and get to see the world as well without having to go through these processes that prevent a lot of them from traveling. I am amongst the privileged in my country to be able to travel. Also, you are always welcome to Palestine where I will introduce you to some Palestinian versions of Pizza.
Thank you Lana for sharing your experiences - I feel speechless. I wish you all the success in your commission and travel writing career, and very much look forward to reading your words 🥰
Thank you so much for sharing. I had no idea of all the paperwork and multiple checkpoints. I passed through Jericho once years ago, but my passport made me feel like it was no big deal. It was only later, talking to my driver (an Arab Christian, living in Bethlehem for work, but with a Muslim family in Gaza) that I could see the depths of horror of a system designed to keep apart, keep down, and humiliate.
Yes, also traveling through the border things are divided so for travelers it is much easier and faster than locals. One time when I was traveling, I think they were renovating the border stops for visitors so there were also travelers with us and I remember one guy saying, let them see how it is like for us to travel. Many people come on religious tours with specific destinations so they do not sense these checkpoints and division.
This is what I want to see in travel writing. I saw this first hand in Palestine, like me being able to walk back and forth and our Palestinian guide having to say goodbye at the prison gates. It made me sick and it was that trip that I finally understood, not just academically what a Free Palestine really means.
Very true, our perception of borders and border crossings, checkpoints, have become so negative that when I travel abroad and we go past a checkpoint quickly, I am astonished.
Never knew it was this frustrating and difficult it must be to deal with border crossings as a Palestinian. Wishing you all the best and smooth travels, with ease at your border crossings, Lama!! Thank you for sharing this piece✨
Thank you, Lama, for this article and for raising this important issue. I can relate to this deeply. I'm from Ukraine and a trip to the nearest neighboring country can become an exhausting 1-2 day trip.
For people from occupied territories, traveling to Europe involves navigating the Russian mandatory filtering process, where arrests can happen easily. I live in the western part of Ukraine, a region that is conditionally safe and close to the Polish border. However, I prefer to cross into Hungary or Romania, which are farther away. The queues at the Polish border can be incredibly long—if you’re traveling by bus, you could be stuck for up to 10 hours, even when only a few buses are waiting. The situation with trains is slightly better.
Additionally, our imports are sometimes blocked by Polish farmers, causing humanitarian aid and essential products to get stuck at the border. Sadly, there have been cases where truck drivers have died while waiting at the border, without access to proper medical help.
Thanks for sharing your experience at the Ukrainian borders when exiting to Europe. I am really saddened to know that arrests can take place and follows the Mandatory of Russia, which leaves Ukrainians vulnerable when crossing the borders.
Having imported stalled really should be banned by the international law and community and no country should be able to this even under law. I really hope things change for the better.
Thank you, Lama, for this article, now I could imagine how hard is travelling for Palestinian people.
I am originally from Crimea, in 2014 Russia come to our land and firm that time we are suffering from sanctions. Travelling is also very hard.
If I would travel from Crimea to Ukraine from 2014 to 2022, which was possible actually, I’d have similar procedures but without taking permission to go out.
And usually you should go walking with all your bags around 2 km, because not everyone has possibility to go by car. Bus didn’t go through borders.
So usually it could take also around 1 day or less just cross it, but depends if borders were crowded.
It was very exhausting but at least there was possibility to go to Ukraine.
After 2022 I believe it’s not possible, there is no border because of war.
For now if I want to go to Crimea - I shall land in Russia and go by bus or train around 12-24 hours because there is no airport working in Crimea.
To reach Ukraine in general I believe possible nowadays by land from Poland or Moldova etc no airport working in Ukraine
Thank you Dinara for sharing your experience with the border experience in Ukraine and Crimea, when wars and occupation take place, the border bureaucracy increases. I cannot imagine people having to walk 2km with their luggage and children to pass the borders if they do not have a car. Let us hope for better days and that international law begins protecting civilians and borders during times of occupation and war.
Wow Lama. I've lived in Dubai for 25 years surrounded by a wonderful Palestinian community, so I thought I was aware of their travel and passport challenges. However, I hadn't appreciated all the obstacles you have so carefully articulated. Thank you for enlightening us. I wish you all the best with your travel writing, and an end to this genocide. x
Thank you, it is great to hear that Palestinian communities in the diaspora are also sharing their experiences and stories with their friends there. We usually see what we go through when traveling as normal because we have never lived an alternative, but when we learn that other people do not travel in the same way, we become aware that our ‘normal’ is abnormal. Also great work you are doing, and nice to see you are also highlighting Palestinian chefs and restaurants.
This is the reason I haven't traveled to se my family in Ramallah since 1996. When entering from Jordan we are searched and the youth are segregated from their parents and are asked all kinds of degrading questions about their luggage. Like what did you pack and what did you pack ...ect. Not to mention how traumatized I am still from the strip searches that we were subject too as kids and the undressing of children and their parents. I remember when my mom was pregnant with my youngest brother and they made her strip in front of us to check her belly, I was only 6 at the time. Hopefully this system will end soon , and we will be treated with the respect we deserve as Palestinians visiting our own land .
Wow, what a traumatizing experience at such a young age. The process of reentry is definitely much more worse than when we are leaving and they do not care what we have in our luggage that is shipped straight to the Jordan borders. The searches when we come back in have not changed at all unfortunately but instead of the strip searches for women they make us use the body scanners but of course pregnant ladies should not go through it and those machines are same as strip searches where they can basically see everything. I do not know how these machines are legal. I wonder how many others they have traumatized from visiting and coming to Palestine. I will definitely be writing about the process of entering to share it with the world.
I travel mostly in the Middle East, and currently live in Sinai, Egypt. I love reading about other people's experiences, hoping to learn something new. Your narration was informative and beautifully written, however it seemed to contain almost no self-reflection or counterbalance. In the last couple of decades, we have all seen airports, borders, and checkpoints become more difficult to navigate due to Islamic terrorism. In 2015 I missed my flight from Cairo to India when an airport security official believed I had something dangerous hidden in my backpack. Just three days later, a Russian tourist plane left Sharm el-Sheikh and exploded, most likely due to a bomb that Islamic State militants had somehow managed to plant in the luggage hold, and all 224 passengers and crew on board died. I have some sympathy for your lack of so-called "passport privilege", but we are all victims of the 'inconveniences' (or worse) that jihadist terrorism has created across the world. It's good to remember that actions have consequences.
Muslims believe they are obligated to struggle (practice jihad) as set out in Qur'an 2:191 which says "... drive them [the Jews] out of the places from which they have driven you out".
The Jewish state of Israel is an "indigenous rights" success story. It is also the beginning of the rollback of Arab Islamic colonisation. I hope that the Kurds, the Copts, Nubians, Amazigh-Berbers, Assyrians, Persians, Zoroastrians, Balochis, etc. will one day all have control or autonomy in their own states.
a white Australian/NZ citizen travelling in the Middle East and calling passport privilege "so-called"? The jokes write themselves.
"actions have consequences" oh yes they do. Tell that to the Israeli terrorists who stole Palestinian land in the 1940s and their progeny who continue the occupation now. And for someone who claims to be in the Middle East to not be able to tell the difference between the Islamic State and Palestine (basic geography?).....what a perfect Exhibit A of the usual obliviousness, casual racism and lack of self-awareness that's a feature of travellers of your ilk.
"Tell that to the Israeli terrorists who stole Palestinian land in the 1940s and their progeny who continue the occupation now."
Let's look at history. After the Ottoman Turks and Arabs of Palestine were DEFEATED in WWI, the Ottoman Caliphate ceded its land to the victors, the Allied Powers, as part of the surrender agreement. The land was carved-up for self determination at the San Remo Conference of 1920. The British and French could have held onto all of the land but they chose not to. The Hejazi Arabs and Jewish people both fought on the side of Britain in return for the promise of territory if their side won, which it did in 1918.
The Hejazi Arabs were granted self-rule in 99% of the carved-up Ottoman Middle East land, ie. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Jews were acknowledged as having had a "continuous connection" to the Holy Land by the League of Nations in 1922. They were granted the *legal* right to reconstitute THEIR ancestral homeland, so long as the civil and religious rights of the current occupants was not prejudiced. This land was less than 1% of the carved-up Ottoman Middle East empire, and the indigenous Jews share it with one-fifth Arabs and other minorities whose families accepted life in the Jewish state in 1948. They have equal legal rights with Jews, and freedom of worship.
The Jewish right to control in all of the land 'from the river to the sea' has never been abrogated because the Arabs have always rejected the right of the Jewish state to exist, and refuse any agreement to have their own state next to the Jewish state.
“The Jewish state” is a racist land theft/rebranded colonialism and settler-coloniser European Jews in particular have no business claiming that land which btw they were already planning to colonise - they used that word- as announced in their paper of choice, the New York Times, back in 1899.
In your words, let's look at history. When was WWI? oh yes, 1914-18. The “right to exist” of that settler colony was always predicated on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs. But I tend not to be surprised when people like you turn out to be Zionists and support that racist ideology, so that's it for now.
Of course I'm a Zionist. I support "indigenous rights", don't you?
You cannot 'colonise' your own ancestral land, but you can 'resettle' it if the window of opportunity arises, as it did for the Jewish people after the defeat of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1918. (Wars have consequences 🙄.) The word 'colonise' was probably appropriate in the 19th century, as the world had not yet recognised the concept of "indigenous rights".
The Jewish state of Israel is just the beginning of the rollback of Arab Islamic colonisation. I hope that the Kurds, Copts, Nubians, Azeris, Amazigh-Berbers, Assyrians, Persians, Zoroastrians, Balochis, etc. will one day all have control or autonomy in THEIR own states. If Iran's leadership collapses, I hope that the various Iranian ethnic groups can reclaim THEIR ancestral and indigenous rights.
Israel is one-fifth Arab and other minority citizens so talking about 'ethnic cleansing' of Palestinian Arabs is just nonsense. These non-Jewish Israelis all have equal rights under the law and freedom of worship. Their families made a good choice to accept life in the Jewish state of Israel in 1948, rather than aligning with the five Arab countries which attacked Israel and lost.
Real 'ethnic cleansing' happened to Jews who were living in the Arab countries after Israel was founded in 1948. Today these Jews make up more than 50% of Israel's population.
Being 'displaced' by wars and through violent #jihadist resistance is mostly a self-inflicted problem. Such displaced peoples should not be kept as perpetual refugees but resettled in countries which most closely match their culture and ideology. Or Israel should extend sovereignty over all of the land 'from the river to the sea' and offer "permanent residence" status to the occupants, which is the status that the East Jerusalem Arabs and Golan Heights Druze have. #OneJewishState
Sorry but those European liars and land thieves are not “indigenous” to that land no matter how much they rename themselves and no matter what sob stories they place in the media. They know it, if they were so ‘indigenous’ then they wouldn't be banning the very tests that reveal people's ancestry (the miniscule percentage of which serves as their excuse for said land theft).
Wars have consequences, you say? Well, so does taking what doesn't belong to you and mistreating the natives. They're just thieves and colonisers like the British were in my country. And they will eventually be made to leave like the British were. Based on your surname and place of citizenship you're a descendant of one of those colonizers too, I don't feel the need to keep arguing with you.
Thanks Lama for sharing this. It's important to remember that the easiness with which great part of the Western world travels is not allowed to many other people.
Thanks for acknowledging the difference Guiseppe, I really hope thar changes and people here can travel easily and get to see the world as well without having to go through these processes that prevent a lot of them from traveling. I am amongst the privileged in my country to be able to travel. Also, you are always welcome to Palestine where I will introduce you to some Palestinian versions of Pizza.
Thank you Lana for sharing your experiences - I feel speechless. I wish you all the success in your commission and travel writing career, and very much look forward to reading your words 🥰
Thank you for wishes Yvette your encouragement really means a lot! I definitely won’t stop writing.
Lama this is such valuable and underreported info. Thank you for sharing it.
Thanks for the comment and encouragement
So happy to have found your newsletter. Looking forward to reading the back log…
Thanks! I also shared a piece today on documentation and IDs for travel from and to Palestine
that's definitely worth looking at. Thanks for telling me about it.
Thank you so much for sharing. I had no idea of all the paperwork and multiple checkpoints. I passed through Jericho once years ago, but my passport made me feel like it was no big deal. It was only later, talking to my driver (an Arab Christian, living in Bethlehem for work, but with a Muslim family in Gaza) that I could see the depths of horror of a system designed to keep apart, keep down, and humiliate.
Yes, also traveling through the border things are divided so for travelers it is much easier and faster than locals. One time when I was traveling, I think they were renovating the border stops for visitors so there were also travelers with us and I remember one guy saying, let them see how it is like for us to travel. Many people come on religious tours with specific destinations so they do not sense these checkpoints and division.
Absolutely agree. It’s much needed to be exposed to the reality. Out of the “provo visitor” bubble.
This is what I want to see in travel writing. I saw this first hand in Palestine, like me being able to walk back and forth and our Palestinian guide having to say goodbye at the prison gates. It made me sick and it was that trip that I finally understood, not just academically what a Free Palestine really means.
Very true, our perception of borders and border crossings, checkpoints, have become so negative that when I travel abroad and we go past a checkpoint quickly, I am astonished.
Never knew it was this frustrating and difficult it must be to deal with border crossings as a Palestinian. Wishing you all the best and smooth travels, with ease at your border crossings, Lama!! Thank you for sharing this piece✨
Thank you for wishes, I am definitely looking forward to my future travels and won’t let the borders hold me back!
You are so brave. Im very happy that I met you once in real. Your Story show us many realities that some people have experienced.
Hope this world will be getting better.
Thank you Assetou, I hope so too. Also, hopefully, it will get easier to obtain visas and I can visit you one day!
Thank you, Lama, for this article and for raising this important issue. I can relate to this deeply. I'm from Ukraine and a trip to the nearest neighboring country can become an exhausting 1-2 day trip.
For people from occupied territories, traveling to Europe involves navigating the Russian mandatory filtering process, where arrests can happen easily. I live in the western part of Ukraine, a region that is conditionally safe and close to the Polish border. However, I prefer to cross into Hungary or Romania, which are farther away. The queues at the Polish border can be incredibly long—if you’re traveling by bus, you could be stuck for up to 10 hours, even when only a few buses are waiting. The situation with trains is slightly better.
Additionally, our imports are sometimes blocked by Polish farmers, causing humanitarian aid and essential products to get stuck at the border. Sadly, there have been cases where truck drivers have died while waiting at the border, without access to proper medical help.
Thanks for sharing your experience at the Ukrainian borders when exiting to Europe. I am really saddened to know that arrests can take place and follows the Mandatory of Russia, which leaves Ukrainians vulnerable when crossing the borders.
Having imported stalled really should be banned by the international law and community and no country should be able to this even under law. I really hope things change for the better.
Thank you, Lama, for this article, now I could imagine how hard is travelling for Palestinian people.
I am originally from Crimea, in 2014 Russia come to our land and firm that time we are suffering from sanctions. Travelling is also very hard.
If I would travel from Crimea to Ukraine from 2014 to 2022, which was possible actually, I’d have similar procedures but without taking permission to go out.
And usually you should go walking with all your bags around 2 km, because not everyone has possibility to go by car. Bus didn’t go through borders.
So usually it could take also around 1 day or less just cross it, but depends if borders were crowded.
It was very exhausting but at least there was possibility to go to Ukraine.
After 2022 I believe it’s not possible, there is no border because of war.
For now if I want to go to Crimea - I shall land in Russia and go by bus or train around 12-24 hours because there is no airport working in Crimea.
To reach Ukraine in general I believe possible nowadays by land from Poland or Moldova etc no airport working in Ukraine
Thank you Dinara for sharing your experience with the border experience in Ukraine and Crimea, when wars and occupation take place, the border bureaucracy increases. I cannot imagine people having to walk 2km with their luggage and children to pass the borders if they do not have a car. Let us hope for better days and that international law begins protecting civilians and borders during times of occupation and war.
Wow Lama. I've lived in Dubai for 25 years surrounded by a wonderful Palestinian community, so I thought I was aware of their travel and passport challenges. However, I hadn't appreciated all the obstacles you have so carefully articulated. Thank you for enlightening us. I wish you all the best with your travel writing, and an end to this genocide. x
Thank you, it is great to hear that Palestinian communities in the diaspora are also sharing their experiences and stories with their friends there. We usually see what we go through when traveling as normal because we have never lived an alternative, but when we learn that other people do not travel in the same way, we become aware that our ‘normal’ is abnormal. Also great work you are doing, and nice to see you are also highlighting Palestinian chefs and restaurants.
Very well written and saddening for all your troubles I hope things improve for you
Thanks Ajmal I appreciate it.
This is the reason I haven't traveled to se my family in Ramallah since 1996. When entering from Jordan we are searched and the youth are segregated from their parents and are asked all kinds of degrading questions about their luggage. Like what did you pack and what did you pack ...ect. Not to mention how traumatized I am still from the strip searches that we were subject too as kids and the undressing of children and their parents. I remember when my mom was pregnant with my youngest brother and they made her strip in front of us to check her belly, I was only 6 at the time. Hopefully this system will end soon , and we will be treated with the respect we deserve as Palestinians visiting our own land .
Wow, what a traumatizing experience at such a young age. The process of reentry is definitely much more worse than when we are leaving and they do not care what we have in our luggage that is shipped straight to the Jordan borders. The searches when we come back in have not changed at all unfortunately but instead of the strip searches for women they make us use the body scanners but of course pregnant ladies should not go through it and those machines are same as strip searches where they can basically see everything. I do not know how these machines are legal. I wonder how many others they have traumatized from visiting and coming to Palestine. I will definitely be writing about the process of entering to share it with the world.
I travel mostly in the Middle East, and currently live in Sinai, Egypt. I love reading about other people's experiences, hoping to learn something new. Your narration was informative and beautifully written, however it seemed to contain almost no self-reflection or counterbalance. In the last couple of decades, we have all seen airports, borders, and checkpoints become more difficult to navigate due to Islamic terrorism. In 2015 I missed my flight from Cairo to India when an airport security official believed I had something dangerous hidden in my backpack. Just three days later, a Russian tourist plane left Sharm el-Sheikh and exploded, most likely due to a bomb that Islamic State militants had somehow managed to plant in the luggage hold, and all 224 passengers and crew on board died. I have some sympathy for your lack of so-called "passport privilege", but we are all victims of the 'inconveniences' (or worse) that jihadist terrorism has created across the world. It's good to remember that actions have consequences.
You know what caused jihadist (and most of all other) terrorism, don’t you?
Capitalism, colonialism, UK and US politics for keeping communism and liberation movements at bay since the publication of Marx’s work.
Muslims believe they are obligated to struggle (practice jihad) as set out in Qur'an 2:191 which says "... drive them [the Jews] out of the places from which they have driven you out".
The Jewish state of Israel is an "indigenous rights" success story. It is also the beginning of the rollback of Arab Islamic colonisation. I hope that the Kurds, the Copts, Nubians, Amazigh-Berbers, Assyrians, Persians, Zoroastrians, Balochis, etc. will one day all have control or autonomy in their own states.
a white Australian/NZ citizen travelling in the Middle East and calling passport privilege "so-called"? The jokes write themselves.
"actions have consequences" oh yes they do. Tell that to the Israeli terrorists who stole Palestinian land in the 1940s and their progeny who continue the occupation now. And for someone who claims to be in the Middle East to not be able to tell the difference between the Islamic State and Palestine (basic geography?).....what a perfect Exhibit A of the usual obliviousness, casual racism and lack of self-awareness that's a feature of travellers of your ilk.
"Tell that to the Israeli terrorists who stole Palestinian land in the 1940s and their progeny who continue the occupation now."
Let's look at history. After the Ottoman Turks and Arabs of Palestine were DEFEATED in WWI, the Ottoman Caliphate ceded its land to the victors, the Allied Powers, as part of the surrender agreement. The land was carved-up for self determination at the San Remo Conference of 1920. The British and French could have held onto all of the land but they chose not to. The Hejazi Arabs and Jewish people both fought on the side of Britain in return for the promise of territory if their side won, which it did in 1918.
The Hejazi Arabs were granted self-rule in 99% of the carved-up Ottoman Middle East land, ie. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Jews were acknowledged as having had a "continuous connection" to the Holy Land by the League of Nations in 1922. They were granted the *legal* right to reconstitute THEIR ancestral homeland, so long as the civil and religious rights of the current occupants was not prejudiced. This land was less than 1% of the carved-up Ottoman Middle East empire, and the indigenous Jews share it with one-fifth Arabs and other minorities whose families accepted life in the Jewish state in 1948. They have equal legal rights with Jews, and freedom of worship.
The Jewish right to control in all of the land 'from the river to the sea' has never been abrogated because the Arabs have always rejected the right of the Jewish state to exist, and refuse any agreement to have their own state next to the Jewish state.
“The Jewish state” is a racist land theft/rebranded colonialism and settler-coloniser European Jews in particular have no business claiming that land which btw they were already planning to colonise - they used that word- as announced in their paper of choice, the New York Times, back in 1899.
In your words, let's look at history. When was WWI? oh yes, 1914-18. The “right to exist” of that settler colony was always predicated on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs. But I tend not to be surprised when people like you turn out to be Zionists and support that racist ideology, so that's it for now.
Of course I'm a Zionist. I support "indigenous rights", don't you?
You cannot 'colonise' your own ancestral land, but you can 'resettle' it if the window of opportunity arises, as it did for the Jewish people after the defeat of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1918. (Wars have consequences 🙄.) The word 'colonise' was probably appropriate in the 19th century, as the world had not yet recognised the concept of "indigenous rights".
The Jewish state of Israel is just the beginning of the rollback of Arab Islamic colonisation. I hope that the Kurds, Copts, Nubians, Azeris, Amazigh-Berbers, Assyrians, Persians, Zoroastrians, Balochis, etc. will one day all have control or autonomy in THEIR own states. If Iran's leadership collapses, I hope that the various Iranian ethnic groups can reclaim THEIR ancestral and indigenous rights.
Israel is one-fifth Arab and other minority citizens so talking about 'ethnic cleansing' of Palestinian Arabs is just nonsense. These non-Jewish Israelis all have equal rights under the law and freedom of worship. Their families made a good choice to accept life in the Jewish state of Israel in 1948, rather than aligning with the five Arab countries which attacked Israel and lost.
Real 'ethnic cleansing' happened to Jews who were living in the Arab countries after Israel was founded in 1948. Today these Jews make up more than 50% of Israel's population.
Being 'displaced' by wars and through violent #jihadist resistance is mostly a self-inflicted problem. Such displaced peoples should not be kept as perpetual refugees but resettled in countries which most closely match their culture and ideology. Or Israel should extend sovereignty over all of the land 'from the river to the sea' and offer "permanent residence" status to the occupants, which is the status that the East Jerusalem Arabs and Golan Heights Druze have. #OneJewishState
Sorry but those European liars and land thieves are not “indigenous” to that land no matter how much they rename themselves and no matter what sob stories they place in the media. They know it, if they were so ‘indigenous’ then they wouldn't be banning the very tests that reveal people's ancestry (the miniscule percentage of which serves as their excuse for said land theft).
Wars have consequences, you say? Well, so does taking what doesn't belong to you and mistreating the natives. They're just thieves and colonisers like the British were in my country. And they will eventually be made to leave like the British were. Based on your surname and place of citizenship you're a descendant of one of those colonizers too, I don't feel the need to keep arguing with you.