| THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN |
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East Barta'a as seen from West Barta'a
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Anybody working with tour groups knows the importance of one particular person aboard the vehicle.
There are those that might think I am talking about the tour leader from abroad, or the local tour guide appointed to accompany them for their stay in Israel.
Neither would be right.
After over 30 years of being involved in informal education I can definitely tell you that as a study tour guide the most important person on the bus is the driver, the VIP – the Very Important Pilot of the vehicle.
If you fall out of favor with him then you are in trouble. There is little worse in this business than an argumentative, grumpy bus driver that's for sure. Often they have good reason to take the hump – like when folks trek in shoes full of sand when they are in the Negev or returning from the beach, or bring in lumps of mud after a hike along a stream. Then again we have those passengers who munch food and crack sunflower seeds inside the bus leaving it looking like a rubbish tip on wheels at the end of the day. All are perfectly good reasons to be grumpy but that's not what I am talking about.
Since the slump in overseas visitors coming on long term seminars in Givat Haviva – post intifada 2000 – the majority of tours guided by yours truly are in the Wadi Ara region, lasting anywhere between 3 to 5 hours and so one would think I wouldn't have too much contact with grumpy drivers.
Wrong as I am often taking them to places not only the people on the bus have never visited before but he – the driver – hasn't either. I have to explain a great deal, often there are arguments as the confused driver kicks against going where he hasn't traveled before.
In many ways the bus drivers are the very people who emphasize certain points one might want to make in a seminar – like for instance where WAS the pre-1967 border between the State of Israel and the then Jordanian controlled West Bank for starters and how it is seen in present times, an ex-border, divide or just a line on an old map.
Many of the bus drivers I find myself working with have never left the Route 65 main high way when passing through the Wadi Ara region which is predominantly populated by Muslim Arab citizens of Israel living in small and large villages and 2 cities, Umm-el-Fahm and Baka el-Gharbiya.
When I recently asked a driver if he had been to Katzir on the Amir Mountain range over looking Wadi Ara, he answered in a rather unpleasant tone that he "didn't go in to Arab villages."
When I explained to him that there were over 750 Jewish families living in Katzir and that it was one of the new communities devised as part of the Sharon Seven Stars plan of the late l980's, he became a little sheepish and said he'd never heard of Katzir.
At the end of the tour not only had he heard about Katzir but actually visited the community and marveled at the wonderful vistas over the coastal plain and Mediterranean Sea on one side, and a large chunk of the West Bank on the other. He was astounded to discover that the so called Green Line drawn in 1949 had divided a Muslim village down below (Barta'a) in such a way that the residents had ended up in two different countries even though members of the same extended family.
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The 'Green Line' in center of Barta'a, East Barta'a on left and West Barta'a to the right of the 'Peace Bridge' build over the wadi
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Whilst parked in Barta'a waiting for the group to return to the bus, the driver had been invited by a local shopkeeper to join him for a cup of coffee during the course of which he had heard about the somewhat harsh realities for those living in the village.
By the end of the tour, the driver had crossed over from grumpy to almost grateful and asked if we also guided Israelis on tours of Wadi Ara as well.
A short time later the driver – whom I would judge to be in his mid-30's and lived in Bat Yam - phoned to ask a few more questions about what he had seen and heard in the space of a few hours on tour that day with a group of young people from abroad.
He also said that in the evening after the tour he had sat with some of the overseas visitors around the dinner table.
"They asked me a lot of questions about the Arabs and their villages that I couldn't answer," explained Avi, who also quipped that maybe he should come to Givat Haviva for a seminar.
Welcome!
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