Jordan Sukkot 2007

Sukkot (Tabernacles) is one of the Jewish holidays that is spread over a whole week so Irit has holiday from school and we can go somewhere on vacation during that week. The same thought occurs to several hundred thousand other Israelis whough which is why most flights from Israel and hotels and B&Bs in Israel are packed during that week.

Since I’m not wild about crowds I thought we might go to Jordan for a few days, not a popular holiday destination amongst Jewish Israelis (see previous post). It’s close, only a car ride away, and I’ve been thinking about Jordan for years. I had bought some guidebooks, I did some homework on the Internet and made some hotel reservations by phone. In retrospect most of these were unnecessary because most hotels in Jordan are rather empty during the month of Ramadan.

Anyway we set off from Haifa on Saturday morning with the car and within an hour we were at the Jordan River crossing point near Bet She’an in northeastern Israel. The crossing point was not very busy and the crossing took about 75 minutes including buying insurance for the car in Jordan and changing Israeli number plates to Jordanian one. We’ve been through this crossing point twice before (albeit not with a car) so most of the procedure was familiar. The officials on the Israeli side were indifferent and the Jordanian ones were welcoming if a little slow.

We drove down the main road that runs along the Jordanian side of the Jordan valley which runs through a series of poor towns and villages. This is definitely 3^rd world compared to Israel. Every 20 kilometres or so there is a checkpoint manned by the army. Occasionally they ask to see our passports (we show them our European ones), more usually when they see we are tourists, they wave us on. Towards the Allenby Bridge a new road leads off to the right which is blocked by heavily armed soldiers in grey uniforms, we continue on the old road. Soon we come to the start of the Dead Sea Highway and the turn off for the so-called Baptism site where Jesus was baptized by John. We leave our car in the parking lot and join a tour that goes by shuttle bus down to the edge of the Jordan River. At one point we see a “competitive” baptismal site on the Israeli side of the river, complete with the obligatory Israeli flag. Our Jordanian guide tells us that, not only is the Jordanian side the true baptismal site, but also that it is much cheaper to visit (8 Jordanian dinars = $11 compared to $100 which he claims it costs to visit the Israeli side (I very much doubt it). The other visitors with us on the shuttle bus include an attractive Lebanese lady banker who’s taking some time off after visiting the Amman branch of the bank she works for.

From the Baptismal site we drive a few kilometers down the Dead Sea Highway to the area of the plush Dead Sea hotels. We check out the Movenpick but find it uninterestingly luxurious and move on the Dead Sea Panorama above the Dead Sea. We have something to drink – the only other guests are an Indian family that lives and works in Amman. We then went to check out the Janna Spa , a beautiful Spa hotel with hot springs tucked away in the desert mountains. There too we find the hotel virtually empty. From the empty roads to the empty restaurants and hotels we are beginning to understand that, at least now, it is a very quiet period for tourism in Jordan.

Travelling to Jordan

We live in Israel, a country in the Middle East. Our closest neighbour is Jordan with whom we have the longest border. From the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 we were (formally) at war with Jordan until 1994 when a peace treaty was signed between King Hussein and Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin. At that time there were high hopes of a Middle East peace that everybody could profit from. Busloads of Israeli tourists “invaded” Jordan and Jordanian tourist operators built new hotels especially around Petra to accommodate the sudden new influx of tourists. But Jordan is the kind of place where Israelis would come once only and by 2000 the peace atmosphere had soured and all the new tourism dried up.

I went to Jordan the first time for a short day trip from Eilat to Aqaba in 1994. I took my daughters who were then 10 and 14 and didn’t feel comfortable in the Arab atmosphere. I felt fine but immediately saw that Jordan is no big deal. What I mean by that is that for the many years that Jordan was Israel’s enemy, it was pictured in Israeli conciousness as a big country with a powerful and competent army. Once again, the picture of the enemy over there was very different for the reality we encountered with our own eyes once we could visit freely for ourselves. We suddenly saw Jordan for what it is, a relatively poor, Middle Eastern country, underdeveloped by European standards, a far cry from the modern and highly Westernized Israel and therefore not really a potent enemy (in military terms) compared to Israel’s might.

I didn’t go again to Jordan until 2 years ago on my trip to India. At the time I was unable to get flight tickets from Israel to India at the time we wanted to travel, and a creative travel agent suggested we travel overland to Amman (it’s only a few hours) and take a flight from there to Delhi. It was an excellent idea – Amman Airport is pleasant and provincial and the Jordanian Airlines flight to Delhi was short and comfortable. More importantly it showed us that (contrary to popular perception amongst Israeli Jews) there’s nothing particularly frightening about traveling to Jordan. Israeli newspapers occasionally rate various countries for how anti-Semitic they are and Jordan regularly appears at the top of the list. Since over 50% of the population are Palestinian (i.e. refugees or descendants of refugees) that’s maybe not that surprising. On a personal level there was nothing in our short experience in Jordan which justified feeling uncomfortable.