Many people have the misconception or wrong idea that people in the Middle East get around via camel as a main mode of transportation and live in the desert. I am here to tell you that is far from the truth. It is important to understand how we come up with these misguided ideas of how other people in the world live when we might not actually know. A lot of times these stereotypes might come from images we see in movies, cartoons and other forms of media.
Similarly, sometimes it is hard for us to understand and empathize or feel for someone else’s experience when it is quite different from our own. I thought that I understood a lot about the West Bank/Palestinian Territories before starting my journey. But, when I came here and experienced things like how people get around and move from place to place or how they are restricted from moving between places, I learned to really understand and feel for their experience.
The topic of transportation in the West Bank/Palestinian Territories is complicated because it is related to mobility, the ability to move from one place to another. Mobility in the West Bank/Palestinian Territories is determined by which ID card you hold and determines which checkpoints you can cross, roads you can drive on and cities you can enter.
