A Year Ago I Traveled Halfway Across the World Only to Stay a Weekend

For someone who has never left the country, let alone gone farther than a few states outside of North Carolina — halfway across the world was a hell of a place to start.

Last March I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to go on a geopolitical trip to Israel and Palestine with my UNC peers.

We arrived in Tel Aviv on March 6, 2020.

But I was back in America bright and early on the morning of March 10, 2020 after a long 12-hour international flight to New York, then another hour and change to Raleigh.

I was supposed to be in the country for 10 days, but those 10 days turned into a measly 2 and a half.

COVID-19 was on the verge of being declared a pandemic and all Americans had to leave or risk being quarantined for two weeks. We didn’t have the means to stay. We had to leave.

But we didn’t leave without taking new knowledge and friendships with us.

My peers and I got to meet and discover so much, all while getting to know each other, our backgrounds and how each of our different lived experiences has impacted our outlook.

From hearing from a Muslim man who started a coexistence kindergarten with his Jewish wife in Jaffa to being welcomed into the homes of a community on the Gaza Strip, where those living there may just have mere seconds to get to a bomb shelter — these experiences are not something I take for granted.

When you hear about things like that, but also when you hear it directly from the people who are affected — things are put into perspective.

Americans and the rest of the Western world can think they’re educated about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We’re not. What do we know? It’s not our lives. It’s not our every day.

Sure, we can have an opinion and be able to verbalize it in a conversation. But then we can forget about it. It doesn’t follow us home every night.

Even a year later, I still think about this trip a lot.

Little did we know that when we arrived home, it would signify the start of our lives changing forever.

I traveled over 24 hours in total there and back only to be in Israel for what was essentially a weekend.

I realize that this is a trip with a lot of implications due to the social, political, economic and religious environment of the region. While I understand the privilege I have to have been able to freely travel throughout the region, without fear — these aspects of life in Israel and Palestine are the things that I hoped to better understand while I was there myself.

Can three days tell me all I need to know about the long and complicated history between Israelies and Palestinians? Of course not. Neither could have the originally planned 10 days.

But what it did teach me was to listen.