First Impressions on Palestine 2018: Even before setting foot on Palestinian soil, my head was already full of preconceived ideas about Palestine and about the Middle East. Indeed, it was my first travel into an Arab country and as I was facing the many reactions provoked by the name of my destination, I was increasingly nervous on what exactly was the situation over there. But this travel anxiety stopped after only two days in Palestine.

When I arrived in Tel-Aviv I knew I was still a long way from my final destination of Hebron, and the face of surprise provoked by the mention of the name of the city didn’t do much to reassure me that I had made a good choice to come in this country. But when I finally arrived in the Palestinian territories, I was literally shocked by how nice the people were.

Every time I passed a young or old person I was granted by a “Alha w Sala” or a warm “Welcome in Palestine”, all the previous stress and paranoia of coming in the supposedly troubling city of Hebron quickly disappeared and I was finally able to relax. In addition to the friendliness of the people, I noticed a couple of other things that I did not expect. So I will now state those discoveries in disorder, first, the absence of homeless people in the street, was very impressive as it is a big problem in Europe, and to see that in such a country it has disappeared should be an inspiration for others.

I came in Palestine during the Ramadan, which was a good and a bad thing; bad because a lot of people were tired and I could not eat in the street, also I was very careful to not offend anyone in daylight as I know that the fast can be hard on people, a good thing because it allowed me to see the nightlife of Hebron and to have big and fantastic meals when the fast ended. Those were the main things that surprised me during my first days in Palestine, of course, there were an all bunch of small things that surprised me or shocked me as well, but I put it more on the count of my first travel into an Arab country than on the count of a sort of Palestinian specificity.

Of course, I cannot talk about my first impressions without talking about witnessing the only case of occupation on earth. I was of course, once again, astonished by the many checkpoints, the number of soldiers, the big Towers in concrete, all those small things that very subtly remind the Palestinian people that he is not free to do what he wants or go where he wants.

Those were my first impressions on my first days in Palestine, of course, I left some of them out, like I could have spoken of the very hot weather or the great amount of trash in the street but as I said, these observations are more of a European discovering an Arab country than me giving my impressions on Palestine. All in all, after a bit of a stressful start, I knew from my first days in Hebron that I will be going to enjoy myself, and I also knew that at the end of my stay I would want to come back.” This Article was written by Grégoire Sainte-Marie