'Anata-Shu'afat, Abu Dis

After a brief visit at Anata which was pretty much the same as usual – school children returning home, vehicles passing through the checkpoint without hindrance, we went to Abu Dis where we had gone for many years before going to Wadi Nar and other locations.  We wanted to visit the Cliff Hotel which, just recently, was returned to its rightful owners after a decade of having been a border police outpost to watch over the few residents of the Moskovitz settlement. 

The once beautiful hotel, with rich gardens and flowering bushes looked like a bombed out mess.  All the windows were broken, the outside area was totally overgrown, and there were remnants of the barbed wire that encircled the place.  There were no border police to be seen, even though the newspaper articles about the place indicated that the border police would retain their positions atop the building.

There was a sign opposite the hotel that passage on the road was only for authorized vehicles, but in the short time we were there, several vehicles went through with no difficulty or interference. 

As for the Moskovitz settlement, there was no sign of life around the place.  It was difficult to know if people are indeed living there.  There might well have been someone atop the building standing guard, but from the distance, there was no way of knowing.

There was more activity in the center of Abu Dis than we remember from our last visit some time ago, but it in no way measures up to the bustling center it was when we first started coming before the separation barrier was constructed.