The Long, Humiliating, and Expensive Trek for Palestinian Jerusalemites Traveling to Jordan

“Believe me, I consider the day I travel from Jerusalem to Jordan and the day I return as among the most difficult days of my life, and I weigh my decision to travel a thousand times,” said Umm Ahmed, 45, from Beit Hanina, while getting into the shared taxi that is licensed to take passengers from East Jerusalem to the King Hussein Bridge and vice versa.1

As is the custom of all Jerusalemites, Umm Ahmed carried 25 pieces of the unique Jerusalem ka‘ek al-Quds with her. The driver advised her to put them in a closed bag to ensure that the sesame seed coating survives the trip (see Ka‘ek al-Quds: What’s the Secret?).

Umm Ahmed finally reached Jordan with her prized ka‘ek intact. When she arrived in Amman’s Shumaysani neighborhood, she said: “Yes, the journey is a difficult one, full of insults, humiliation, disrespect, and exploitation to the utmost degree; it takes hours to go and days to return, and it is expensive. Yet it is necessary, because Jordan is the lung that Jerusalem breathes from. It is the only readily available destination for Jerusalemites.”

Indeed, the crossing to Jordan is the only point where a Palestinian leaving the West Bank can enter a place that is not in Israel.

Air travel is too expensive for many, and the flight options are quite limited. So that leaves the land routes to Jordan (via either the King Hussein Bridge, also called the Allenby Bridge, [within the occupied West Bank], the Sheikh Hussein Bridge, also called the Jordan River Crossing, in the north [near Beit She’an or Beisan, Israel], or the Rabin Crossing [in the southernmost tip of the country, in Eilat]) as the only options. However, unlike Israeli citizens, Palestinian Jerusalemites are only allowed to use the King Hussein Bridge, so our analysis here focuses only on that experience.

The trip via the land route is costly on many fronts.

First, as permanent residents, Palestinian Jerusalemites have no international travel document, so they need to apply for a travel document called a laissez-passer from the Israeli Ministry of Interior. This costs around NIS 75 (about $20) and is valid for five years, so most Palestinian Jerusalemites hold one. (Those who are citizens travel on their passports.)

Documents in hand, it is impossible for Palestinian Jerusalemites to drive or even take a taxi from Jerusalem to their destination in the neighboring country, Jordan.

Because Israel considers the bridge area a military zone, no cars or parking are allowed by anyone. They could park in another city, Jericho, but that is a 20-minute drive away and would involve an extra cost as well as the hassle of transporting bags back. Israel also doesn’t allow car rental companies at the bridge, which means thousands of travelers are forced to use shared taxis or hire a private taxi, which costs NIS 300 to 350 (about $100).

Al-Nijmeh (Star) taxi company has an Israeli government-issued monopoly for the King Hussein Bridge and takes passengers from East Jerusalem in shared rides. Even though the taxi company has changed owners, it seems to always keep the monopoly, either by competing directly and winning the bid for it or by buying the bid from whomever wins the tender. There is little Israeli supervision of the company. The shared taxi, which takes 10 passengers at a reasonable cost of NIS 42 each plus extra for bags, stops running at noon, which forces afternoon passengers to hire a private taxi.

After reaching the Israeli-controlled side of the bridge, Palestinian Jerusalemite travelers incur two extra unnecessary costs: an exit tax of about NIS 200 (about $54) per traveler (including children)2 and an exit permit of about NIS 220 (about $60 per person; children are exempt). Palestinians holding PA IDs, which are titled and function as passports/travel documents (unlike Israeli permanent-resident IDs), do not need to purchase the exit permit, because they enter Jordan on their passports, but Jerusalemite permanent residents who have an Israeli-issued laissez-passer get no such break. Jordanian officials require travelers to carry an exit permit valid for only three years (and not the Israeli laissez passer, valid for five years). (Foreign passport holders can save time and money by getting a five-year multiple-entry visa to Jordan, available online.)

After paying the laissez-passer fee, the shared taxi or private taxi cost, the exit tax, and the exit permit, travelers then have to pay a bus fare for transportation to the Jordanian side and an additional JD 10 for an entrance visa to Jordan.

Finally, one navigates the public transportation system to get to Amman or any other destination. The posted rate for shared taxis is JD 7 per person, but taxi drivers charge more (sometimes much more) if they are asked to go to a specific address in Amman. A private taxi can be as much as JD 30 (about $42). Unlike on the Israeli side of the bridge, car rental companies are available on the Jordanian side, and many passengers opt to rent a car and return it when they head back.

All the above costs are for the general public using publicly available transportation options (which also require porters to load and unload luggage, and they expect to be tipped). For passengers who want to avoid riding crowded buses and waiting hours to cross the short but difficult distance between the Jordanian and Israeli passport control areas, they have the option of paying for a VIP service ($120 per person) to make the three-kilometer trip in an airconditioned (but also shared) van. This monopoly is run with little supervision or regulation. Travelers often claim that a governmental security agency either runs or partners with the company that has the monopoly on the Jordanian side, but this has never been proven. Clearly, though, no one can do anything in a border area without the sanctions and approval of the sovereign government.

Masoud Younis, 22, a student at one of the Jordanian universities, spoke to Jerusalem Story about the difficulties and humiliation of travel. “By God, we lose our humanity more than once at the bridge by the employees, especially on the Jordanian side, who treat us, especially us young men, as if we are unwanted,” he said.3

But Hajj Abdul Rahman Nour, 72, who was preparing to go to visit his son in Amman, insists that crossing the bridge is so much easier today than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. He said:

Because the number of Palestinian travelers from Jerusalem is relatively modest, the Jordanian authorities ask them to board the bridge bus with passengers with Palestinian passports coming from other parts of the West Bank; this means they have to carry their bags and walk a long distance to reach the designated bus. And thus begins another round of inconvenience, with crowding and racing to get on the bus. Palestinians from Jerusalem are not given the option to travel on the more comfortable tourist buses, which are usually not full. Jordan correctly states that East Jerusalemites are like the rest of the Palestinian population in their eyes, but Jerusalemites hope that this small gesture would make their lives easier.

Summers are peak travel times, and buses are severely congested; it can take 15 to 30 minutes just to get off a bus upon arrival to the destination. During that time, pesky Jordan Valley flies energetically buzz around. Once you get off the bus, you have to be a skilled athlete in order to sprint to the least crowded passport control window in order to hand over the Jordanian travel document (for those who have them—see Precarious, Not Permanent: The Status Held by Palestinian Jerusalemites (Pt. 1)) or your foreign passport.

This stage may take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the pressure and the determination of the employees. If things do not go well for you, your passport will be transferred to the intelligence service, and you can expect to be questioned.

Next, non-Jordanian nationals are required to pay JD 10 for an entry visa, even if they carry a Jordanian passport of the type that does not have a national number.

Then you go to a large luggage holding area, and you have to search for your luggage. Porters are available to help with the search (for a tip, of course). If you are unlucky, a bag may disappear or be stashed in a random corner, not in the space designated by the number tag attached to it.

Luggage in hand, you finally move toward the exit, passing through a narrow hallway where you are required to pay the baggage fees before you can leave the facility and head toward the taxi stands. The fee keeps rising for unknown reasons—from half a dinar to two dinars.

Step outside, and you are warmly greeted by dozens of men who try to convince you to ride with them in a private car other than the designated public cars. The fare might be lower, but they are uninsured, and travelers have no recourse if they forget a piece of luggage in the car trunk or if the driver decides to charge a higher fare midway.

All told, for a Palestinian Jerusalemite, it generally takes three hours from the moment one enters the Israeli side of the bridge to the moment one exits the Jordanian bridge. This is more time than it takes to fly from Tel Aviv or Amman to Istanbul. And that is without the driving time from there to whatever the destination is in Jordan, which can be an hour or more.

One of the reasons that Jerusalemites endure the humiliation is that the King Hussein Bridge is virtually the only viable port of entry and exit for all Palestinians wanting to travel to Jordan or onward from there, to elsewhere in the world. While Jerusalemites are allowed to use the Ben Gurion airport, flights are both prohibitively expensive and not frequently scheduled, and security measures there are uniquely intrusive for Palestinian Jerusalemites (see “We Are All Mikey!”).

Because the King Hussein Bridge is not open around the clock, serious overcrowding is common, especially during the peak summer months, when families take their children to see relatives in Jordan or expat Palestinians return home on summer holidays. The suggestion to open an additional bridge between the West Bank and Jordan has stalled, even though the Adam Bridge exists north of Jericho.

Attempts to persuade the Israelis to open the King Hussein Bridge on a 24-hour basis have generally failed. Yet it has been done twice: In the early stages of implementing the Oslo Accords and until October 2000, Palestinian police were actually stationed at the Israeli-controlled bridge, and taxis took passengers to all locations in Palestine; and again in March 2023, the US State Department’s point man Hady Amr and the US Ambassador to Israel exerted some effort, and sure enough, the Israelis (Jordan has always agreed but the Israelis have often refused) agreed to keep the King Hussein Bridge open 24 hours a day.5 These operating hours ended abruptly after October 7, 2023, with al-Aqsa Flood Operation and Israel’s war on Gaza. Now, once again, the hours have reverted to the old schedule: short daytime hours, even shorter hours on Friday, and no crossings at all on Saturday. (The Israelis claim that many of their workers are not available because of the war in Gaza.)

Obviously, crossing the bridge would be much more convenient for Jerusalemites (and Palestinians generally) if they were allowed to drive their own cars or use public land transport from Jerusalem the whole way from home to their destination in Jordan. Israeli citizens (including Palestinians) with the same yellow-plated cars as Palestinian Jerusalemites are allowed to drive into Jordan via the Sheikh Hussein Bridge (after paying a temporary permit and local insurance); but Palestinian Jerusalemites must use the King Hussein Bridge, which means they can’t drive their own cars—because Jordan does not allow them or their Israeli car licensed cars to cross that bridge into Jordan.

At one time, about two decades ago, the Jordanians allowed Palestinian Jerusalemites to drive across the Sheikh Hussein Bridge, but then suddenly, they stopped for reasons that remain unclear. Some have suggested that the Palestinian leadership requested the change (although Palestinian officials insist that they didn’t); some claim that Mohammad Dahlan made the request when he was in the Palestinian government under the guise that it was not fair to the rest of the Palestinian population, but his supporters also deny that.

A petition signed by senior Jerusalemites, including Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, and sent to the Jordanian government in July 2022 requesting permission to drive their own cars into Jordan via the northern Sheikh Hussein Bridge did not effect any change.6

Jordanian officials apparently do not want to convey even the slightest appearance of actions that could be interpreted and criticized as signaling or encouraging the mass exit/expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), even though there is no evidence that changes to the bridge procedures would be at all related to that.

Hazem H. Kawasmi, a Palestinian Jerusalemite who is a political economist, a development expert, and a civil society activist, told Jerusalem Story that Jordan, Palestine, and Israel all have a say in the status of Jerusalemites and their ability to travel without hassle, without exorbitant costs, and in reasonable time.

Kawasmi said that, currently, there are serious fears in Jordan that Israeli radicals are pushing for a mass exodus of Palestinians, and therefore, the idea of approaching the Jordanians on this issue is a nonstarter. “These problems are not going to go away until there is an independent Palestinian state,” he said.

Update: As this article was being finalized, the news broke that a Jordanian truck driver arrived from Jordan to the Israeli side of the bridge and, during an inspection, opened fire with a handgun, killing three male Israeli bridge workers.

In response, Israel closed all three crossings, raising fears of a continued escalation of violence within the West Bank as has occurred in recent weeks in Jenin, Tulkarm, and elsewhere.

Later in the day, Israel reopened the crossings to pedestrians but they remain closed to trucks.