In the West Bank, a hotel with no name - and no guests

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Wednesday, December 23, 2009 09:53:22 AM, Hans Dahne IANS

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Atarot/East (Jerusalem): The beds have been freshly made. In the lobby, the waiters have set the coffee tables nicely. In the kitchen, the cooks are preparing meat balls in a tomato sauce. At the reception desk, Fakhre Alame stands ready to welcome guests - even though the young man in the snow-white shirt knows that nobody is coming. Not today, not tomorrow, just as has been the case for the past 42 years.

It must be one of the most unique cases anywhere in the Middle East: a hotel without a name and with no guests. It has 60 rooms, services ranging from the kitchen to in-house cleaners - and above all, an incredible history.

The chronicle begins with the highest praise when the hotel was opened May 10, 1967. The late King Hussein of Jordan himself was on hand and 18 cooks served up dishes for 300 guests. The tables were weighed down with 750 kg of meat and 200 kg of rice.

“The hotel was meant to be an investment in the future,” recalls Masri Tammimi. The profits were to go to help finance the schooling of Palestinian and Jordanian youngsters in a private vocational school affiliated to the hotel. The learning institute still exists to this day and Tammimi is its principal.

By contrast, however, the dream of a successful hotel was already over a month after the royal banquet.

“The Six-Day War began,” Tammimi said, referring to the June 1967 conflict between Israel and its neighbours. “The 22 German teachers left the school.”

In their wake, Israeli officers came knocking on the door. “The school stands atop a hill and from a military viewpoint it was significant because from there you can observe the entire area all the way to Jerusalem,” the principal explained. “We asked the German government to protect the school.”

This did help matters and the connection with Germany has since then never been interrupted. The German development aid agency currently supports the project, providing two training personnel and expert consulting.

And what became of the hotel? Within viewing distance there is an airport - but after the Israeli occupation all the Arab businessmen and tourists which the hotel’s founders had been counting on never came. Tammimi as a result toyed with the idea over and over again of converting it into a hospice for less-affluent guests.

“But this was only a beautiful dream,” he admits. For one thing, he could never meet the tax office’s estimated tax of some $50,000 - per month. And for another, there is the dividing wall, set up by Israel and cutting the West Bank-situated hotel off from its Palestinian hinterland.

And now, in the midst of a large Israeli industrial area, the school complex atop the hill is today the last Palestinian bastion.

What is left remaining of the original hotel project is not only a venue with a grand view from the roof-top terrace. The four-storey hotel without a name has also been converted by the owners into an apprenticeship hotel. At the moment 54 young Palestinians - all men - are learning the hotel profession from the ground up.

“We must offer good service and good-quality meals,” says chief trainer Anwar al-Shamasnoa. “Tourists will only return if the quality is good.”

And so the cooks prepare their own meals and test the result of their meatballs in tomato sauce. In five fully-equipped hotel rooms, the young men of the room service learn how to fold the bedsheets precisely. In the lobby, smartly-dressed waiters serve tea and cakes.

And at the reception desk, 16-year-old Fakhre Alame, his hair freshly gelled, practices a beaming smile for some later time when he’s on duty at a real hotel.

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