What is the best way to travel to the West Bank?

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The best answer would be to check in advance and make all possible arrangements to make sure that you will be able to enter. You should check both with the Israeli embassy in the US and the US embassy in Israel to get the best answer and cover all your bases as much as possible. And you should check where you should enter, Ben Gurion airport or the Allenby bridge.

Palestinian-born Americans (or other nationalities) like your mother might have a hard time getting into Israel and sometimes are denied entry. The same goes for their children, even if they were not born in Palestine.

You can see in my answer here for examples of this or this article that describes similar events*.

I don't think that a computer or any other consumer electronics would pose any special problem. Don't bring a drone, those are problematic for everyone in many countries.

That regards entering to visit PA territories. If you want to visit East Jerusalem (including the old city) and/or places that are located in C territory, that would be the same as visiting Tel Aviv and other places in Israel. Usually, for non-palestinian Americans, there are no special problems with this, including Americans born in other hostile countries such as Lebanon or Iran, but Palestinians are a special case and all inquiries should probably be done in advance.

Regarding the COVID situation, it's hard to say, and it's an ongoing situation that changes, you can look at the US embassy guidelines regarding the COVID status in the PA and Israel (which are different).


* - Many of the sources that tell pf the stories about people being denied entry are less than supportive of Israel. Specifically in the source I add in this answer, I wouldn't trust Gideon Levi to tell me the time for sure I wouldn't completely trust his telling of an interaction between someone and any representative of Israel. But, there are enough stories circulating, to believe that some people, under some circumstances, are denied entry. Also remember that shouting at a border control officer "You wish you had the same roots as I do. You should be the one to leave, not me! I’m a daughter of this land" wouldn't help your case.

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