Mount Nabi Yunis (3,346 ft) – Highest point in Palestine
Eric and Matthew Gilbertson
On the highpoint
March 30, 2018
The highest point in Palestine is one of the most technically easy country highpoints to ascend in the world. You can literally drive to the very summit. However, it is potentially politically difficult to access.
Matthew and I had just finished climbing the highest mountain in Jordan, Jabal Umm ad Dami, and took a taxi from the Jordan-Israel border into Jerusalem in the morning. I had originally planned to just rent a car in Jerusalem and drive to the highpoint, but I learned that rental agencies may not allow driving into that part of the West Bank. There are three different zones in the West Bank: Zone A (full Palestinian Authority control), Zone B (partial Palestinian and Israeli control), and Zone C (Israeli control).
Mt Nabi Yunis from a distance (it’s where the mosque is with the spire sticking up)
The Palestine highpoint, Mount Nabi Yunis, is in Zone A, so no Israeli rental agency would allow a rental car to be driven there. The next option was to hire a taxi, and this also sounded somewhat complicated. Israeli taxis aren’t always allowed across the border into the West Bank, so I’d been told by some friends in Israel that I may need to switch taxis at the border checkpoint.
The best bet, I figured, would be to stay at a hotel in Jerusalem and ask them to try to arrange a taxi. I reserved the Ritz Hotel (it was actually the cheapest one, not the same as the Ritz in the US), and it was conveniently in east Jerusalem.
The turnoff to Halhul
The hotel receptionist advised against travelling to Halhul, where the highpoint was, on a Friday, but it wasn’t exactly clear why. She said something about it being the holy day in Islam, and the security situation may not be as good. Matthew and I had a tight schedule, so we persisted and she said it would probably be ok.
Luckily she knew a Palestinian taxi driver who had grown up in Halhul, but now lived in Jerusalem. Since he had
Israeli plates on the car, but was Palestinian, he could drive us the whole way there with no need to change taxis. It was kind of expensive ($200), but seemed like our only option.
We left the hotel at 11am, driving south through Bethlehem and Efrat on route 60, then turned west into Halhul. There were big red signs on the turnoff warning us that we were entering Zone A, and that Israeli citizens were risking their lives by entering. We weren’t Israeli citizens, and the taxi driver wasn’t concerned, so we didn’t worry.
Matthew at the highest point
We drove into the middle of town near the Mount Nabi Yunis mosque, then turned right down a side ally and told the driver to stop. We were at our GPS waypoint, and at the obvious crest of the hill. It wasn’t too scenic there next to a dumpster, but it was the highest point of land in Palestine. We got out in the light rain and took a few pictures and found a summit rock.
The driver was surprised we had come all that way for that location, and he insisted on driving around a little bit more to make certain we found the highest point. After passing the mosque, then circling back again to the highpoint, we told him we were satisfied and ready to return.
On the way out of Halhul, there were now several Israeli soldiers with machine guns posted next to the red warning signs. I don’t know if they would have let us in if we’d arrived a few minutes later, but I’m glad we didn’t have to find out.
In another hour we were back at the hotel, and spent the rest of the day walking around the old city.
Video of summit tour:
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