$800 Taxi Ride Into an Israeli Combat Zone

It was cheaper for me to fly to Turkey one way than to hang around Israel in a taxi for a couple of hours, what gives?

Photos by Dexter Phoenix Salem-News.com

(HAIFA 2006) - (This story begins in Haifa, Israel, during the summer of 2006, when I was covering the fighting between Israeli and Hezbollah forces as a freelance news photojournalist. To read the previous story, please visit: The Worst Day of Hezbollah Rocket Attacks in Haifa, Israel's History - Dexter Phoenix Salem-News.com)

After standing around wondering what to do next, I looked for the taxi driver, and saw him standing by the police line looking at me in a curious perplexed way, wondering what I was going to do next.

I walked over to greet him. Soon I was pushing myself through the gathering sweaty crowds towards his parked taxi.

At this point I was drained, and in need of a cold beer. Unfortunately, there were no open bars around that area, so I asked him where there was a place I could get a beer. He said he knew a small deli place where they sold cold beers, so he drove up the road to the shop.

I was still a bit anxious about how much this taxi driver would be charging me for all of this, and I mentioned it discreetly towards him. Again he reassured me that it was all "OK".

I bought him a sandwich and a drink and let him talk a thousand words a second - routine to his friends - who obviously owned the shop. About 10 minutes later, he came out and said the owners of the shop said there had been a recent bombing just up the road. So the taxi driver drove me up to another cordoned off area.

Damaged house in Haifa, Israel

By now the place was pretty much engulfed in darkness due to the bombings cutting off most of the main power in that area. About the only light that was illuminating the whole street was coming from the fire engines, police cars and ambulances.

The main concern here though, was the downed live power lines that I had no idea about, after walking all over them to get to a house that had been badly damaged. With my press pass and large professional camera, they let me through the closed-off area, and luckily everyone was too busy to really notice me. It was only when I came walking back that a fireman shouted at me NOT to walk on the live power cables that were laid all over the road in near darkness.

I was too tired to care, and just wanted to get out of this taxi situation, pay him, and start editing my pictures so I could wire them off to all the newspapers that I could find showing interest.

We drove down back to the hotel, and I got out the car. By now he was on the radio to his taxi company, explaining where he went and what he did.

I seriously thought that this taxi guy was going to give me a good deal after all his reassurances in not charging me the earth.

Now I am not easily shocked and to be truthful, after all the crap I had been through, this had to be one of the biggest, most extreme shocks that I have ever had since being in this part of the world!

He got off the radio and looked at me very sheepishly. I said “how much?” and he said.... "800 dollars".!!

Local resident shows camera a bloody towel

My heart just missed a beat and my stomach felt like it had just been kicked! I looked at him speechless for about 5 seconds, then I just said “are you f*@king serious!?! - 800 dollars?"!

“I could fly to another country for that!”

"I thought you said you had it under control?" He then patted the air with his hands, in a “calm down” motion. He then said, "I phone my boss and talk to him, I see if I can make it no so expensive."

He then sat in his taxi for about 10 minutes talking to his boss, sounding like they were having some bargaining thing going on, while trying to justify their extortionate prices towards me.

I could see the taxi driver was getting frustrated and was not happy about the prices his boss was throwing at him, for only a couple of hours work... most of the time when the car was parked and the meter NOT running.

He then got his final offer from his boss and switched the radio off. He shook his head and rubbed the top of his head. He got out the car slowly, like he was about to be the bearer of bad news, and said, "the best I can do is 400, no less... the boss insists!"

I exclaimed "Four hundred dollars! Are you serious?"

It was cheaper for me to fly to Turkey one way than to hang around Israel in a taxi for a couple of hours. He also said they would only accept $400 if the money was paid in American dollars!

Now at the time, I just about had that amount in American dollars, but there was no way I was going to pay all my emergency money over this. So I decided to barter about the money and finally came up with a deal of 200 dollars in US cash, the rest in Israeli currency that I could draw out at the nearest bank. I told him to wait but he insisted to walk in the hotel with me to get the money.

Another vehicle severely damaged nearby, peppered with shrapnel

As I walked in, the owner and his family wanted to know who the guy was, and what the problem was. When I told them the situation, they basically told me to leave for a for a few minutes while they literally verbally assaulted this taxi driver. They were very shocked and appalled about the price that I had to pay.

20 minutes went by, and in the end the owners of the hotel managed to get it down to 200 American dollars, and even then the father of the family was telling me not to pay him. But being as sympathetic and friendly as I was, and knowing what this poor taxi driver had to go through, I felt compelled to at least give him some amount of money for all his effort and help in this rather dark period of Haifa's history.

I apologized for only giving him that much, and shared my gratitude for all his help in this. I could see he felt uncomfortable being caught in this situation between me, his boss, and the owners of the hotel. I gave him the cash, shook his hand and off he went. I then got a long lecture from the hotel family about me being so gullible in getting screwed over by the local taxi companies.

They even said all that money could have paid for nearly a whole week “if” it was in American dollars... again I rolled my eyes in disbelief. While they were nice, I had to wonder if they was equally upset that the $200 wouldn't be finding its way into their cash register.

By now I was extremely agitated, and looking at the clock; thinking to myself that I really needed to get these photos sent off ASAP. It was now 10:00 p.m. and I sat down editing the photos and down-sizing them to a manageable sending size.

I got a list of international papers and proceeded to send them with a small description of what was happening at that time. Thinking now, that I could finally regain some of the loss on my rather expensive day out.

If things could not get any worse, their wi-fi decided to be an absolute pain. Before, when I used their wireless, I had no problems in checking out the internet. Also, a good friend who is an American journalist had no problem using it to send off his dispatches.

Today seemed to be the only day that it decided to act up and make me work for my money. I tried countless times in sending all my work to the newspapers, but halfway through, the wireless decided to cut off mid-dispatch. I tried for 2 hours straight, to the point that even the owners of the hotel felt sorry for me, and tried their best to resolve the issue.

To no avail, in the end, I just gave up. Disgruntled and extremely annoyed, I decided to call it a day and turned my computer off. All I wanted now, was to find a bar with my journalist comrades inside, and spend all night spitting my venom out about the frustrations of being a freelance photojournalist in a country that seemed to be working against me while only trying to get the truth out.

The final insult to my injury was knowing that by tomorrow, the Israeli camera people would have had their work out in print, and knowing that their coverage would have been nowhere near as graphic or detailed as my work.

What a surprise to realize my future predicament about the papers the next morning. It almost felt like I had been robbed. I only had one more chance to regain the efforts of my work, and decided to book a coach to go to Jerusalem to see if I could sell my work to the top newspapers of Israel in person.

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Dexter Phoenix has worked as a staff and freelance photographer since the mid-1990's and has a wealth of professional experiences on his resume. We welcome his presence to our staff at Salem-News.com.
This native of Great Britian moved to Los Angeles in 2007, where he photographed general news, general interests, sports, did freelance model photo work, and also stock images. In his career, Dexter has had photos published: World wide, in many magazines and newspapers and online. Throughout the course of his career he has experience with technology of all imaginable types. In his career as a photographer Dexter has covered stories in Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, France, Mexico, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Somalia, Tunisia, Algeria, Angola, Iran, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Colombia and The United States. Email inquiries about photo purchase to Dexter at the above address.
You can email Dexter Phoenix, Salem-News.com Photographer/Reporter, at innocent_p0stcard@hotmail.com