Graffiti and guard towers

I must admit that by the time I boarded the bus for the short trip from East Jerusalem to Bethlehem I had been influenced by the frequent travel warnings about the West Bank that had been flooding my inbox for the past few weeks.

My recent experiences in Syria taught me that DFAT's travel advisories are often based on limited information from events that occurred more than three weeks earlier and are generally ridiculously over cautious. I know that travel advisories have to warn of worst possible scenarios. But given that the advice for pretty much every country in the world now includes the phrase "possible threat of terrorist attack", DFAT may want to consider changing the name of their website from 'Smart Traveller' to 'Scared Traveller'.

That said when the phrase "possible threat of terrorist attack" is mentioned in reference to the West Bank, you do tend to take it more seriously than when it is mentioned in the travel advice for Tasmania. In the end, I decided that the best course of action was just to go there and suss out the situation for myself. If I got to Bethlehem and felt uncomfortable I could just do what most other travelers do and treat it as a day trip. If I felt OK in Bethlehem I could use it as a base to explore the West Bank for a few days.

As it turned out the word that best describes how I felt in Bethlehem was not scared, but rather welcomed.

The constant low level tension that I had felt in Jerusalem melted away in the face of the warm hospitality constantly on display from the local Palestinians. When I was trying to find the main bus station in Jerusalem, four different individuals pretended they didn't hear me, looked straight through me and did not break stride in their haste to avoid offering assistance. When I was trying to find the Shepherds' Fields just outside of Bethlehem, I was offered assistance from eight different individuals including a Palestinian army officer who took it upon himself to stop several passing cars to ask the drivers for directions!

Due to the fact that most people visit Bethlehem as part of a day trip from Jerusalem, there was plenty of room at the inn when I booked into the Bethlehem Star Hotel. The fact that I only saw one other guest in the five floor hotel during my stay made me wonder how the place stays open - but I suspect they might be fully booked around the end of December each year.

Bethlehem itself is a lovely town perched atop a rocky hill and has a skyline filled, as you would expect, with church spires. What you may not expect is that the most beautiful church in town is not the one that marks the (supposed) location of the birth of Jesus Christ. Indeed to enter the Church of the Nativity you don't amble under gilded arches, but rather duck through a small stone doorway. Once inside, stairs behind the alter lead you underground to the Grotto of the Nativity. The Grotto is a small cramped chapel and if it wasn't for the steady stream of tourists I would have had no idea of the location's significance. I think I probably would have felt more spiritually moved in a local stable. I mean would it kill them to throw some hay on the Grotto floor to get visitors in the mood?

Highlight #2467 for my travels so far was seeing the amazing graffiti on the much hated security wall just outside of Bethlehem. The enormous concrete structure that the Israelis built to separate Israel from the West Bank is completely illegal and is also a blatant land grab as it encroaches significantly on Palestinian lands. On the Israeli side the high grey walls are almost completely bare. But on the Palestinian side the wall has become a gallery for local artists and activists to creatively express their rage. The works vary from detailed stencil graffiti to rough spray painted slogans, but the message conveyed is the same. I love the way that the Palestinians have used an intrusive object, placed on their lands to imprison them, into a billboard to showcase their dissent.

I spent a large portion of my time in the West Bank riding in shared taxis as I visited Ramallah, Nablus and Jericho. As we barreled over rocky hilltops and sped through olive groves I kept my eye open for the Israeli settlements I had heard so much about. Before I arrived in the West Bank, I had wondered how I would be able to tell the difference between a regular Palestinian town and an Israeli settlement. I needn't have worried as the Israeli settlements stuck out like a mariachi band at a meditation retreat.

The Israeli settlements that I saw all looked like stepford housing developments with hundreds of identical townhouses huddled together on a hilltop. The main difference between an Israeli settlement and the standard Meriton horror that you see in most Australian capital cities is that the Israeli settlements also have structures that look like air traffic control towers in the middle of them for security purposes. If you somehow failed to notice the walled compound look, the dramatic improvement in the condition of the roads leading up to the settlements would also be a pretty good giveaway that you were not approaching a regular Palestinian town.

I found Jericho to be far more biblically atmospheric than Bethlehem. The Mount of Temptation, just outside of Jericho, is supposed to mark the location where the Devil appeared to tempt Jesus after he had fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the Judean desert. The view from the mount stretches across the hazy desert to the Dead Sea. It is a stunningly barren landscape. Given that I was close to delirious with heat stroke after spending just 40 minutes on the mount (and that Jesus probably didn't get the cable car to the top like I did) - I can understand why he thought he saw the Devil up there. My temptation did not take the form of Lucifer, but rather an icy pole and a cold bottle of water. And, unlike Jesus, I was too weak to resist.

After nine hectic days, my time in Israel came to an end. I had only one more hurdle to overcome before I could head off on my own pilgrimage to Florida... Israeli airport security.

I won't detail all the components that made up the most frustrating five hours of my life, but I will say this... emptying the contents of a pack that took more than a day to zip up - and then getting uppity when the lowly backpacker takes more than twenty minutes to repack it - is not a way to make friends. The Israeli security staff were bloody lucky that I managed to make my flight. Because if they think they have a problem with the Palestinians - it would have been nothing compared to the rage that I would have rained down on them had their ineptitude kept me from a Harry Potter conference that I had been waiting two years to attend.

Let's go fly a kite!

On my third day in Jerusalem, ever eager to take in more history, I set off to visit two exceptional museums: Yad Vashem & the Israel Museum.

Located amid a forest on the outskirts of the city, Yad Vashem is an incredibly moving memorial to the millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The amazing artifacts, archival footage and audio visual displays combine to overwhelm visitors with evidence that humans are capable of almost unimaginable horrors. The Children's Memorial, with its single candle light refracted through mirrors in a dark room so that its image is projected millions of times to represent the young lives lost in the Holocaust, was particularly moving.

Though I learnt a lot at Yad Vashem, and firmly believe that humanity as a whole would benefit if every person on the planet visited the museum, there was one aspect of the site that unnerved me slightly. The Holocaust museum is arranged in such a way that you weave your way down a literal timeline towards a decked exit that overlooks the forest. The displays at the end of the journey, documenting the zionists struggles to establish a Jewish state at the end of World War II, combined with the architectural design all communicate a very persuasive narrative. Namely that you the visitors, like the Jewish people, have gone  through the darkness to the light. That the only way to begin to redress the terrible, terrible wrongs done to the Jewish people was to give them the state of Israel.

After spending more than three hours vividly reliving the horrors of the Holocaust I'm sure that most visitors to Yad Vashem come to that deck and think "Yeah, you know what - they earnt this land. The least the world could do after all they suffered was to give the 'chosen people' a country of their own". That would have been all well and good had the land been empty. But Palestine was not empty at the end of World War II. As I stood on that deck looking across the tree tops of Israel I couldn't help wondering if the world might take a different view of troubles in the region if the Palestinians had their own memorial museum.

The collections on show at the Israel Museum are so extensive that you could easily spend a week exploring the museum's archeological displays, Jewish cultural displays, art galleries and sculpture gardens. Having said that, there was no way that I was going to fork over the hefty entry fee more than once so I instead tried to take in all that I could in one 4 hour marathon session.

The information and artifacts on offer in the archeological section comprehensively cover the most recent 5000 years of Israel's history, not to mention three floors of the museum, and were a tad overwhelming for someone like me whose formal education in history ended in year eight of high school.

An exhibition in the modern art gallery that I found particularly evocative was called 'Sands of Time'. The artist, Micha Ullman, had covered much of the gallery floor with sand and various sculptures and formations appeared to break through the desert sands to emerge on the surface. After three hours of intense cultural immersion it was a relief to wander through the stunning sculpture gardens on my way to the museum's main attraction.

For a book nerd like myself, a display called the 'Shrine of the Book' is a natural drawcard. The external design of the shrine is architecturally magnificent and appropriately symbolic for the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. Honestly the only way I could have enjoyed the shrine more would be if they added a wing focusing on 'Libraries Through the Ages' with a special section on the history of the sliding ladder.

After spending the day wading through Israel's history it felt good to take in a bit of modern day Israel in front of the Damascus Gate at sunset. As the temperature cools in the early evening, shopkeepers pack up for the day while families and friends take in the fresh air before heading home for dinner. Orthodox jews, catholic nuns and devout muslims mingle as they head out of the old city, carefully negotiating their way through the multiple soccer games that are underway on the stone terraces that stand between the Damascus Gate and greater Jerusalem. Local arabic boys fly kites overhead and the scene would be quite idyllic if the kites weren't in the shape of fighter jets and weren't covered in camouflage print nylon.  Still I can't help thinking that as long as Palestinian teenagers are still able to fly their kites over Jerusalem there is still some hope for peaceful cohabitation in this troubled country.

A strange place for an agnostic

I've written in a previous post about the fact that an Israeli stamp in your passport prevents entry to many middle eastern countries and that this results in the situation where most backpackers visit Israel last on their travels in the region.

In some ways I think it is unfortunate that most backpackers only visit Israel after exploring countries like Syria and Lebanon. I know that I arrived in Israel with more baggage than just my 20 kilo pack. Conversations with Palestinians in Jordan, NGO staffers working in refugee camps in Lebanon and Syrians with family members forced out of the Golan Heights had left me with a decidedly negative view of Israel.

Further reading on the troubled history of the region, though making me more aware of the amazingly complex interplay of factors that lead to the establishment of the Jewish state, did little to diminish the strength of my belief that the establishment of the state of Israel was a monumental mistake.

One statistic that really struck me was that under the partition of (then) Palestine, passed by the general assembly of the United Nations in 1947, 37% of the population (Jewish) were given 55% of the land - of which they only owned 7% at the time! It is also worth noting that the land awarded to the Jews in the partition consisted of the prime agricultural lands, such as the Coastal Plain and Jordan Valley, while the Palestinians had been left with the comparatively bare and hilly parts of (then) Palestine. In light of all this, it is not hard to understand why the Palestinians considered themselves to be particularly hard done by under the plan.

Like many travelers to Israel I began my explorations in the nation's historically rich and politically disputed capital, Jerusalem. The capital has three very distinct parts, each with its own unique character. The modern architecture and state of the art infrastructure make the Israeli New City (West Jerusalem) easily discernible from the stall lined streets of the predominantly Arab enclave of East Jerusalem. The real drawcard of the city though is the ancient walled Old City which contains some of the most important Christian, Jewish & Muslim sites in the world.

Wandering around the Old City in Jerusalem I was struck most by the veritable melting pot of pilgrims, representing many different religions and at least 50 different countries, local Jews and Arabs that I encountered. All of the pilgrims appeared to be excited and moved to be in a place of such profound importance to them. In addition to the locals and pilgrims, the Old City was full of non-religious travelers like myself who appeared to be excited and moved to be in a place that had been of such profound importance to so many people over thousands of years. Add into this mix a significant number of armed teenagers, in the form of the Israeli military, as well as a plethora of tacky tourist shops selling T-shirts saying "Super Jew" you start to get an inkling of the incredible diversity on show in the old city.

On my first day in the Old City I orientated myself by walking along the top of the 16th century stone ramparts from the Jaffa Gate right around to the Lion's gate. The walk really helped me in identifying the visual differences between the Old City's Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters. Catching glimpses of the glittering gold Dome of the Rock between rooftop gardens, church spires and satellite dishes certainly helped to build my anticipation for visiting the sacred site.

Metal detectors and bag searches are a sad necessity on the approaches to both the Western (Wailing) Wall and the Temple Mount. The last remanent of Judaism's holiest shrine, the Second Temple, the Western Wall was built 2000 years ago as a retaining wall to support the Temple Mount. The area in front of the wall now forms an open air synagogue and is split into separate sections for men and women.

On the day I visited there wasn't any wailing, pilgrims were instead engaging in intense prayer with their hands reaching out to touch the sacred wall. Some people wrote their prayers on tiny scraps of paper and tried to squeeze their missives into cracks in the wall, an act that is supposed to increase the likelihood of prayers being heard. Given that pilgrims have been partaking in this practice for at least the last 40 years, it shouldn't come as a great surprise that those who were successful in wedging their prayers into the wall had to stand on plastic chairs to achieve the feat. It seems that God favours persistence.

As I wandered amongst the cyprus trees in the stone plaza of the Temple Mount I kept oscillating between two opposing thoughts. On the one hand it was lovely to see people of all different faiths rejoicing at walking around the location that Muslims believe is where Mohammed ascended to heaven and that Jews believe is where the foundation stone of the world is located. On the other hand it is staggering to think of how many lives across millennia have been lost in conflict over a, admittedly deeply historic, small piece of land. It is difficult to imagine that God or Allah would be happy with how history has played out in the region.