From Athens to Singapore Part 4 of 12: Middle East: Israel

Author: scott, May 22nd, 2010

Visit the Purple Roofs Israel page

Purple Roofs is happy to welcome back an old friend. Last time, Mike regaled us with tales of his trip through South America. This time, he brings us details from his two month trip from Greece to Singapore. Enjoy!

Entering Israel is the first place on this trip that I have had to use/carry my passport and show it constantly. All previous national security checkpoints were pretty much unmanned and ignored.

Israel has lots of security and many checkpoints, but once through them all looks very peaceful. Interesting though in that they give you a separate piece of paper or “landing card” on which they place their entering and exiting passport stamps. They do not stamp inside the passport itself as it was explained if an Arab country sees an Israeli stamp in your passport then they will not let you enter into their country.

This again reminded me of when I went on the humanitarian mission to Cuba with an authorization piece of paper from the US State Department which was stamped by Cuba, not my passport itself.

Haifa, Israel is a modern city even with a building that is a smaller copy of the sail-like looking hotel in Dubai, but here the building is not a hotel, it houses government offices. People dressed very trendy and the town looked pretty clean, except for some of the very old parts. Haifa has the stunningly landscaped Bahai Gardens terraced from the crest of Mount Carmel down to the sea and the Shrine which is the center of the Bahai religion.

There is excellent public transportation and the Haifa main train station had a constant flow of trains entering and leaving. Some but not all signs were in English, but most people also speak English. The motor traffic was very considerate, always coming to a stop if you looked like you were about to step off of the curb to cross the street.

In front of the Haifa City Hall was a plaque that identified San Francisco as one of its sister/twin cities. It is a center of technical education and I was told that IBM has a major research center located here. We spent three days in Israel so there was time to see plenty of sites, especially with the 11-hour long site seeing days.

This is the point from which we took a bus trip to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee. Nazareth, where Jesus grew up was then a tiny village, but today is a busy and rather dirty city that evokes little to nothing of bible liturgy other than an occasional donkey clogging traffic.

The Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation (new dating from 1969) is the largest church in the Middle East and is built over/encompasses a small grotto believed to be the cave where the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary “announcing” that she would bear Jesus. The nearby Greek Orthodox church of St. Gabriel (built 1750) is built over Nazareth’s only natural spring, called Mary’s Well where it is believed she drew her daily water needs.

Israel since its founding in 1948 is a fairly small country bordered by Arab countries. For its small size it attracts a lot of international attention, not always good. It has endured six wars in the last 60 years and continued periodic violence.

From Haifa we could see north to the mountains which were the border with Lebanon. At the same time we could see east to the greener Golan Heights and the mountain border with Syria.

The next day we were docked further down the Mediterranean Sea coast south of Tel Aviv in Ashdod, very close to the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip was an off-limits no-go area because it is prone to shelling and mortar attacks. The commercial port town of Ashdod where we docked was our jumping off point for exploring Jerusalem and then into the Palestinian controlled area of Bethlehem.

Jerusalem has a subway currently under construction and very nice roads but totally inadequate for the large number of vehicles. Add to that the hundreds of huge tour busses and traffic became a grid lock. I was amazed at the large number of tourists of all faiths visiting Jerusalem.

From here you can see out into the Judean Desert Mountains and it is just a short drive to the Dead Sea (lowest point on earth) which is also the border with Jordan. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city with a population of about 800,000 and a land mass of 49 square miles, both those figures being almost identical to San Francisco.

The city of Jerusalem has a history going back 7,000 years, one of the oldest cities in the world. It is the holiest city of Judaism, at the same time it contains many significant ancient Christian holy sites, and is the third holiest city in Islam. The various faiths live in relative peace and harmony here in very close quarters with churches and shrines of each faith so close together they sometimes touch each other.

I spent 11-hour days touring and some of the sites I visited were: Temple Mount and golden Dome of the Rock (Muslim site where Muhammad ascended to receive the teachings of Islam from God); the Western Wailing Wall (Jewish remnant of temple destroyed by Romans – today many bar mitzvahs take place and 24 hours a day you can write prayers on a slip of paper and push it into cracks of the wall while praying); and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (built over the sites where Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead including the stone hole in which it is said Christ’s cross was placed when he was crucified, and the stone slab on which Jesus’ body was placed after He was taken down from the cross).

I walked through the old walled city of Jerusalem four quarters (Armenian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim), up to the Mount of Olives (for a city view) and then down to the Garden of Gethsemane. This garden of Gethsemane today contains 2,000 year old olive trees and is where, after the Last Supper, Jesus walked to pray and was betrayed and arrested. In this Garden is built the Church of All Nations which encompasses in front of the main altar the so-called Rock of Agony where Jesus endured his beatings.

In Bethlehem I visited the Church of the Nativity which is built over and encompasses the place/grotto where Jesus was born and where the holy family lived. A mass was being conducted in the basement of the church in a room called St. Joseph’s chapel. Outside is Manger Square a central plaza and adjoining is the Church of St. Catherine the newer Catholic Church that is being prepared for the Christmas Eve Mass and from which it is telecast around the world each year. There was a time when 80 percent of the population was Christian; today 80% are Islamic, with 20% Christian and others.

There was no security going from Jerusalem into the Palestinian controlled area but when leaving Bethlehem there was long delay while Israel checked each passport.

Actually it was more of a delay and “show” of Israeli security than any real check as only the front of the passport was looked at and some people were still trying to get their passport out of their pockets when the one young female security armed guard passed them on by, so not a very good check. Basically she walked in the front door of the bus with the gun over her shoulder and quickly down the aisle and out the back door of the bus.

Many people thought she was still on the bus when we started moving again but she was long gone. At this point there was a view of the tall barbed wire topped wall separating Israel part of the city from Palestinian controlled West Bank. We drove in the dark back to Ashdod to board the ship for a shower, dinner and good night’s sleep…tomorrow Egypt.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags: gay travel, haifa, Israel, jerusalem, middle east, palestine, Uncategorized