Israel trip, Part 1

Back in May I spent 10 days in Palestine/Israel with the Amos Trust, during which my eyes were opened to what is going on over there. I thought I had a reasonable grasp before I went, but I discovered that I didn't know the half of it.... I have delayed publishing this as I wanted to be certain that I would not get anyone into trouble...

This is 'Part 1'  as the title says. If you are interested  there will be several further parts over the next few days....

Day 1 - Monday

It started well. A pleasant flight - I had a window seat - and a very smooth landing at Ben Gurion airport. While waiting to get off the plane it started raining, which was a bit of a surprise as the forecast was for 0% possibility of precipitation for at least the first 5 days. Quite a heavy, but short-lived, shower.

After an unscheduled delay of about 1 1/2 hrs at the airport while our group leader, Nive, was interrogated, we made our way to the bus which was to take us into Jerusalem for the first night and set off leaving one of the group behind... - Nive paid for her taxi. 

More rain during the drive to the hotel. 

In a couple of places we passed rows of 'shells' of vehicles painted grey (not rusting, or distorted, but only shells) some at the side of the road and some in the central reservation. Down some very narrow roads (for a coach) to our hotel – our first introduction to the quality of the driver Sami.

After supper went for a walk into the Old City - Herod's Gate, Via Dolorosa and the West Wall - still packed at 10.

Reflection – security – they were paranoid because the group includes a lot of clergy (all in their dog-collars...), but Nive isn’t a minister; he has been back & forth several times, we will be having several tourist guides for the trip, not just one; & we will be staying in hotels outside the main tourist towns… - but 1 ½ hrs seems excessive. At least he WAS released – someone he knows was refused entry recently... This would have been bad publicity though.  :-)

Day 2 - Tuesday

Left the hotel at 8.30 with some very threatening clouds around, and went to the offices of Sabeel - a Palestinian Christian Ecumenical Peace Community trying to work out where they are theologically in the Bible - where do Christians fit in as Palestinians in the state of Israel? A very informative and moving talk from a lady of 77 called Cedar who was 12 and living in Haifa when the 'Catastrophe', or Al Nakba, (the setting up of the state of Israel) happened*... She had been brought up with the teaching that the bible is inerrant, that the good are rewarded and the bad punished, that the Holy Land was given to the Jews by God etc. They were quite happy for Jews to come (though some Palestinians were against the influx saying they would take over - which indeed they did!), but expected to still play a significant part in the new state. They also expected to return to their properties within a few months at most. Very few have done, & even fewer more will do so in the foreseeable future...

(*this should perhaps read ‘began’ rather than ‘happened’ – see near the end of day 3 in 'part 2')

From there we went to the Mount of Olives, to the 'Christus Pleuvit' church, on the spot where he is supposed to have wept over Jerusalem, and from which we had a good view of most of Jerusalem and a patchy view of the Garden of Gethsemane, and some wonderful gilded onion-domes on the Russian Orthodox church. 

I should say 'supposed' before all references to biblical locations (except the temple itself), as no-one can be totally sure about any of them in reality, but for the sake of simplicity assume it from now on. 

Our Palestinian tour guide, Rami, pointed out Christ's route from the Garden to the House of Caiaphas, the Antonine Tower (Pilate's Praetorium), the Citadel (where Herod was), back to the Antonine tower, and then to Golgotha where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands. He also pointed out the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosques (side by side). Then down to the Garden of Gethsemane - with some wonderfully ornate work on the portico.  Back onto the bus for a drive into the Old Town past some (very) wide steps leading up to the walls of the temple - no gate there now, but there was in Jesus' time and this is the way he would have entered Jerusalem on the journey from Galilee since you had to have a certificate to say you were ritually clean to enter the Temple and the baths for that were in the valley below. Hence they are known as the Jesus steps. Into the Western Wall precinct (which Rami insisted on calling the Wailing Wall, probably as an act of resistance to Jewish rule), stopping to view the excavations of the south part of the temple and then the Western Wall itself (a second time in my case). As he pointed out, this was only ever a retaining wall to make sure the weight of the temple would not cause a land-slip - it was never part of the temple itself. Herod's temple was twice the size of Solomon's so it came very close to the edge of the mound. The stones of the lower half of the wall each have a recessed border, and these are the ones from Herod's time; the rest getting steadily smaller as the wall gets higher.

From there we retraced my walk of last night to the start of the Via Dolorosa, to the courtyard of Pilate’s Praetorium. Here he was condemned and flogged - 39 lashes (being 40, minus 1 for leniency!) - apparently 13 on one side, 13 on the other, and 13 on the back. Rami also said that the Romans are thought to have used fish-hooks on the ends of the lashes so after 13 strokes on the back there would be little or no skin left... From there we followed the Via Dolorosa for a few stations, had a break for lunch then continued along it through Arab souqs (very frustrating, not being allowed any time so stop & wander....) and into the Jewish Quarter (a VERY noticeable change in building and atmosphere - almost like a knife-cut) till we eventually got to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Crusader church built over Golgotha and the site of the tomb. Queues of over an hour to descend to the 'tomb' itself, and so much bling around it was unbelievable. There is a bit upstairs where he is supposed to have been crucified, a bit at the back where he is supposed to have been washed and a bit downstairs in a crypt where St Helen was supposed to have found the 'True Cross', as well as a separate wing with Armenian altars and an entire village on the roof! Six different 'Christian' denominations fought for control of this building so in the middle ages a 'status quo' was agreed as to who had what rights/responsibilities and in some instances for what times of day they had them, and a Muslim family was given the keys. This agreement is still in force with the same family holding the keys, &every so often there is a flare-up when someone does something which is the right/responsibility of one of the other sects and sometimes it comes to fisticuffs. All very silly!

Then we went to Caiaphas' house to see where Jesus spent his last night - though since tombs have been discovered underneath it and Jews were not allowed to build over tombs as they would be ceremonially unclean it seems unlikely to be the true site of the house of a High Priest... Our final point of call was a church on the 'site of Peter's triple denial', a few yards from the house.

We then go on the bus again for the drive to Bethlehem, passing through a check-point (freely - they only check people going INTO Jerusalem at this one, not people leaving) into the Occupied Territory (Area C – see on for an explanation of the zones) then passed HUGE red signs saying that 'this road goes into Palestinian Territory and it is illegal for any Israeli to pass into Area A as they will be risking their lives' (paraphrasing). This is an Israeli law not a Palestinian one. And so to Beit Sahur on the edge of the City of Bethlehem to our hotel for the next 5 days - The Ararat, completed about 6 months ago on the side of a very steep hill - arriving at about 5.30 having been on our feet almost all day... We are now in the heart of Palestine.

Reflection: It is far more compact than I realised, but incredibly hilly, the crosses were not high, but left the face of the victim just about at eye level so they could be spat at and reviled by passers-by, the Palestine-Jew situation now is closely analogous to the Jew/Roman situation of Jesus' time - to name but a few...

Zones of control in the Occupied Territories (or as the Jews call them, the ‘Disputed Territories), introduced following the Oslo Accord:

Zone A: complete Palestinian control – though intermittently violated by the Israeli military

Zone B: Palestinian civil control (supposedly including planning consent) but Israeli security control

Zone C complete Israeli control

In zones B & C the Israeli military can effectively veto all planning applications by claiming that there is a ‘security reason’ (which does not have to be disclosed) to block any proposed building. Very very few Palestinian planning applications that have been put before the Israeli authorities have yet been granted – thousands are still awaiting a hearing after many years pending. This means that they have to build without consent and then have a ‘demolition order’ put on their house/house extension. This may or may not be executed for many of years (with only about 72 hrs notice of when it is to be enforced by the military) but for every year that it is not enforced there is a hefty fine for having failed to demolish it, and when the Israeli’s do the demolition there is a further hefty bill for their services! Of course if the Palestinian decides to do the demolition themselves, they do not have to pay the fines/bills…