Blogs from West Bank, Israel, Middle East - page 8

A bon port Maintenant notre marche prend fin, devant les portes de Jerusalem nous avons la joie des pelerins heureux d'avoir ete conduits jusqu'a destination. Pourtant, l'echec nous a severement menace. Nos passeports, apres 4 voyages inch'Allah, presentent une collection quasi complete de visas des ennemis d'Israel. "Je ne pense pas que vous puissiez franchire cette frontiere" nous lache la douaniere, peu commode. Nos affaires sont confisquees, nos telephones et nos boites mails controles. Alors nous faisons le choix de la plus franche verite, expliquer en detail le contenu et l'esprit de notre projet, raconter les joies de nos rencontres, la teneure de nos conversions, la richesse de nos decouvertes... Petit a petit Adie, notre "geoliere", s'adoucie, la Verite fait son effet. Elle s'interesse de plus en plus a inch'Allah et finit par nous liberer, en ... read more

This is it once again. Spent more than 3 weeks travelling through the middle east and enjoyed it too much. This report is just a summary of my trip. My first night in Jordan I met up with John and Joelle, my lebanese friends who were in Amman at that time. It was really lovely to catch up with them. On saturday i started my travels towards lebanon by service taxi. The syrian controls have been hilarious as usual, met some very kind people on the way, monks and nuns who spontaneously offered me to show me their monastery near Saida and offered me a bed for the night. We spent the evening watching charlies angels, drinking lebanese Almaza beer (delicious i must say)... I didn't imagine these deeply religious people to spend their evenings in ... read more

Passover is already in the air. The supermarkets are displaying cleaning materials (including toothbrushes) and matzah and we recently got a notice at Mandel that following our usual Monday "tea time" in two weeks, we will be packing up the cups. Cafes and restaurants are starting to post notices about whether they will be open or closed during the holiday and people are talking about their vacation plans. I'll describe the whole Passover phenomenon another time; this time I want to tell about my visit to the area around Bethlehem with an organization called Encounter. (www.encounterprograms.org) This was part one of a two part series through Mandel in which we spent two days speaking with Palestinians living in Bethlehem and the West Bank. The second part will be after Passover in which we will visit a ... read more

Occupied Palestine - Nov. 25th - 29th, 2009 This blog entry is to show people some of our experiences while we visited the Holy Land in occupied Palestine. In our 7 months of travel, not a single place has been as disturbing as Jerusalem and the West Bank. 60+ years of Zionist occupation has turned this place into a apartheid state with different laws for Muslims and Jews, with the Muslims always getting the short end of the stick. Every effort is made to make this place look as normal as possible for visiting tourists, but looking past the propaganda, just under the surface, you can see the paranoid heavy security and the tension that exists to this day between the two peoples. Below are a few pictures that reflect the brutal Israeli policy towards the ... read more

We started off Friday by driving down to the Sea of Galilee and along its banks to Tiberius. Tiberius was a Roman town named after the Emperor Tiberius, and it doesn’t actually have much to see. Mostly it was just driving through the town (not walking, because it was raining), though we did get to see an old Roman wall. We stopped for a latte (it seems we are going on a country wide latte tasting), and continued on. Our next stop was the old Jewish/Roman/Crusader town of Zipori. Zipori was originally a Jewish city, and it was occupied by the Romans during the Jewish revolt. The city was saved by the city leaders making a deal with Roman generals not to fight. The town is now just ruins, except for a Crusader lookout tower. Walking ... read more