We took extended tours in Israel the last two days. Much of the 12+ hours per day were spent driving through the countryside, including two trips into the west bank territories.
My biggest overall impressions are the variety of geography and the harsh west bank dividing line.
Note: My memory is poor and I have not had time to fact-check some things in this post, having entered them from memory of our guide's descriptions.
DAY ONE-HAIFA TO MASSADA
There is much more farmland in this part of Israel than I thought there would be. Large areas east if Haifa are flat, fertile and sufficiently watered to grow crops of grain, hay, vegetables and similar crops, plus many fish farms. As we turned south near the Jordanian border, the crops turned to date palm groves, and further east in the Jordan river valley were large covered gardens. When we reached the dead sea heading south farming played out except for a few smaller gardens and groves. We crossed into west bank territories through checkpoints, and reached the Masada, a large fort constructed in the first century bce on an isolated island-like plateau rising 1500+ feet from the dead sea, whose surface is itself around 1400 feet below global average sea level, making the fort only 100-200 feet above sea level.
The trip of 900 vertical feet to the fort on top was accomplished via cable car, but the "snake path" foot trail was also in use by tourists with the time, energy and heat tolerance to undertake it. The climb appears to be about the difficulty of the Cathedral ledge road in NH, but far more scenic.
The fort area's most notable resident was king Herod, as documented by Josephus Flavius in the first century, ce. He built a palace that is mostly in ruins now, and used it as a seasonal retreat. Later in the first century ce (66) a group of jews rebelling against Roman rule took over the fort until the Romans finally won it back via a siege, which ended with the mass suicide of the 900 or so Jews left there, vowing not to become Roman slaves.
That's a thumbnail. Go Google it for more info. Like most world heritage sites, it is crowded and with large tours you miss much. But a fascinating visit anyway.
After the fort we had lunch at a hotel on the dead sea, and donned our swim ware to experience floating in water saturated (33%) with salts, whose density (1.24 g/cm3 versus 1.03 for normal sea water) made floating easy and weird at the same time. Floating upright, people appeared the be standing on the bottom so much of their bodies were above water level.
The rest of the day was spent returning to the Haifa port.
DAY TWO-JERUSALEM-WEST BANK
Yesterday we drove a coastal route from Haifa south, then inland on the famed route 443 to Jerusalem, where we mainly toured the old city on foot, then stopped at some overviews.
Driving inland east towards Jerusalem on RT443 we reached a west bank checkpoint, mainly checking vehicles on their way out of the west bank into Israel to screen for Palestinians and their weaponry, as I understand it anyway. From the check point on the road was lined with walls topped with razor wire and had periodic guard towers. Welcome to the division between Israel and Palestine, which goes back to before Israel was a state, and was only annexed from Jordan after a short war in 1967. At some point the wall stopped, since we didn't see it after entering Jerusalem.
Since Palestinians can't freely use the road, their economy is stunted and unemployment is high (20%) according to some people. But in some sense the presence of radical Islamic people in the west bank makes an open access road impossible politically and from a security perspective. It seems like this cycle can only be broken when Palestinians crack down on the behavior of these people with emphasis, with a zero tolerance policy and statements to match.
I think this will be difficult given human nature and the chronic human mental defect that produces organized religion which is fertile ground for radicalism to take root, be nurtured, and express itself in acts that ironically are both supported and rejected at the same time by their cherry-picked literature.
We visited many of the old city religious tourist spots like the the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, or the Church of the Resurrection, which was constructed under direction from Rome at the time when they adopted Christianity. They claimed that the church housed the rock where the cross Jesus was crucified stood (but when I looked there seemed to be no hole where such a cross could be placed), the flat stone where his body was prepared for burial, and a small chapel representing his tomb. Devotees were paying homage to all these spots during our visit, by singing, kissing and praying.
After leaving the church, we walked a path Jesus was said to have walked, and stopped along the way at spots called "stations of the cross", where is was said Jesus touched the wall when carrying the cross, and where Simon of Cyrene took up the burden when Jesus could no longer carry it.
We wound up at the western wall of the temple mount, the remaining structure from the second destruction around 66 ce. This is the wall you definitely want to be seen and photographed kissing and praying to if you have political ambitions.
