The more I see of Israel the more I start to appreciate the diversity. Religious diversity: there of course jews, a large number wearing a small round hat (the kippa); there are conservative jews, dressed in black with an untidy beard. They pray standing up, small prayer book in the hand and while praying they bob back and forth all the time. Muslim Arabs are also to be found in many of the corners, and thus of course also mosques. There are also Christian Arabs, German Christian settlers (which are truly an category by themselves), Druze; a religion which keeps very much to itself, some major religious sites for the Bahai religion, and some Armenian Christians.
As far as nature is considered there are the Golan Heights – the one place in Israel where you can ski. There’s the Death Sea, the desert, the lake of Galilea, and probably other places of interest which I missed up to now. There are biblical places, Jerusalem, the Jordan river (I spent one morning watching the white-robed pilgrims getting baptised by their holy man. It doesn’t look so comfortable, but the official certificate of being baptised in the same place as where Jesus got baptised seems to make up for a lot.)
There are Palestinian territories here and there – the West-Bank is not, like I used to think, one big piece of Palestinian controlled territorry, but consists of about a dozen small chunks of complete Palestinian controlled territories. Of course, as soon as I thought about going to Israel, I knew already that I’d be going to Palestine. From several sources I get the impression that in Palestine the city of Jeriho in the West-Bank is a good place to visit. So one day I go to the road and hitchhike in the direction of Jeriho. The young guy who drops me of just outside the Palestinian territory asks me: “Do you want my telephone number, in case you need any help at all?” He looks a little bit worried, so I answer: “Well, I can give you a phonecall if I get out of Palestine to let you know that I’m allright.” He takes a long look at me, then smiles and says: “No, not necesarry, you’ve got the look of somebody who can take care of himself.”