Lets go to Israel!

Israel, small country with high media coverage. Country some people dream about. Some ones hate it. The others fighting for and the rest is afraid of. Me and two friends of mine decided to make a short trip to israel and try to visit all places we have heard about from news and bible. So this is photo report of our israel trip because my camera made me a company of course! So pictures from Israel!

Landing Tel-Aviv straight to Hebron

Its 18.1.2007 arround 5:00 am. We are getting to friends of mine flat. Just quickly throw away our luggage and then directly to Central Bus station.

For everyone who is first time in Israel. Just visit of central bus station is pretty shocking. First of all they the security check is the same like on airport (you get use to very fast because they check you in the same way even at the entrance of every restaurant or club). Secondly young soldiers are everywhere. The israel is the only country which has military duty for man and woman as well. Boys has to serve 3 years, girls just 2. So you see them all around and to be honest they do not lookl frustrated at all. :)

Our destination is Hebron located on west bank (under palestinian authority control) and the way will not be easy because there are no any lines there. It is pretty dangerous place and most of isrealis have never been there during their whole life. We are getting in armoured bus (bullet proof windows etc.) direction the nearest settlement: Qiryat Arba. Btw. We are the only non-uniformed passengers.

There are no real bus stops in settlements so sometimes its pretty confusing to get off at the righ place. Anyway we decided to get out because friend of mine though it is the place. So no we are in the middle of nowhere trying to find a place to hitchhike to Hebron. After one hour we find out we are completly wrong. Qiryat Arba is next settlement around 4 kilometers away and tt is danger to go there by foot so we have to hitchhike to Qiryat Arba first and then to Hebron.

After two hours we are in Hebron. Hebron is one of the most ancient cities in the Middle East. And one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world as well. Population around 150000 palestinians and 500 jews (which are guarded by 5000 israel soldiers). Its is holy city because allmost all patriarchs are buried here (sara, isaac, rebekah, rachel), second holiest city for jews called the city "the City of the Patriarchs". We are staying right in front of the Cave of the Patriarchs. Synague, thomb and mosque at once. Today some muslim festival take place there so there are a lot of policemans and atmosphere is pretty hot.

Very soon we are getting to know some settlers. They are really interested in what we are doing there because not very much visitors comming here in general. Look at picture bellow even ambulance has to be armoured here!

These guys are very nice to use and they offer to give us a tour guide. So we are walking around idf checkpoints. On every second corner there is a story who died here and when. Wanna bit of frustration?

We did not want to go too far from last checkpoint because it was quite obvious that there are some problems all around (shooting can be heard clearly).

When we get back to the cave it was around 6pm. and no car have been parking there anymore. So question was how to get back to Qiryat Arba. After 30 minutes some one give as a lift to the nearest bus station and on the we found out why everybody told us that comming back on foot to Quiryat Arba is almost suicide. A lot of strange people were rubberneck on the streets and so on. 10:00pm we are safe home in Tel Aviv Jaffo which is very nice by night:

Jerusalem, capital of all

10:00 am we are on the way to Jerusalem. No armoured bus anymore. Around noon time we get to the ancient city and we were walking around famous sights and our favoured places and restaurants. Lunch we spent in Praha restaurant eating fake hungarian goulash with dumplings (we got ordinary goulash with potatos something instead however good taste after days of eating just falafel :) ). Here are some pictures next day at night in Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Kotel (western wall of second temple).

Now we are on the way to Afula to get to kibbutz Ein Harod to visit my realtives. Kibutzs are collective community villages (cities). Its kind of ideology way of living: everybody share everything and no one owns anything. People working for kibbutz and gets everything they need (like house, food, goods). Most of kibbutzs are willage type of setlements around some factory or farm which giving people jobs. They provide corporate dinning hall, swiming pool or car renting (free for members). Around 8% of all israelis living in Kibbutz. Getting less now days because for young people this way of living is not cool anymore. We were quite surprised by visiting nice club near by Ein Harod. On our way back we drive golf car (pretty drunk) which was very funny. :)

Golan Heights

Next day we were going to Golan Heights. Israel captured land during Six Day War in 1967 and Yom Kippur War in 1973. Nice piece of nature full of mines and other war artefacts.

Last picture is from Syrian border with anti-tank barrier. On our way back we went to Kineret lake and Nazareh. Then by bus back to Tel-Aviv.

Gaza, Ber-sheba, Massada, Dead See and back

Gaza strip is very small area with around 1.4 mil residents, mostly Palestinians. Probably most dangerous place in middle east. To be honest I do not know why we wanted to go there. Maybe just kind of adrenalin. Anyway we were able to get just to the border line. No way to get in. Gaza is surrounded by defence wall (security fence), 6 m high concrete wall. It takes exatly 1.5 minutes israeli army HMMWV (idf) to capture you when are waling near by this wall. They were quite angry to us however at the end they were happy to see just stupid tourist and not something else.

Our next steps goes to the judea desert to visit massada and dead sea. Massada is really unique fortrest in the world. It was build on the top of flat mountain and it had everything you need to survive: rainy watter tank, fields. No wonder Romans spent few years at mountin foot and even after that they won just because all of defenders self-murdered.

And this is the end of our journey... just map of travel.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Pictures from. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.