The Western Wall, Friday, May 20, Jerusalem, 2016

Israel and Palestine: Folio #3, 2016

Entrance to the old city, Jerusalem

The Wailing Wall

Bethlehem, the site of his birth.

Banksy at the wall, Bethlehem

Israel and Palestine: Folio #2, May, 2016

Franciscan mother-of-pearl works, Jerusalem

Druse elders

Synagogue

Bethlehem, site of Jesus' birth.

Banksy, Bethlehem

Elad, our guide for the trip. He comes from a Morroccan Jewish background, served in Lebananon as a tank commander and now dedicated to bringing all sides together in dialogue.

Golan Heights with a priest from Sri Lanka

Church of the Nativity on the sea of Gallilee

The Port Inn, Haifa

Checkpoint for entering Israel from Ramallah

Israel and Palestine: Folio #1, May, 2016

Shabbatt at the Western Wall Plaza, Jerusalem, Friday, May 20, 2016

Shabbatt at the Western Wall Plaza, Jerusalem, Friday, May 20, 2016

Church of the Nativity, Nazareth

Massada, with the Dead Sea in the background

Model of previous civilizations at Massada

Baptism at the Jordan river, with Jordan visible on the other side. However, the river is incredibly polluted and Israel's Ministry of Health has stated that "Christian pilgrims should be banned from entering the river Jordan at the site where Jesus is believed to have been baptised because of dangerous levels of pollutants..." Guardian, July 26, 2010

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Still Life, Jerusalem

Eritrean men at the Church of the Nativity, Nazareth

Jerusalem

Shop interior, Jerusalem

Artist at his opening Tiberias

A group of settlers provocatively walk in the grounds of the Al-Aqsa Mosque followed by compound police and Israeli police. This is part of their larger plan of building the Third Temple on the mosque's ground. Lives has been lost within this struggle, in fact our driver, Moustafa, had been shot three times in an incident that took place in October, 1990, known as Temple Mount Riots, or the Al Aqsa Massacre, in which the Arab community responded to the Temple Mount Faithful's attempts to lay a cornerstone at the site as part of their expressed desire to build the Third Temple on the grounds.

Jerusalem

The Garden Tomb is a rock-cut tomb in Jerusalem which was unearthed in 1867 and has subsequently been considered by some Christians to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus. The Garden Tomb is adjacent to a rocky escarpment which since the mid-nineteenth century has been proposed by some scholars to be Golgotha (it is also known as Skull Jill, Gordon's Calvary, and Conder's Calvary.  [wikipedia]

We come and we go....[for Mike]

Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum), Jerusalem. This is the view that greets you when you finish walking through the museum. To understand something about Israel a visit to this musuem is indispensable.

Entrance to a church property somewhere near Bethlehem.

Friday market, Tel Aviv