There may have been problems, but that didn't stop us from seeing the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City. Or
from floating on the Dead Sea, or walking on the ramparts of Masada, or wandering through the Arab bazaars. We traced the shore of the Sea of Galilee and gazed from on high at the Mediterranean port of Haifa. We loitered at sidewalk cafes on Ben Jehuda Street in Jerusalem and found time for a few hours of basking on the shores of the Mediterranean in Tel Aviv. We met Israelis in their homes and farms and offices. We were overwhelmed at Yad Vashem, the museum of the Holocaust. We pondered our roots at the Diaspora Museum, and were awed by the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum. We saw splendid fruits, vegetables and flowers growing in sand, and met the people who are making the desert bloom.
But you can read all about that in travel folders. What is it like to be a tourist in Israel during these unsettled times?
By and large, I felt no less at ease than I have in other foreign lands - or for that matter, in some American cities. Just as there are some areas at home from which I try to keep my distance, discretion was the better part of valor in Israel, too.
Tourists are very carefully steered away from some spots they might want to visit, such as Bethlehem and Hebron, because of the volatile conditions in those predominantly Arab towns. The areas we did drive through didn't seem particularly threatening, except maybe Jericho, where an alarming number of idle men were lounging about. It may have been my imagination, but they seemed to be glowering at our bus as it passed.
