MY nine-year-old daughter gave me a hard, incredulous stare. Mad Dad was going on holiday — to a place that at the time of booking was an official war zone!


She turned on the TV in a huff. On the screen were pictures of rockets hitting Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee.

“I’m going there too,” I said cheerfully.

Israel has lived with, and through, conflict over thousands of years. It has helped shape it and, ironically, make it the fascinating destination it is today.

At just some 14,000 square miles the Holy Land is small in size but big in its place in history.

It is the land of the three great monotheistic faiths — Judaism, Islam and Christianity — and the bridge between three continents. No wonder it has been fought over so much.

Jerusalem alone has been besieged more than 50 times, conquered 36 times and destroyed 10 times. Culture after culture, war after war, have left an indelible mark on it. 

We entered Israel only a few weeks after the latest violent clash — this time between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. So it was somewhat of a surprise to find a pervading peace almost everywhere we went. In fact the lack of tourists exposed and enhanced the spirituality of the holy sites even more. It says something of the area’s ability to return to ‘normality’ quickly that we — a group of 26 Christian pilgrims from the Outer Hebrides — should find ourselves being driven in a sightseeing coach through the border town of Qiryat Shemona where multiple barrages of Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon had been pounding the local population only a few weeks earlier. The only sign that any conflict had taken place was a ruined house — hit by a Katyusha missile — now clasped in scaffolding and being repaired by a small army of builders.

Ironically a children’s playground contained three Syrian tanks — painted cheerfully in yellow, pink and blue — captured during the 1967 six-day war! Tourists will always have to live with the troubles. Tourism was just getting back on its feet following the Second Intifada — the Palestinian campaign directed at ending the Israeli military occupation — that had begun in September 2000, when along came the latest clashes with Hezbollah. Our guide Samer had given up a good job with the Red Cross to strike out into the tourist business. Of 15 trips he had had to cancel all but two due to the war. Other guides told similar stories. 

Israel depends heavily on tourism and it has so much to give visitors. Few places can offer the historical and spiritual sights, the melting pot of cultures and faiths, such diverse scenery or a spectacular fusion of Middle Eastern and European cuisine.

A walk along Jerusalem’s ancient tunnel-like Via Dolorosa (The Way of Sorrows) — the route Jesus took to Calvary — has you shoulder to shoulder with people of other religions as you stop at each of the 14 Stations of the Cross, dodging shouting shop owners selling everything from carpets to pomegranate juice, passing through an Ethiopian monastery, before ending up at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is shared by the Armenian, Coptic, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. That is Jerusalem in a melting pot microcosm. The great Basilica encompasses all that remains of the traditional rock of Calvary and the site of Jesus’s tomb. But beware — the area, like many of the Holy Land sites, is plagued by pestering bead sellers. 

Experts are divided over where Jesus was actually crucified and laid to rest. The more convincing site, in my view, is near the Damascus Gate where the Garden Tomb is found and the nearby rock face, which General Charles Gordon of Khartoum was sure was Golgotha. The skull-like rock now has mosques and a bus stop around it with an Islamic cemetery on top, but the Garden Tomb is a place of absolute tranquillity and spirituality. 

We were even given a tour by a Scot who lives in Jerusalem. The best place to view the landmarks of the religious capital to half the human race is undoubtedly from the Mount of Olives. There, perched above the thousands of Jewish graves waiting for the Messiah and the day of Judgement — and where Jesus ascended to Heaven — you can see the city is squeezed like a child’s Lego box inside its 16th century walls. The stunning Dome of the Rock and El Aksa Mosques dominate the foreground, while nearby is The Wailing Wall, the holiest shrine in the Jewish world.

Paper skullcaps are dispensed to bareheaded tourists as you approach the last relic of the last Temple — the remaining portion of the retaining wall Herod built before the Romans destroyed the rest in 70 AD. Jerusalem has so much to offer — from the fabulous Israel Museum, where the Dead Sea Scrolls can be seen, to the haunting and overwhelmingly moving Yad Vashem memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.

Outside the historic city are easy day trips to the Dead Sea where you can float in the lowest place on earth  — watch out for the sharp and caustic salt crystals — and the nearby spectacular table top mountain fortress of Masada, where in AD 73 nearly 1000 men, women and children chose to die by their own swords rather than surrender to the Romans. Also within easy reach are Jericho, Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, and Bethlehem, to name but a few places of interest. 

Bethlehem involves going through the infamous Israeli-built wall into the occupied West Bank. It is a different world. Poor and untidy, Bethlehem is not the little town of Christmas carols. Bead sellers won’t take no for an answer and will pester women, in particular, with every trick and compliment in the book.

Nazareth, now a bustling city of around 100,000 people, is also far removed from the village of a few hundred people in Jesus’s time, and is also somewhat of a disappointment, save for the Basilica of the Annunciation. Fortunately at the Jeel al-amal Boys’ School in Bethany — run by a remarkable Christian Palestinian — we witnessed what non-sectarian love can do.

The sites and spirituality of Galilee, the sounds and smells of Jerusalem, plus the magnificent churches of Antonio Barluzzi and the beauty of Acre and Caesarea are among a host of holiday highlights. Food is mainly Middle Eastern with hummus, beetroot and fennel on nearly every menu. Do try the wonderful grilled St Peter’s Fish, which you will find nearly everywhere. Meals and gifts are cheap — but don’t take Scottish notes of any denomination. Only English will do but U.S. dollars and the local shekel are more favoured. 

Tourists may naturally be wary of entering a war zone but it is worth it. You would be mad to miss it.

Mike travelled with McCabe Travel Ltd. Call 020 8675 6828 or www.mccabe-travel.co.uk 
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