Israel, Day 3: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Har Gillo (Israeli 'Settlement')

Today was a very interesting day. We spent most of our day in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

We arrived at the border checkpoint--run by Israelis to keep Israelis out, not to keep Palestinians out-- and the first thing we saw was this sign:

This meant that our main tour guide, Amir, couldn't go with us because he has an Israeli passport; and although Nurith (my professor) was a citizen of Israel, she is now an American citizen with an American passport. If the guards at the gate chose to question her, they could have but because she didn't say anything and they didn't hear her accent, she was able to pass through the checkpoint just fine.

When we arrived in Bethlehem, we met our tour guide from Palestine where she took us to the Church of the Holy Nativity, one of the most well known and holy sites for Christians. We arrived in the Nativity plaza (if anyone has ever seen the Christmas programs from Bethlehem on TV or the internet, this is the place you've seen on TV). My professor told us that the last time she was there, there was a huge Hamas protest in the Nativity plaza right after they were there (there were no such protests while we were there--thankfully we have had a quite uneventful trip so far).

This door is incredibly small. Roughly 3 feet 9 inches. There used to be a door  there where the archway was (you might be able to see it filled in with stone).

This door replaced the old archway which allowed animals to enter the church, but under the rule of the British, the door was changed when the British wanted to disallow animals from entering the church. When you enter the church, you can see the ancient Byzantine floors that were found by the British under their rule, they did research on the age and ancient use tiles and mosaic in the building. There are now pieces of the mosaic floor that can be seen when opening the wooden hatches on the floor.

The church of the nativity is also built over what is believed to be the birth place of Jesus Christ... unlike what many people believe, the inn and stable that Mary and Joseph were supposed to have tried to stay in were actually a cave. We saw the site that is believed to be where Mary gave birth to Jesus, and we also saw where historians believed the manger was located.

The supposed birth place of Jesus, the star is said to show the location of Mary when she gave birth to Jesus.

The supposed location of Jesus' manger is on the right side, where the large slab of marble is.

After we visited the Church of the Nativity, we talked with a Palestinian Christian what he thinks about the conflict and his ideas for the solution. He believed, like many other Palestinians, that there should be a one state solution so that everyone can live in the same place, instead of being a crazy mess.

We then moved onto talk at a house on a settlement in Jerusalem. It just so happens that when we got inside, he told us that the house was his! It was  a total shock, and we didn't know what to do or to ask... we didn't want to offend our tour guide and we didn't want to be seen as unknowing either, so there were long awkward silences pauses,but the time was definitely worth the discussion.

Just behind this group of houses (owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy) is Har Gillo, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. This is where the house we visited was located.

                                                                                                                                                                                              The next day, we gathered an hour later, after packing and began to leave the city. We first took a short tour of the government hill with a tour around the supreme court and the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament). Then we worked our way down the road to Tel Aviv by learning about the battles that were fought over the road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv in the war for independence. We stopped at some of the battle grounds to find out about the different struggles and how it was possible for a small Israeli population of 600,000 people (men women, and children) to defeat 6 mighty Arab armies: Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria.

I'll throw another blog post up tomorrow depending on how much we end up doing tomorrow... we may get a leisure day tomorrow! Thanks again for reading!