Having faith in the Holy Land

So this is what all the fuss is about.

Like many Americans, I was somewhat apprehensive about going to Israel. My vague mental image came from a lifetime montage of "Exodus," dusty Biblical movies, charging tanks, rock-throwing Palestinians, falling Scud missiles, suicide bombers and kibbutz pioneers. Not exactly the stuff of tourist brochures.

It was a surprise then, when coming to research a historical novel (I was not traveling as a journalist, or a religious pilgrim), to discover how "normal" much of this tiny country seems. Tel Aviv and the coast reminded me of the pretty side of Southern California. Galilee has the rolling agricultural charm of Eastern Washington. Ben & Jerry's ice cream can be found at the beach.

Israel is a country under a 60-year siege. When I heard laughter, it was usually from tour groups of Americans. Yet the tension is well-buried in most places that tourists want to go. Jews and Palestinians as well as significant Christian communities in cities such as Nazareth and Jerusalem are, if clearly not integrated, at least able to live side by side without the Uzis and minefields of my imagination.

Just as important, the nation is beautiful and soaked in history.

Whatever your attitude toward religion, it is moving to walk where Jesus preached and carried the cross, to touch the foundation stones of King Herod's platform that once held the Jewish Second Temple, or to view the golden-topped Muslim Dome of the Rock. There Abraham reputedly offered to sacrifice his son to God, and Muhammad rose in his nighttime journey to heaven.

Israel, Jordan

Getting there

There are no direct flights to Tel Aviv or Amman from Seattle, but a number of carriers have connecting flights through Europe. El Al flies nonstop from New York.

When to go

The best travel times are fall and spring. Petra and the Israeli desert are unbearably hot in summer, and it can snow at Petra and in Jerusalem in mid-winter.

Travelers' tips

Most tourists go with tour groups, but English is so widely spoken (Palestine was ruled by Britain for 30 years) that independent travel is quite feasible.

Driving is easy in the countryside, challenging in the city. Drive defensively and be ready to hit the brakes. Parking signs are in Hebrew. I got a parking ticket, and I still don't know what for.

Israeli prices are roughly on a par with the United States, while Jordan is slightly cheaper. There is a wide variety of food available in Israel; the best Thai noodle bowl I've ever had was in Haifa. Alcohol is readily available in Israel and in tourist hotels in Jordan. The tap water was safe in Israel, but I was advised not to trust it in Jordan.

ATMs are available in both countries.

You cannot take a rental car between Israel and Jordan. I flew from Tel Aviv to Amman, a quick 30-to-45 minute trip. You will need to purchase a Jordanian visa on arrival for 10 dinars, or about $14.

Lodging

There is a complete range of hotels in both countries, including American chains. In Jordan's Petra, I recommend the upscale Moevinpick Resort or Crowne Plaza because both are close to the archaeological park's entrance. In Tel Aviv, getting a hotel near the beach is interesting because in good weather the scene is reminiscent of Waikiki or Miami.

Israel has a number of nice beaches on the Mediterranean coast, but the water sports capital is the Red Sea. Resorts are in Eilat on the Israeli side and Aqaba on the Jordanian. Jordan is also building an impressive string of resorts on the Dead Sea, below sea level. While the location is exotic I found the heavy air hot and humid even in early May and the scenery kind of dead. But the resorts themselves are a watered Eden.

William Dietrich

And not just saints and sinners. Alexander, Hadrian, Richard the Lionheart and Napoleon all walked this evocative land.

There are Roman theaters; Crusader castles; more museums per capita than any nation in the world; and for the apocalyptic-minded the supposed site of the coming battle of Armageddon, the last great clash of good and evil. (I'm skeptical. It's a dusty, unimposing hill covering the ancient ruins of Megiddo.)

In neighboring Jordan, the rose-rock ancient city of Petra is one of the most stunning archaeological sites I've ever seen.

Only in the Old City of Jerusalem surrounded by two miles of stone walls built by Suleiman the Magnificent are soldiers and police more abundantly evident. There, a tour guide who carried an automatic in the small of his back was a reminder that while one's chance of encountering terrorism is extremely small (more Israelis have been killed in traffic accidents than in all the wars and attacks combined) this remains a bizarre political hot spot, sacred to three religions.

Still, some 1.9 million tourists visited Israel last year, a 26-percent increase over the year before because Jewish-Palestinian violence has declined, and Americans were the largest single nationality, totaling 450,000. Most are Jewish or Christian tour or study groups. (That's roughly one tourist for every three Israelis.)

Neighboring Jordan is equally welcoming. In both nations signs are frequently in English as well as Hebrew (in Israel) and Arabic. Many hotels and restaurants are first class. English is widely spoken, and I can testify that the quality of English at Ben Gurion International Airport at Tel Aviv is several notches above that at New York's JFK.

The nations are compact. The straight-line distance from the Jewish fortress of Masada in the south to the northern shores of Galilee where Jesus preached is about 120 miles, meaning all the major historical sites in Israel fit in an area roughly equivalent to the Puget Sound basin between Olympia and Bellingham. The drive from Jordan's capital of Amman to Petra can be done in three or four hours.

I drove a rental car in both countries and found independent travel not much more challenging than in Western Europe.

Still, there is no question you are visiting a place that is unique.

You have not gone through airport security until you've gone through El Al and Israeli security: going to Jordan from Israel took me an hour to clear. Coming back, I had six people inspecting me and my lone suitcase to get me on my return flight to New York on time. I took it with good humor and got friendly respect in return.

On the flights themselves, I was thumbing a Grisham novel while my seatmates were Orthodox American Jews who spent much of the flight praying.

Later, a fundamentalist American Christian group was breathlessly reading apocalyptic texts in a grove of trees below Megiddo. And in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built on one of two identified spots where Jesus might have been crucified and buried, I was almost stampeded by surging pilgrims from a single Greek village. They set smoke clouds rolling with lighted tapers as they chanted in religious ecstasy. At evening meals in a hotel garden in east Jerusalem, one is serenaded by half an hour of Muslim prayers broadcast from an adjacent mosque.

Play and pray

Jerusalem is simply intense.

I asked a few of the devout what they made of being elbow to elbow with other worshippers equally devout, but of opposing faiths.

A Christian couple on tour from Vancouver, Wash., said this religious supermarket was forcing them to remember what they believed and why they believed it.

Jews I spoke to have a different perspective, sidestepping religious competition. They explained they are not so much a faith as a tribe: the Chosen People, who do not proselytize and in fact discourage conversion. One is born a Jew, ancestry coming from the mother's side in mixed marriages. (In the United States, the high number of mixed marriages is forcing reconsideration of the stance on conversion.)

The more guarded and financially strapped Palestinians said they are trying to carve out a living as an economic and ethnic minority hurt by radicals on all sides.

Israel perplexes for two reasons. One is the sheer robustness and modernity of the Jewish state. It's an astonishing success story, a mini-America compared to the Mexico-like standard of living in surrounding Arab countries. Recognize its right to exist? Hey, Israel is in-your-face, industrial, brilliantly lit, nearly as populous as the state of Washington and as solid as Mount Rainier. Yes, the Crusaders left, but the Jews? I don't think so.

One suspects Israel's affluence, and its steely competence, may irk the Middle East as much as its religion.

Israel is also an ethnic invasion, as inexorable as our own European invasion at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. While in some places Israel appears to have assimilated Palestinian communities, in others it has reduced the original Arab inhabitants (Israel-Palestine was just 2 percent Jewish in the 19th century, compared to two-thirds Jewish now) to frustrating poverty and second-class political status.

There are also huge cultural gulfs, with the joke being that Tel Aviv plays and Jerusalem prays. A visitor can literally leap in a few hours from the bikinis and beer umbrellas on Israeli beaches to the scarf-wrapped women in Jerusalem's Muslim quarter, or the solemn Jews at the Wailing Wall.

A traveler can also choose to ignore modern politics completely. I drove in and out of the Palestinian "green zone" without knowing precisely where the boundaries were. I didn't even see the infamous new dividing wall. I did not attempt to visit trouble spots such as Ramallah, Nablus or Gaza.

One peculiarity is the profusion of secular and religious holidays. Friday is the Muslim holy day, Saturday the Jewish and Sunday the Christian. All can affect openings and closings. I also had Memorial Day on a Tuesday and Independence Day on a Wednesday. Then there are the religious holidays of three religions. Fortunately, most tourist sites are open most of the time.

There is so much to see that it is difficult to summarize. Highlights for me included Old Jaffa adjacent to Tel Aviv, an historic port now dominated by art galleries. I also liked the Roman and Crusader ruins at Caesarea, the San Francisco-like mountainside port of Haifa, the Crusader port of Acre (or Akko), the Sea of Galilee where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount and recruited several apostles, and the walled city of old Jerusalem. To walk down the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane, or past the Arab vendors at Damascus Gate, is to have history and headlines come alive.

I was somewhat disappointed that virtually every important Christian site had been marked by a church, making it more difficult to visualize what it might have looked like in Biblical times. The Holy Land doesn't look like Hollywood's Holy Land.

In Jerusalem's maze of winding pedestrian streets you can browse Muslim markets, visit swank Jewish shops on an underground lane that was once the main Roman thoroughfare, eat pizza and people-watch on the street where Jesus suffered, or visit the island-like Temple Mount, Muslim-governed and eerily quiet compared to the bustle of Jerusalem below.

Astonishing Petra

Jordan has an entirely different charm. Here is a friendly introduction to Arabic and Bedouin culture, in the country where much of "Lawrence of Arabia" was filmed. It has a surprising, green agricultural backbone along the King's Highway that leads to Petra. It also has Dead Sea and Red Sea resorts and its own Crusader castles.

Petra, which was featured at the climax of the "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" movie, is simply astonishing. One walks down a kilometer-long, narrow sandstone canyon and emerges at a colossal temple facade improbably carved out of solid rock. And that's just the beginning. Rock facade after facade extend for miles.

In a desert landscape reminiscent of southern Utah or northern Arizona, an Arabic tribe called the Nabateans carved out, at a caravan crossroads, a city from sandstone rock. There are huge temples, an amphitheater, a Byzantine church and an estimated 5,000 caves in a landscape in which you expect to find Moses around every corner. Adding to the color are local Bedouins who have set up souvenir stands about every 50 yards along every major trail.

To really see Petra, allow at least two days and bring comfortable shoes. It's vast, and one prominent temple involves a climb up 800 steps.

I came away from both countries wishing I had more time. This is the cockpit of history, the source of three faiths, and the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Over the past 4,000 years, Jerusalem has been completely destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked another 52 times, and captured and re-captured 44 times. In the Middle Ages it was considered the center of the world. Today, religious extremists prophesize it may be the possible fuse for nuclear holocaust.

And yet the city is vibrant. Its hilltop air shimmers. Its buildings glow with the color of honey because of the uniform limestone required for new construction. Birds soar amid piled cumulus clouds. Like it or not, this beautiful, sad, atmospheric, venerable place continues to affect the entire world.

If you get a chance, go see it.

William Dietrich is a Seattle Times staff reporter