Lost in Tiberius

Tiberius, Israel

Ibn Battuta is again quite out of sequence with his itinerary here, but as I was too, we will ignore it.

“....I continued my journey to the town of Tiberias. It was in time past a large and important city but nothing now remains of that save vestiges that bear witness to its former greatness and magnificence. In the town there are wonderful baths.....here too is the famous lake.....”

We spent much longer in Acre than anticipated, so by the time we arrived in Tiberius it was pitch dark and pouring rain. According to my ancient guidebook there was a Scottish Guesthouse, formerly a hospital, mission and hospice which had been run by the Church of Scotland for over a century. However what I found was a substantial stone-built hotel exuding a faint old-world glamour, called The Scots Hotel and which was, on appearances alone, clearly quite beyond my budget. The very accommodating receptionist told me to look for the guesthouse next door. It should have been perfectly simple. It was not - we could not find it and when, on our fifth attempt, we did, it was as lively as a morgue. Located in a residential area on a dark sidestreet with nobody about to ask directions - on the fourth try I suddenly saw a taxi that a young girl was getting into. I shouted to get the driver's attention before they drove off, running towards him. When I reached the car, the driver was in Shakespearian mode, one hand poised rather melodramatically over his heart. It is as well that I do not understand a word of Hebrew because on recovering his delicate equilibrium, he bawled at me. On reflection, given the part of the world we were in, his reaction may have been quite understandable, but it may also have had something to do with the fact that said young girl wearing a skirt that would not decently have covered a pelmet, was sitting beside him in the front seat. Perhaps he had other things on his mind, perhaps he thought I was her mother........either way I was still lost. When we did finally find it, we could not find anyone to let us in even though the main doors were open. We gave up. Earlier, on several inadvertent drives through town I had seen the Panorama hotel which is where we ended up.

Pisans, Templars and the Strange Case of the Tomb of Salih

Acre, (Akko) Israel

“I then journeyed along the coast to the town of Akka which is lying in ruins. Akka was formerly the capital of the lands of the Franks in Syria and the harbor for their vessels.......”

I did not journey along the coast because I came from Jerusalem with a Palestinian driver called Abed. And although I drove across much of the West Bank, we were on the highway, and green Palestinian licence plates are nowhere to be found because the access roads have been blocked. The settlements on either side of the road are fenced in with high chainlink fencing, and the ubiquitous concrete wall completes the apartheid picture.

Houses on the right comprise an illegally-built Israeli 'settlement' on Palestinian land. This road is for Israelis and yellow-licence plate holders only - the road barrier secures the passage of Israeli settlers on restricted roads by preventing Palestinians from gaining access. Palestinians thus have to take detours which can make a journey of minutes take several hours.

It is profoundly depressing; for the Palestinians because the ongoing theft of their land is an injustice they will never accept and for which they will continue to resist, and for Israelis because surely they can never have imagined that the 'Promised Land' would turn out to be the open prison that they themselves have built.

Scenes from the Occupied Territories.

What is positively uplifting however is the number of Israelis and Palestinians who are working together to try and bring about change. For those who want the truth about the genesis of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict as well as honest, up-to-date reporting, I recommend the following four sources;

Zochrot, www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?lang=english means 'remembering' in Hebrew, and the objective of this admirable Israeli organization is to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. Israeli schoolchildren were deliberately never taught about 1948, and consequently many Israelis themselves have no idea what really happened.

Another Israeli organization is the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions who can be found at www.icahd.org/eng/

An excellent website is Electronic Intifada - Palestine's Weapon of Mass Instruction. You can find them at http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml

Another useful link is www.miftah.org the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, associated with the highly-respected scholar and tireless promoter of a negotiated and just peace agreement, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi.

And so to Acre; Akko to the Israelis, Akka to the Arabs.......