We arrived in Haifa at dawn to discover a port that was not exactly the world’s most picturesque.
Israel intrigued me. I am not a religious man. Indeed, I think religion is the cause of many of our problems. But I was aware of the history and could see that Jerusalem was the focus of centuries of conflict between the three Abrahamic religions. It had fought to an uneasy truce. Jerusalem was the powder keg for the whole Middle East. It could go off at any moment. The Palestinian/Jewish situation looked like it would never be resolved.
For the West this presented a great opportunity to benefit from the unrest. The whole Arab world was in conflict.
It was easy to see how this constant state of animosity and fear pushed people to more extreme positions and beliefs.
I was eager to have a look. A lot of history was bound up in this small area.
Boarding a coach we set off for Jerusalem and received our first glimpses of Israel through the window.
We arrived at the walled city and entered in.
We caught our first glimpse of orthodox Jews. We were going to see a lot more religious extremists in the course of the day.
We arrived at the Abbey of the Dormition.
