Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "old-city"

Intifada fans can breathe a little more easily.

Just when it seemed as though no amount of building in Israel’s settlements and harsh statements at the United Nations by the country’s foreign minister could truly provoke new violence between Israelis and Palestinians, the Jerusalem municipality came up with something guaranteed to steam up some hotheads.

The city’s planning committee is considering a proposal to build an underground parking lot for the Old City by breaching the 16th-century walls of Suleiman the Magnificent and digging into the rock beneath the ancient Jewish Quarter.

“This is illegal,” said Ghassan Khatib, director of the Palestinian Authority’s government media center in Ramallah. “These illegal changes would provoke the Palestinians and many others, Muslims and Christians. This will aggravate the tension between Israelis and Palestinians and have a negative effect on current international efforts to renew the political process.”

Over the years, Palestinians and Islamists have called for violence to protect, as they put it, the Old City from alleged Israeli plots to undermine it and bring the Aqsa Mosque, considered the third holiest shrine in Islam, tumbling down. Such conspiracies always seemed somewhat far-fetched, though nonetheless effective for all that.

This time, Jerusalem’s city government seems set on mirroring some aspects of the most vivid Palestinian paranoia.

For the rest of this post, read my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.<\a>

The New York Times ran a travel article last weekend about things to do in Jerusalem during the Jewish Sabbath when most things are shut. The article was fairly typical of shorter travel writing in that all the experiences described were unlikely to surprise anyone. Eat hummus at the restaurants. Browse for ceramic bowls. Take a hike through lackluster scenery. Yet each item, through no fault of the writer who is a noted foreign correspondent, had to be described as though it would all add up to a thrilling afternoon.

It got me thinking about all the guff that tourists have to swallow. How often do visitors stream to must-see attractions which are actually unattractive – and which are only worth seeing so you can tell other people you’ve been there. I decided to apply this theory to Jerusalem, a city that’s a major tourist attraction and where I’ve lived 15 years. Here’s the Honest Tours guide to a selection of sites all of which are listed in most guides as delightful spots for tourists:

The Israel Museum: Just completed a $100 million renovation. Ho-hum. Makes you wonder what at least $90 million of the budget went on. But the donations included a major one from the Marc Rich Foundation, so perhaps the whole thing was just a money-laundering scheme. Though the museum has some interesting archeological bits and pieces, give the art galleries a miss unless you thinks a pile of old school desks nailed together in a white room ought to be called contemporary art.

The Old City: I felt deep sympathy for businessmen who suffered during the economic deprivations of the second Palestinian intifada during the last decade. Except for the nasty traders of the Old City. They’ve been fleecing tourists in a particularly mean manner for years and it was time they got a dose of karma. If you like bad hummus and surly service, try the couple of hummus restaurants listed in all the guides as “the best hummus in Jerusalem.”

The Western/Wailing Wall: Prepare to have your mystical communion with the ancient stones interrupted by a guy who looks like he stepped out of Vilna circa 1822. He’ll shove his hand in your face and ask for charity. Not for nothing does Yiddish (which many of these guys speak) have the best word for “sponger” in any language (“schnorrer”). The place is a Mecca for them.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.