Dec. 24 - Outside David's Tower, Old City, Jerusalem

Words can't describe coming upon the Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem for the first time. There was something powerful in the air around the yellow sun-soaked wall.

I couldn't stop the tears from streaming down my face and I sank to my knees, overcome.

In a daze, I could barely see from the fog of tears in my eyes. The thought of those thousands upon thousands of prayers, the millions of people that have visited, cried, pressed crumpled bits of papers in the crevices in the wall, touched me in a way I didn't expect.

Maybe it was the result of all the prayers for redemption and salvation that had been prayed over the centuries, of all the faces that turned to the Wall in hopes Someone would hear. But hope, anguish and desperation seemed to hover over still, turning the it into a touchstone of heaven.

Outwardly, the scene was not so different from anything else you'd see in an Orthodox area in Israel. Men in kippas and long black jackets, locks curling over their ears, opened their cellphones just a few seconds after leaving the wall.

Some did their prayers rocking back and forth, a meditative motion that accompanied the half-chanted words in the prayer book. Some men prayed wordlessly, propped up with an arm above the head, leaning against the wall. Some had their forehead pressed on it, some kissing it just before they left, still facing the wall as they receded back to the public area.

Soldiers in baggy green uniforms came up to the wall in twos and threes. A mother with her little girl pressed both their hands against the wall. All around me, sincerity breathed.

Whoever these people were, whatever they may say or do when they walk about in their day-to-day lives, they appeared to be serious when it came to the wall. There's something about it that inspires respect, calls forth reverence, instills a sense of holy awe. You may pray ritually, but not idly.

I walked to the women's side, the right-hand third of the wall. Interestingly, the women's side was entirely in the shadow that late afternoon, while the men's side was still washed in sunlight, with the line of shadow demarking an exact split between the two.

I passed by the free head-coverings and walked quickly by the few women calling out, "Please! Miss, have souvenirs!" and offering, ironically, bits of red string tied to a hand with the eye of Islam.

I waited my turn to approach while the line of sunlight above me slipped higher and the shadows grew longer. In front of me a group of girls, maybe just a little more than half my age, were mouthing the words quietly with prayer books in hand.

My turn came. I can't say how long I stood there, forehead pressed against the cool stone, knees shaking from the cold, tears streaming once again, my mind quiet. It was the strangest prayer I'd ever prayed.

I asked God's intervention in a place that so urgently needed the help -- was I mad? -- asking for something much bigger than I could imagine, for the peace of Jerusalem, for the peace of the Middle East and for all mankind.

The rest of the day, my photo-happy travelling companion Ingela and I walked and walked for hours around the Old City: Jewish Quarter, Christian Quarter, every corner we could get to was explored from rooftop to underground market.

It was almost midnight when we found ourselves at the Damascus Gate in the Muslim quarter, on the holiest night of the Christian year, watching the whole market being torn down and rebuilt for the next day. Medieval, dark and dripping, every corner was lit by candles. It was oddly reminiscent of an ancient, underground cathedral.

Dozens of family members, cousins, aunts, nephews, flooded the narrow alleys to help box up the day's refuse, sweep the stone steps and splash water to wash down their shops. Little boys maneuvered three-wheeled wooden carts down the ramps by riding the rubber tire chained to the back, using it as a brake.

A cart full of massive animal bones was pushing its way slowly toward us, piled so high we almost couldn't see the three young boys, straining and being careful not to let the whole thing slip and crash to the floor.

Small tractors roared, piled high with stacks of empty produce boxes, waiting to have carts hitched to them so they could roll out of the mess again, out of the glorious, chaotic, exhilarating, noisy, tumultuous mess and into the starlight night at the Damascus Gate of the Old City.

Tobi,

Over and out.

December 22 - Empty falafel restaurants, frustrated residents:

Tel Aviv's main outdoor market feels quiet, but then it's only Thursday. By Friday, the souq fills up with Sabbath-observers, scurrying to finish shopping before sundown.

Jason Israel waits for customers, propped against the open doorway of the café where he works washing dishes and serving falafels to a sparse tourist clientele. He sits down to have coffee with a customer. Technically, he should be working, but there's no one to serve at the moment.

Every night, he returns to the gritty comfort of the bar at Momo's Hostel. He has lived at the hostel for over a year with a loosely knit community. He and a dozen international friends hang around Momo's because of the abundant "unofficial" labouring jobs that flow through the hostel. With his gentle, open nature, Israel makes friends easily - with travelers that have the time, that is. But he loses them just as easily. Such is the intransient nature of the hostel.

He moved to Israel from the U.S. eight years ago. After living on a kibbutz for four years, he followed friends to Tel Aviv to find work.

Adopted from Columbia, Israel looks like he belongs in the Middle East. Sometimes, though, it's not helpful to blend in too much. Even though he's Jewish, he was stopped 200 times in one year by security and police because he looks Arabic. It's true: he has dusky, olive skin and black, black hair.

"Once, they came to the hostel and asked to see all the passports in the safe," he says. "When they got to mine, even though it says I'm an Israeli citizen and my last name is 'Israel', they waited to question me." After that, he grew his hair long so maybe he would be mistaken for a hippy rather than a Palestinian.

"I had a friend from Florida, after he got here, he became a little Ashanti, hippy-kind of person, he started living on the streets, saying the world was going to end."

He jumps up when the café owner calls him. She wants him to help translate for a pair of English-speaking women.

When he sits down again, he leans forward and speaks intently. "When I first moved here, this place was crazy, the souq was crowded all the time, bars packed with people who just wouldn't leave till the next morning."

"But all that changed with the intifada."

Tourism dropped by over two hundred per cent, and after the summer war with Lebanon, his life got even quieter.

At least Israel isn't working the under-the-table construction jobs he used to. He has horror stories. Often, he would have to work without safety equipment, not even a helmet. Israel said he's had a few "corrupt bosses, men who say they'll pay you so much money for a job, but then stiff you."

And he's had to be tough to endure it. "Once, I was given a handsaw and told to cut up a 50-year old telephone pole while it was still in the ground. And then we had to dig out the stump with a shovel." He says it took him and a buddy nine hours. They still haven't gotten paid.

He said he stayed in Israel for so long because it's easy to get "very lost and stuck" here. But that season of his life could be over. Israel says he's almost ready to go back and rejoin his family in Philadelphia, and find a home.

Dec 20, night, Momo’s Hostel, Tel Aviv:


Dearest family and friends,

Made it safely through the intimidating security checks at the airport. They were rather suspicious that I didn't have any particular reason to be visiting Israel and didn't know know anyone in the country, but then I remembered I did, my old roommate. That was OK for awhile, until they asked me for his number. When they tried to ring it, it was apparently for Wisconsin. I got the "extra long wait" treatment but thankfully not the "bags and person searched" treatment.

The rest was a blur of hefting heavy backpacks and finding a train and meeting Austrians and finding a taxi, followed by a torturous route through Tel Aviv to a secret location. Almost passed out on the small cot, one of ten available to me courtesy of Momo's establishment, even after consuming the Red Bull provided by a thoughtful friend in London, but then...

... was startled awake by the last person I’d expected to meet in this dirty, rough hostel: a bubbly brunette from Colorado who’d come to join the army and become an Israeli citizen. Was a little shocked. Who would choose to come here and give up living in the States?

I was surprised to find her (and my hope - already! a story!) at this rather dingy hostel, home to traveling Kiwis and South Africans who sit at the bar and drink their aching construction-weary muscles away. Much of the under-the-table work in Tel Aviv passes through here and the guys live here for months at a time.

I had planned to stay just a night or two while waiting for Inge, my traveling friend. Long enough to sort of get the lay of the land, figure out how to go about exploring Israel, Palestine and Egypt. No mom, I don't have a plan, don't really have a clear idea of why I'm here. Pure curiosity I guess.

I hadn’t expected to meet Rebecca Dutcher my first night. Or to hear her story.

She’s a normal American girl, except that before studying physics in high school she got into anti-semitism and Holocaust studies at the age of ten. Said she has always loved research.

She’s Jewish and has joined Israel's Defence Force (IDF). “I’m here because I want peace",  she said as we talked in our little dorm room, lit only by the purple neon light outside. “I don’t think I can do anything from the States because it’s [the government] is so corrupt. I feel I can do something here".

She said a couple of Palestinian friends back home didn’t agree with her decision and that she probably won’t hear from them again.

"It’s getting better, slowly, we’re working on pulling out of Gaza, out of the West Bank.”

“People live differently here because there’s the chance of a war everyday.
I want to raise my kids here because I think it’s important and I want to help. But do I want to see my son one day grow up and have to serve on the front lines and learn to hold a gun? I don’t know.”

“It would be nice if there was peace... I think there should be a two-state solution. [Ariel] Sharon was building a wall [around Israel]… it sucks. But what can you do? My father said, 'You take your hits and you keep going.”

Her family is, of course, Jewish.

She talked of the movie Shindler’s List, Leon Uris’ book Exodus. Asked me if I've read much on the Holocaust. I said, yes, a little bit. I asked her, what made her do all this research on her own? She said it wasn't pushed through school. “In a way, it’s a normal question for every Jewish kid: why does everybody hate us?”

She said there’s an old, and bad, joke that resurfaces every once in awhile:
“How do you deal with concentration camp victims? What do you threaten them with? Being outnumbered, with death? No. There’s nothing you can do to these people."

"You want to tug the heartstrings of these people - use guilt, because that’s what we do! There’s no forgiveness, we don’t use forgiveness, only guilt.” When asked if she thought that wasn’t destructive as well, she agreed but said it was just the way they [Jews] were.

She thinks the two-state solution would not have worked the way it was drawn up last time as Tel Aviv would have been six miles from a hostile border.
“The first one was just desert, it would have been pretty hard to have a functioning state. Israel offered to meet 97 per cent of the Arabs’ demands and Arafat said no. He refused the right of return [to Israel].”

She explained some of the problems brought on by the Israel's right of return, the system whereby the government subsidizes any Jew who wants to come and live in Israel as a citizen. Her opinion was that it has been the main cause of a lot of the poverty in Israel.

The Law of Return, enacted in 1950 to deal with the Jewish problem of homelessness and worldwide persecution, came about because the government needed numbers to amp up population in the state. The state not only sponsored those who had Jewish parentage, they also "airlifted people out of places like Yemen, Sudan... It was only possible because of the American Jewish money.

These people come from villages into the modern world, they weren't really able to cope…. There’s a lot of poverty here.”

Israelites are taxed roughly 50 per cent of their income, a lot of which goes to the army, which Rebecca described as “a first-world army in a second-world country."

She thinks the army is essential to Israel's existence and is proud to be joining.

“If Israel hadn’t kicked the crap out of Hezbollah in the summer, it would have been a sign of weakness. They would have been like: ‘Hey, mighty Israel couldn’t defend themselves against these little guerillas, maybe they’re not as strong as we thought they were.’”

We got off the heavy topics of politics and military strategy and got onto travelers' favorite topics: where we were headed and where we'd been. She told me what she thinks of Jerusalem: “There’s something intoxicating about that city, there’s something magnetic there.

I don’t know what it is about it.. and about Israel... there’s nothing, no oil, no natural resources, it’s not an easy life here."

She said she knew "why the Jews had to be here," as opposed to anywhere else
- there was talk about a state in Uganda and South America. "Having a Jewish state is backup, the next time someone comes to f--- with them, there’s going to be someone to speak up.”

That was day one in this land.