Armageddon is up the road

Paul Wood visits the Holy Land

The joy of travelling around the Holy Land lies in seeing the place names of biblical legend right there on the signposts in front of you. Leaving Ben Gurion airport on my first visit here, some years ago, there was a jolt of excitement as we passed the motorway exit almost casually directing drivers to The Galilee. Armageddon is not only what will happen if the Israelis discover that Iran has the bomb; it’s a real place, about 60 miles north of Jerusalem. You really can walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

The sheer weight of anticipation can turn to disappointment, warns one of my guidebooks, when the sacred sites do not seem as grand as might be expected of the home of the greatest story ever told. It is true that for a city which is central to the world’s three great monotheistic faiths, Jerusalem can seem a bit shabby in places. Wandering through the Old City’s narrow alleyways and passages, there is graffiti on the walls and, by dusk, piles of rubbish left rotting in the streets.

Still, all this, the crush of people, and even the souvenir sellers plucking at your sleeve — some things don’t change over the millennia — start to work on the imagination. OK, I must admit that one of the things which leapt into my mind was the Python sketch about the People’s Front of Judea. No! The Judean People’s Front. But making your way up the Via Dolorosa, over polished stones left by the Romans, it is also easy to picture the centurions at the foot of the Cross, casting lots for Christ’s single garment.

After squeezing through the gap between the tourist police and the T-shirt shop, you arrive where this is supposed to have happened, now marked by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a sepulchre being a grave carved into a hillside. From the outside, the church is rather modest; you can see what the guidebook is talking about. But inside is a cool, dark, echoing chamber topped by a great dome. Up a flight of stairs is Golgotha, ‘place of the skull’, reputed site of the Crucifixion.

The exact spot, a tiny square of rock, is just visible, framed by the ornate brass and gold leaf of the eastern churches. There’s usually a line of Rohan-clad tourists waiting to take photographs and reach in to touch. Many people are here on pilgrimage and it’s always interesting to watch their reactions: often, they are overcome with emotion. Just below, half a dozen American women wept as they knelt to touch the spot where Jesus was said to have been laid after being taken down from the Cross.

Of course, Jerusalem is holy not only to Christianity but to Judaism and Islam too. If you walk the Old City walls from Jaffa Gate, as the battlements curve around, you glimpse the brilliant gold of the Dome of the Rock, the 7th-century Islamic shrine enclosing the place from which Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to heaven accompanied by the angel Gabriel.

(Once there, according to one of the most touching stories of Muslim tradition, he was instructed by God to pray 50 times a day. Moses, who was waiting nearby, thought this was excessive and told him to go back and negotiate a smaller number. This happened many times until the number five was reached. Mohammed was too embarrassed to go back again, and so Muslims say five prayers daily today.)

For religious Jews, the large, rough lump of rock beneath the dome is the foundation stone of the world, the place where Adam was formed, where Abraham was called upon to sacrifice his son. The building of a new Jewish temple here will herald the messiah’s arrival.

I once interviewed a former member of the Jewish underground who tried to hasten Judgment Day by blowing up the Dome of the Rock and the nearby al Aqsa mosque, after which the current Palestinian uprising is named. Most observant Jews, though, are content to wait for divine providence (specifically for the advent of a red heifer, a cow with no single white hair, the remains of which will be used to purify those who wish to enter the Temple Mount, thereby allowing construction to begin.) Until then, people have to satisfy themselves with prayer at the Kotel, the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.

Seeing the faithful there is one of the most moving sights in the Old City. There are usually clumps of soldiers with M16s slung over their backs, and Orthodox Haredim in black frock coats, all with heads bowed, rocking back and forth close to the wall. Prayers are also written on pieces of paper and inserted between the great stones. A few yards away is the entrance to the tunnels which take you on a journey down through layer upon layer of the Old City’s history.

Like everything else here, the tunnels are controversial. In 1996, excavations triggered clashes in which 80 people died. So when we are finally spat out of the underground maze, emerging, slightly to our surprise, from a nondescript door in the wall close to the Via Dolorosa, the Israelis provide an armed escort back to the Western Wall.

Those feeling more adventurous can visit the West Bank. Bethlehem is just a few minutes’ drive from Jerusalem. You drive out through the industrial suburb of Talpiot and past the red-roofed settlement blocks which Israel is building to redraw the map of Jerusalem, prior to the peace agreement which never comes.

The entrance to Bethlehem is marked by ‘the wall’, part of the separation barrier which Israel says is needed to stop suicide bombers coming from the West Bank. It is a fence in places, but in Bethlehem it is huge concrete slabs, pressed right up against some of the houses. Graffiti artists have taken advantage of this, including Britain’s own Banksy. When Tony Blair visits the Bethlehem Intercontinental Hotel, he looks out on an original Banksy showing a little girl in a pink party dress detaining and searching an Israeli soldier in full combat gear.

The centre of Bethlehem is Manger Square. There is a mosque on one side, the Church of the Nativity on the other. Like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it was built by the Roman Emperor Constantine and his mother Helen. It has a tiny, low door at the front, originally to stop horsemen entering. Down below is the small dark cave where Jesus was said to have been born. A nun lay full length on the floor of the grotto, weeping, when we visited last.

This visit, last month, happened to coincide with the public funerals of four Islamic militants killed by an Israeli hit squad the day before. Manger Square was packed. There were bursts of automatic gunfire over the heads of the mourners as the four bodies passed by, wrapped in flags, the faces uncovered. A neatly dressed middle-aged woman in a headscarf began abusing the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, blaming his policy of talking to Israel for the four deaths. ‘You dog of Bush and Rice,’ she screamed, ‘I hope you die an ugly death.’ Another similarly dressed woman objected and there was an unseemly exchange of blows between the two women in their funeral best.

All this was unfolding as a couple of tour groups, one Swedish, one Japanese, emerged from the Church of the Nativity. The Swedes looked puzzled. The Japanese seemed to think it was all part of the entertainment laid on by the tour company. (In my experience, no war zone is complete without a camera-festooned Japanese tourist. In 2002, during the siege of Manger Square, when Bethlehem was sealed off, a Japanese backpacker arrived in the centre of town, having come straight through the Israeli checkpoints. I’ve also seen Japanese tourists popping up in Sarajevo and in Baghdad.)

After all this, if you have chosen wisely, you will return to the American Colony Hotel, regularly voted the best in the Middle East. The unhurried service will allow you to enjoy a quiet glass of fresh lemonade in the famous courtyard garden, water gently bubbling from the fountain. You won’t entirely escape history here. A white bedsheet from the American Colony was Jerusalem’s flag of surrender to the British General, Allenby, in 1917. More recently, some of the secret negotiations for the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians took place in Room 16 of the hotel. It is, though, a break from all the powerful religious imagery, the landscape and buildings which evoke both history and prophecy. There is even a recognised psychiatric disorder called Jerusalem syndrome, with some visitors suffering psychotic episodes, overcome with the belief they have a messianic mission. If you come here, the idea of Jerusalem syndrome won’t seem as bizarre as it sounds.

Paul Wood is Middle East correspondent of the BBC.