Bullet holes are cool. Especially, if there’s little chance of guns being fired now.
So when my guide pointed out a few pock marks near the Jaffa Gate, I knew I was seeing some history. (They come from the Six Days War when Israel invaded the West Bank on a Sunday and wrapped up the whole war before sunset Friday night, so everyone could enjoy a good Shabbat dinner.
Welcome to the Old City: Jerusalem. Thousands of years of history and important religious and cultural landmarks are crammed in the .35 square miles, including the Wailing Wall, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher. Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions all see this city as a major stopping point. Christ was killed here, Mohammad rose to heaven here and King Solomon built a temple on the same ground.
Walking narrow stone streets through the Armenian, Jewish, Christian and Muslim quarters is equally fascinating. Shopkeepers sell everything from trinkets and souvenirs to rosaries and hamsa pendants. There’s a sense of history everywhere you walk.
Wandering through the Jewish quarter, rebuilt by the Israelis following the 1967 war, I passed a slight, gray-haired man walking with a cane. “Arab and Jew, all of us end up in the earth,” he announced, to no one in particular, continuing on his way.
On my final night in Jerusalem, I met up with a Shlomo Gensler, an American studying in Jerusalem whom I met on the flight to Tel Aviv. Before we grabbed a beer at an outdoor café along Alrov Mamilla Avenue, an upscale shopping district connecting old and new Jerusalem, he offered to show me some sites not on any official itinerary. The tourism board may not have approved, but citizens of this ancient city would.
Amid a nearby complex of municipal buildings, Gensler pointed out the site of a car bombing several years ago. The area was once the site of frequent mortar and sniper attacks, and the indention in a wall from the bombing remained visible.
As we sipped beers on Alvov Mamilla, it become clear, even along this new, trendy street made of Jerusalem stone, that the past is never far away here.
This is the final part of Greg’s three-part series on Israel.
Greg Tasker was one of 3 million tourists to return safely from Israel. There’s some cool, religious and morbid sights to see there.
