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Day 14 - cold and clear, good driving weather for a trip down to Bethlehem with a new guide Khalid and driver George - both Christian Arab residents of the Occupied West Bank. Bethlehem is close and the ever expanding Jerusalem will soon swamp the the town in the next few years. Most families here have about 6 kids!! So the population is increasing rapidly. Jerusalem is becoming more religious as the ultra-orthodox Jews are drawn to the place while those who are Jewish only in name tend to drift over to the more modern and secular Tel Aviv.
Bethlehem itself is also booming, about 400,00 people now and a far cry from the WW1 city. We saw where Jesus was born,m (Church of Nativity- see pic) and a couple other religious spots then out to see Solomon’s Pools. The NZMR camped here back in the day and Bert mentions them in his letters. It was a big disappointment, gone to wrack and ruin, heaps of trash all around, green water in the too two pools and the countryside heavily forested - there were no trees here back in 1918. We noticed generally that the West Bank, under Palestinian authority, was more like Egypt, virtually no civic maintenance at all - must be a cultural thing because there are plenty of unemployed ere who could clean the place up. We tootled back to the hotel about 2.00pm, siesta, then a trip to the local Menachen Yehudah Market- for an afternoon snack of lollies, salted nuts and beer. Bed early, off to Jordan tomorrow.
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Sally Grimmett Just discovered the map below :)