[updated to fix typos]
I’m a travel nut. I enjoy having new experiences in places that are not quite familiar to me. Whenever I can get free, I like to go somewhere else and see it with my own eyes. There’s nothing like a firsthand view of unfamiliar terrain to sharpen your powers of observation. And those powers carry over when you get back home, too: you tend to see things with fresh eyes—at least for a while. So I recommend it.
But if you’re not free to travel—or if, like me, you’re not inclined to go too far afield when you do travel—there’s always armchair travel.
So, those of you who can tear yourselves away from more pleasurable distractions and are curious about what on-the-ground reality looks like in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem should check out this feature in National Geographic.
There’s a reported piece that goes along with the stunning pictures. I haven’t read it yet, but here’s a taste.
Bethlehem and Jerusalem are only six miles apart (ten kilometers), though in the compressed and fractious geography of the region, this places them in different realms. It can take a month for a postcard to go from one city to the other. Bethlehem is in the West Bank, on land taken by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967. It’s a Palestinian city; the majority of its 35,000 residents are Muslim. In 1900, more than 90 percent of the city was Christian. Today Bethlehem is only about one-third Christian, and this proportion is steadily shrinking as Christians leave for Europe or the Americas. At least a dozen suicide bombers have come from the city and surrounding district. The truth is that Bethlehem, the “little town” venerated during Christmas, is one of the most contentious places on Earth.
Be sure to check out the pictures.
