Green Olive Tours Blog • Palestine • Israel

Green Olive Tours Recommends: DIY Tel Aviv

2012-05-24T20:59:00.000+03:00

By Miri For a Middle Eastern country Israel is as Western as it gets and Tel Aviv is probably the queen of Westernness. And yet, for a person who sets her/his foot for the first time into this place, it can get quite confusing. Shimrit Elisar took it on herself to ease this experience by publishing a very special guide

Historical View at the Jewish Community in Hebron

2012-05-20T14:29:00.001+03:00

By Miri As a matter of fact historic Palestine always also was the home of a Jewish community. Hebron is considered to be the site of the oldest Jewish community in the world and thus looks back at a long turbulent history, a history that extends into the present and raises crucial questions about the future of Palestine

The Nakba in Israeli Society

2012-05-15T14:58:00.001+03:00

By Miri Today, May 15th marks Nakba Day. Nakba means “catastrophe“ in Arabic and refers to 1) the events that took place during the war of 1947/1948, usually referred to by the Jewish-Israel discourse as the War of Independence, during which an estimated number of 750,000 Palestinians were expelled and/or fled from

The Story of Cinema Jenin

2012-05-09T18:04:00.000+03:00

By Miri Every building has a story. It's just a matter of listening carefully for it to reveal itself. If you go on a Jenin tour, the façades of the city's buildings will probably tell you the stories of their bullet holes, of their collapsed ceilings and of the rubble, hence, stories of violence and of grief. But that's

The Dead Sea - Looking Beyond its Beauty

2012-05-02T13:04:00.000+03:00

By Miri The Dead Sea is obviously one of the focal points of tourism in the Holy Land and also Green Olive Tours offers a number of tours which guide you through this area. On a trip organised by Green Olive Tours, however, you will be enabled to look beyond the natural beauty of this unique site whose shores constitute the lowest place on earth and whose waters are said to have therapeutic

The Struggle of the Communities in South Mount Hebron

2012-04-29T11:35:00.000+03:00

By Miri It is generally acknowledged that the Israeli settlers in the West Bank live in relative affluence when compared to their Palestinian neighbours. Yet nowhere becomes this contrast more apparent than in the case of the Southern Hebron Hills, an area considered to be one of the poorest of the whole West Bank and constituting the home of several thousand farmers and shepherds.

On Leaving Israel

2012-04-23T09:50:00.000+03:00

By Miri Last week I wrote about crossing the border and entering the Holy Land. That's however only half of the story; eventually you will have to leave again and I feel it's worthwhile to also give some advice as to how to depart without unnecessarily calling the attention of Israeli security to you and ending your trip

On Entering Israel

2012-04-19T19:43:00.001+03:00

By Miri At least since 09/11 boarding an airplane became a pretty lengthy procedure. Boarding an airplane in order to enter or leave Israel, especially (but not only) as a foreigner and even worse as an Arab or Muslim, has always been a “special” experience. Israeli airline security is

A Brief Look at the Status of the Palestinian Population in Jordan

2012-04-17T16:48:00.000+03:00

By Miri When trying to undermine the Palestinians' right to self determination, right wingers usually come up with two arguments, first “the Palestinian people as such don't exist”, and/or second, “the Palestinians already have a country, it's called Jordan”. The second argument is usually based on the notion that Jordan's

Beit Ummar - The Occupation in a Nutshell

2012-04-14T20:55:00.000+03:00

By Miri Beit Ummar is a town situated between the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem in the beautiful and fertile central highlands of the West Bank. In Palestine, like everywhere, each and every place has its very own and particular story, at the same time, however, Beit Ummar's condition in a way constitutes the Occupation in a nutshell. Since 1967, five ideological settlements were built on

Instances of Genuine Co-Existence in Jaffa

2012-04-08T13:31:00.000+03:00

By Miri Joint Palestinian-Israeli initiatives are not that rare anymore. In fact, in recent years they have become some sort of business, and funding agencies all over the world are keen on financing efforts at establishing dialogue and co-existance. At the same time, those initiatives are frequently criticised, both

Our First Video!

2012-04-08T09:26:00.000+03:00

Green Olive Tours Production Proudly Presents:

The Tale of Jericho's Oasis Casino

2012-03-29T20:02:00.001+02:00

By Miri Like so many other places in Palestine and Israel, Jericho, supposedly the oldest continuously inhabited city of the world, is full of legends and myths, many of which are biblical and endowed with wonders and sacredness, others, especially the more recent ones, are embedded with a less holy aura. Such is the

Vegetarian/Vegan Travels in the Holy Land

2012-03-21T17:22:00.000+02:00

By Miri Being vegetarian or vegan in your home country or your country of residence is usually not such a big deal. It may take a little time, it may take a little practice, but at some point, no matter what the local cuisine has to offer, you will figure out and learn how to best accommodate it to your needs. Being a

Caught Up in Conflict – Some Notes on the Case of the Samaritan Community in Palestine/Israel

2012-03-15T18:26:00.000+02:00

By Miri "A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite

A Harp for Yasmin

2012-03-11T17:40:00.000+02:00

Yasmin Gebara is blind from birth and lives in the village of Salem, just to the east of Nablus in the middle of the West Bank. She graduated college in 2010 with a major in English literature, and writes poetry in English which you can read at this link. Yasmin's father was murdered in 2004 and her mother Muna has been raising six children.Harpist Sunita Staneslow is the wife

Beit Ummar Womens Conference

2012-03-11T16:29:00.001+02:00

Fred Schlomka On Saturday 11th March, over 300 women, Israeli and Palestinian came together in a demonstration of solidarity and support, to say a resounding 'NO', to the ongoing Occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The Theme was 'Practicing Civil Disobedience'. Over 120 Israeli women from Tel Aviv and beyond attended the event, many of them from the new civil disobedience

"What Keeps Mankind Alive?" - Introducing Jenin's Freedom Theatre

2012-03-05T20:56:00.000+02:00

By Miri "What keeps mankind alive?" asked Bertold Brecht in his Threepenny Opera that premiered in Berlin in 1928. Brecht's answer was “first the grub, then the morality”. Obviously the deprived working class had to be fed, but almost equally important to Brecht was their exposure and access to art and cultural expression, specifically theatre, which Brecht regarded as a medium with great

Bethlehem's Church of Nativity - Beyond Holiness...

2012-02-27T16:34:00.001+02:00

The Church of Nativity in Bethlehem is unquestionably one of the top tourist sites in the region, and obviously any holy land pilgrimage, any Bethlehem tour, but also other West Bank tours usually include a visit of the supposed birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. The relevance of the site to pilgrims is obvious, but also architecturally, historically, culturally, and politically, this place is of

The Story of Shuhada Street

2012-02-22T13:56:00.000+02:00

This Friday, February 24th, for the third time, the residents of Hebron call upon the international community to stand in solidarity with them and demand the open access to Shuhada Street. In the recent two years for the Global Day of Action to Open Shuhada Street, direct actions and protests took place in Hebron, Israel, the U.S., Europe and many other places all over the world. In the

Act NOW Against the Expulsion of 30,000 Bedouins in the Negev

2012-02-19T16:46:00.000+02:00

Most of the human rights issues covered by international media and NGOs concern the Palestinian population living in the West Bank and Gaza. Notwithstanding the fact that the Bedouin communities living inside Israel are being increasingly deprived of their resources, the discrimination they are facing usually receives less

Next Stop Gaza City

2012-02-12T16:27:00.000+02:00

By Miri The images that we associate with conflict zones are usually grim ones that are inextricably linked with those of war, suffering and poverty. For an outsider it may be hard to imagine that from within those places, so occupied with survival, art may emerge. A West Bank tour that includes visits of cities such as Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jenin will however reveal those places as the home

The ABC of Palestinian Hospitality

2012-02-06T16:02:00.000+02:00

By Miri The contradictions between common representations of the Palestinian population in predominantly Western media and actual real life encounters as visitors to the country usually experience them could not be greater. Images of angry mobs burning US and Israeli flags, of masked fighters roaming the streets, shooting their guns into the air and screaming "Allahu akbar" (Arabic: "Allah

Who's the Terrorist? Settler Violence and Notions of Safety and Risk in the West Bank

2012-02-02T14:31:00.001+02:00

By Miri A lot of the questions that we receive surround the notions of safety and risk in the West Bank. This is not surprising considering that foreign governmental institutions, such as

Talking Walls

2012-01-30T14:28:00.000+02:00

By Miri Graffiti is not a phenomenon that came up with the emergence of hip hop culture. It is definitely not a Western or a modern appearance, in fact it is a global practice that can be traced back to ancient times. If you think about it, cave paintings can be considered graffiti as well, so its history dates back to no less than 30,000 BC. Both in antique Roman, as well as in Greek