YASSER ARAFAT'S TRAVEL GUIDE TO "PALESTINE"

THIS DISGUSTING LITTLE TRAVELOGUE FROM BRITAIN'S GUARDIAN SHOULD MAKE YOUR BLOOD BOIL. THE WRITER ENCOURAGES YOU TO VISIT "PALESTINE" IN ORDER TO SUPPORT THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. THAT IS, IF YOU CAN ENDURE THE HARSH MEASURES TAKEN BY EVIL ZIONISTS TO MAKE YOUR LIFE A LIVING HELL. I'M NOT SURE WHICH IS MORE OFFENSIVE: THE MISREPRESENTATION OF ISRAELI ACTIONS OR THE DOWNPLAYING OF PALESTINIAN TERRORISM AND CALLS FOR GENOCIDE. THANKS TO UNCLE STICKY FOR POINTING THIS OUT TO ME.

Humour and hospitality go with the Territories
A holiday in Palestine is never going to be easy but, finds Andrew Mueller, the rewards for tourists and locals alike can be huge

To get to the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, I have to negotiate a military checkpoint. Opposite the church marking the site of the Nativity, a building flies a huge poster of a man infamous, in some circles, as a terrorist.

Although the modern brick block wearing this vast portrait of the late Yasser Arafat presides over the square of a town all but empty of tourists, its souvenir shop is open. One of the magnets for sale in the the Bethlehem Peace Centre bears the word 'Palestine' beneath a photograph of green graffiti on a wall. Later, someone who reads Arabic better than I do will look at this, smile, and explain that the words are a slogan supporting Hamas. It is difficult to be a tourist in Palestine without one's irony detector making anguished grinding noises.

The Gaza Strip is closed to all visitors bar journalists, diplomats and NGO workers, but the West Bank is accessible to anyone willing to put up with the same inconveniences endured by the Palestinians living there: checkpoints, roadblocks, vehicle searches.

Olive Co-Operative, a British tourism and fair-trade company, runs visits to the Occupied Territories, organising meetings with Palestinian and Israeli activist groups, touring the safely accessible areas of the West Bank and dropping in on Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu - who, released after 18 years in jail, now receives visitors at St George's cathedral in East Jerusalem.

Potential tourists have two principal concerns here. The first is whether or not holidaying in a war zone is really the done thing. I've never met a Palestinian (or an Israeli, for that matter) who objects; quite the opposite. If a Palestinian state is ever going to work, it will have to pay for itself; those whose sympathies lie in that direction could make no greater gesture of solidarity than booking a holiday and spending money there.

The other worry is personal safety. There is, after all, a war on here, and neither side has much respect for the heritage sites. The Church of the Nativity was besieged by the Israeli army for 39 days in 2002. [ED. EXCUSE ME, BUT AS I RECALL ISRAEL SHOWED GREAT RESTRAINT WHEN MUSLIMS SEIZED THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, HELD HOSTAGES, AND USED CHRISTIAN HOLY BOOKS AS TOILET PAPER] In March this year two Israeli soldiers were wounded by Palestinian gunmen at a security post near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, final resting place of Abraham and a site holy to Jews and Muslims.

Yet another irony of the Palestinian Territories is that they - the grim open-air prison of Gaza aside - often feel less scary than Israel. The violence visited upon Israel by Palestinian militants tends to be sudden and random, which is why it is impossible to enjoy, for example, the peerless iced coffee in West Jerusalem's Cafe Hillel free of worry about another patron wearing an unseasonably heavy coat.

On the West Bank, it is usually possible to see trouble coming at sufficient distance that you can get out of its way - Israel's assaults on Palestinians, while frequently disproportionate, tend to be fairly predictable as regards location. Any tourist injured by violence in Palestine is unlucky, or foolish.

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