The Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation

Photo: St. Gabriel's Greek Orthodox Church in Nazareth

The Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, situated in Nazareth, Israel, is a principal center of Christian pilgrimage. As the name suggests, the place where the church is located is believed to be where the angel Gabriel delivered God’s message to Virgin Mary.

The church, also known as the Church of St. Gabriel, is built over a subterranean spring where Mary was drawing water at the time of the Annunciation, according to the Eastern Orthodox belief. The spring water is still present inside the apse of the church.

The Book of Luke (1:27-35) does not describe the exact location where Gabriel delivered God’s message to Mary, but only mentions Nazareth. However, according to the second century text of James, when the angel addressed her and greeted her she looked around but could see any one. She returned home with the pot of water after which Gabriel appeared before her and informed her about the virgin birth of Jesus.

The church had previously been occupied by the Franciscans and the Greek Catholics. But Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, the ruler of Galilee, granted control of the church to the local Arab community of Greek Orthodox faith. Consequently, in 1750, they built a new church just beside the existing one. Since then the Arab Orthodox local council in Nazareth has been running the church.

The original church is believed to have been built during the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine I at the site of a spring that was the only source of water supply to the village of Nazareth.

The water of the spring originates from a mountain known as Jabal as-Sikh and flows underground for 17 meters and emerges in the church. From there it continues to flow 130 meters further to surface at Mary's Well. This was the well from which Mother Mary and boy Jesus used to draw and drink water. But today, there is a nonfunctional structure rebuilt for the millennium celebrations of Nazareth in 2000.

The spring within the old chapel can be accessed from the present church by descending a few steps, and water can be drawn from it.

Another important center of pilgrimage is the Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation built over a cave which is believed to have been the house where Mary lived.

Eshtaol Forest in Israel

Photos: Views of Eshtaol Forest areas in Israel, photographed on March 18, 2006.

Eshtaol Forest, a popular recreation area and one of the largest forests in Israel, is located north of Beit Shemesh and near Ta'oz and Neve Shalom. Like many other forests in Israel, it was planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

The Jewish National Fund, a non-profit organization founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine (later Israel) for Jewish settlement, owned 13 per cent of the total land in Israel by 2007. Since its inception, it has built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres (1,000 squire km) of land and established more than 1,000 parks. In a period of over fifty years, the JNF planted over 260 million trees mostly in semi-arid, rocky, hilly terrain where agriculture is almost impossible and the risk of land degradation is very high.

There are critics who accuse JNF on various counts, including for planting non-native pine trees rather than local species such as olive trees. While some forests have been planted for security reasons, others are for demarcating Israeli areas. Forests in the Negev Desert are said to have been planted to restrict herding by the Bedouins. After the 1948 war, forests were planted on the sites of abandoned Arab villages whose inhabitants left the areas or were expelled from their homes.

Jerusalem Mountains, Israel

Photo: The Central Judean Hills, commonly known in Israel as Jerusalem Mountains.

Photo: The urban landscape area around Jerusalem, view from Jerusalem's entrance.

The Jerusalem Mountains is a mountain range spread across Israel and the West Bank. It is also known by names such as Judean Mountains, Judean Hills, Hebron Hills and Jibal al-Khalil. The mountain range has several religious and historical places which are sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Some of the holiest places of Judaism, such as the Temple Mount and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, are located in this mountain range. Also, Jerusalem and several other cities such as Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah are located here.

The Judean Mountains is a natural division between the Shephelah coastal plains in the west and the Jordan Rift Valley to the east, and rain shadow region responsible for the formation of the Judean desert is because of this mountain range.

The mountain range spans from north to south, and extends to west and east of Jerusalem and at the southern end is Mount Hebron. In prehistoric times, Judean Mountains was home to animals such as elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes and Wild Asian Water Buffalo, which were not found in the Levant region. The range has Karst topography, typified by landscape shaped by the dissolution of layers of soluble bedrock, including a stalactite cave in Nahal Sorek National Park between Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh and the area surrounding Ofra, where fossils of prehistoric flora and fauna were excavated.

‘Adam, Eve and the Snake’ in the mosaic garden, kibbutz Eilon, Israel

Photo: ‘Adam, Eve and the Snake’, mosaic sculpture in the mosaic garden situated in kibbutz Eilon, in northern Israel. It is located a mile south of the Lebanese border and six miles east of the Mediterranean coast. Kibbutz is on a ridge between the streams, Nahal Betzet and Nahal Kziv.

Cobble encrusted with halite from the shore of Dead Sea

Cobble encrusted with halite evaporated from the western shore of the Dead Sea near Ein Gedi.

Halite, commonly known as rock salt, is the mineral form of sodium chloride (common salt or kitchen salt of chemical formula NaCl). Halite forms isometric crystals, typically colorless or white, but may also be light blue, dark blue, purple, pink, red, orange, yellow or gray depending on the amount and type of impurities contained in it. It commonly occurs with other evaporate deposit minerals such as many sulfates, halides, and borates.

Cave where Dead Sea Scrolls were found

Photo: the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in this cave in Qumran in the West Bank near Dead Sea in Israel.

According to Wikipedia ‘the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in Israel.’

These include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and other documents of great religious and historical significance, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek on parchment and papyrus. These manuscripts date between 150 BC and 70 AD. The scrolls are identified with the ancient Jewish sect Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and some scholars argue that the scrolls were written by priests, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups. Click on the photo to enlarge it. You can use it as a wallpaper (size: 1600x1200 pixels) on your computer or post it in your blog! Read more on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Church of the Beatitudes, Israel

Photo: the Church of the Beatitudes on the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee in Israel, the spot where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount.

The Church of the Beatitudes, near Tabgha in Israel, is a Roman Catholic Church built on the traditional site of the Sermon on the Mount. The current church was built in 1938 near the site of a fourth-century Byzantine church. The floor plan of the church is octagonal, representing the eight Beatitudes (meaning ‘blessed’ or ‘happy’), which are blessings from Jesus recorded in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke.

Main entrance to Bethlehem from Jerusalem

Most of the entrances and exits from the Bethlehem to the rest of the West Bank are currently subject to Israeli check posts and roadblocks, and subject to Israeli security directives. Travel for Bethlehem's Palestinian residents from the West Bank into Israel-annexed Jerusalem is regulated by permits, acquiring of which has become difficult, though Israel has erected a terminal to ease transit.

Israel Palestinian territories and western Jordan

Map: annotated satellite image of Israel, the Palestinian territories and western Jordan, highlighting principal geographical features: based on NASA satellite image of Israel in January 2003.