The Holy Lands of Israel and the Sinai Desert sit at the crossroads three continents – of Asia, Africa and Europe – and three great religions –Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Jews have lived here for over 3,000 years, but the State of Israel was only created in 1948. It’s the Jewish Promised Land, the land of Jesus and where Mohammed ascended to Heaven.
With only 5 million people in a country the size of New Jersey, the fate of Israel has been varied, religious and political throughout its turbulent past and equally turbulent present. In the last 50 years it has gone from being a wasteland to a modern nation. Two mammoth tasks make Israel unique, as a gathering of the nation of Jews and the irrigation of a desert into a homeland.
Israel is a land of contrasts, from ragged deserts to ripe farmlands, cosmopolitan skylines, from pious religions and pilgrimages, to a mecca for technology. It’s a nation which mixes the old and the new, from the cradle of civilisation – where human culture first developed to modern urban life.
