Travel guide
Featured on October 9, 2026
The world's lowest exposed land lies beside Jericho.
Places
Go for the Church of the Nativity, its worn limestone stairs, and the shock of ordinary town life carrying on a few turns from Manger Square. After dark, when the day groups have gone, the old streets feel like a town again rather than a pilgrimage stop.
Tip: Be at the church at opening time and give Bethlehem at least half a day more; staying overnight changes the place.
A spring-fed town among date palms and yellow cliffs, with history piled into the landscape. Come for Tell es-Sultan, the Mount of Temptation above town, and the heavy, low-altitude air on the road toward the Dead Sea.
Tip: Give it a full day and go between late autumn and spring; midday heat is real even when the hills are cool.
The old city runs under patched market awnings and stone vaults to the Ibrahimi Mosque and Cave of the Patriarchs, where devotion and control sit side by side. Stay for the hand-blown glass and ceramics still made in family workshops.
Tip: Go in daylight, preferably on a weekday morning; access around the shrine can change on religious holidays.
Come for the vaulted souk, soap cut into pale blocks, and trays of kanafeh carried hot through the old city. It is the place to feel how a mercantile hill city works from the inside.
Tip: Give it a full day; late morning into lunch is its liveliest stretch, and Fridays run slower.
This desert ravine drops away between Jerusalem and Jericho, with the Monastery of Saint George fixed to the cliff like a ledge. Walk it for the silence, the chalk-coloured rock and the sudden green around a spring.
Tip: Start early, carry more water than you think you need, and leave it alone in peak summer heat.
Eat
Roast chicken is set over taboon bread soaked with olive oil and covered with onions cooked down with sumac, often finished with pine nuts.
Where: At family lunches in olive season and in home-cooking restaurants in Ramallah and Bethlehem.
Rice is cooked with aubergine or cauliflower and chicken or lamb, then the whole pot is turned out upside down onto a platter.
Where: Most at home on a Friday family table; look for home-style kitchens rather than grill houses.
Shredded or finely rubbed pastry is baked over white cheese and finished with sugar syrup; in Nablus it is soft in the middle and often bright on top.
Where: Sweet shops in Nablus's old city, eaten hot from the tray, often standing up.
Hand-rolled bulgur pearls are steamed and served with chickpeas, onions and chicken or with a savoury broth.
Where: At family tables and in women's cooperatives, especially in villages around Bethlehem and Hebron.
Story
At dawn in Bethlehem, the lanes below Manger Square smell of sesame bread and cardamom coffee. In Nablus, a stranger may send you for kanafeh at once, while the tray is still hot, then point you toward a soap factory round the corner. By sunset above Jericho, the land drops toward the Dead Sea so sharply the hills look folded by hand.
In 326, Helena came to Bethlehem to see the cave local Christians had long revered as the place of Jesus's birth. Builders marked the spot and raised a basilica over it. Pilgrims followed with oil lamps and small flasks. A town of groves and cisterns became a stop in the traffic of empires.
In 1949, tents went up at Dheisheh on Bethlehem's edge for families displaced in the war the year before. They came with blankets, flour tins and keys. The camp was meant to be temporary. After June 1967, another line defined the day: cars idling at checkpoints, papers in hand, waiting to pass.
In 1994, Yasser Arafat returned, and before long Ramallah was filling with ministries, police stations and portraits. On a Friday now, a cousin can leave that city at noon and reach Bethlehem late because the road has stalled. Lunch waits. Someone flips the maqluba, tea follows, and the small coffee cups come last.
Say hello
أهلين
Hi; a warm everyday hello
Say: ah-hlayn
يعطيك العافية
Thanks to someone who is working or helping
Say: ya-teek il-aa-fyeh
شو الأخبار؟
How are things?
Say: shoo l-akhbaar?
قديش الحساب؟
How much is the bill?
Say: ad-daysh il-hsaab?
تسلم إيديك
Thank you for the food you made
Say: tis-lam ee-dayk
Surprises
Taybeh Brewery, founded in 1994 in the village of Taybeh, still bottles beer in the West Bank. The same village also hosts an Oktoberfest-style beer festival.
Near Jericho, Hisham's Palace preserves an Umayyad floor mosaic known as the Tree of Life. One side shows gazelles under a fruit tree; the other shows a lion bringing one down.
On Mount Gerizim above Nablus, Samaritans still read the Torah in Samaritan Hebrew and write it in the Samaritan script. Their Passover sacrifice is held on the mountain, in public.
Quiz
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves near which site?
They were found near Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. What made the discovery so important was not only the place but the age of the manuscripts: they pushed surviving biblical texts back by many centuries.
3 days
Day 1
Morning at the Church of the Nativity and old streets of Bethlehem, afternoon in Hebron's old city and the Ibrahimi Mosque, evening back north to sleep in Bethlehem or Ramallah.
Day 2
Early start for Jericho: Tell es-Sultan first, then the Mount of Temptation, with late afternoon in Wadi Qelt on the way back toward Ramallah.
Day 3
Head north for a full day in Nablus: old city lanes, a soap factory if open, lunch in town, kanafeh before you leave, then back south in the evening.
At a glance
At a glance
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Listen
The song of the day
علي الكوفية
Mohammed Assaf
Its chorus travels far beyond concerts; you hear it at weddings, rallies and from car speakers.
Play a 30-second preview30-second clip via Apple Music
Before you go, watch or read
Palestinian Walks
Book
Raja Shehadeh teaches you to read hills, paths and politics through the act of walking.
Entry requirements
Palestine entry requirements by passport: of 197 passports, 126 can enter without a visa, 0 get a visa on arrival, 0 apply online before they travel and 71 need a visa from an embassy or consulate.
Find your passport for the documents, the cost and how long you can stay.
Safety
Do not travel to Gaza due to armed conflict and terrorism
US State Dept, updated March 4, 2026. Advisories change: check your own government's travel advice before you go.
From the community
🇵🇸 Today's country is Palestine. The world's lowest exposed land lies beside Jericho. At dawn in Bethlehem, the lanes below Manger Square smell of sesame bread and cardamom coffee. In Nablus, a stranger may send you for kanafeh at once, while the tray is still hot, then point you toward a soap factory round the corner. By sunset above Jericho, the land drops toward the Dead Sea so sharply the hills look folded by hand. 📍 Places to visit • Bethlehem — Go for the Church of the Nativity, its…
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