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It’s easy to get a bit romantic about these things. Look at this roundabout. It’s Dizengoff Square, one of the buzziest parts of one of the buzziest cities. All around the square are cafes that spill out onto the street, all full, all alive. Last night the square was a…

I’m sitting in an outside bar, having a drink and a smoke. It’s a beautiful evening, around 6-ish, and life is happening in a very Tel Aviv way. I’m reading a bit, thinking a bit, planning the next step – going to Palestine. Blimey, that’s exciting! – when…. My front…

Efrat’s about 20 minutes from Jerusalem, no further than Brighton is from Lewes. In the real world where politics collides with culture and history, it’s a lot further than that. But first… I’ve got a podcast to do. Antony works for The Israel Project, an organisation dedicated to putting out…

It’s been a long weekend here, first Shabbat, then Rosh Hashanah. Lots of family time, lots of eating and talking and more eating – everyone’s favourite Jewish pastimes. But now it’s back to work and time to move on. The local train station is packed with kids, all going back…

Sometimes it’s just nice to have a day off. Enough of the politics and looking behind the curtain and talking to people about what they really think about life here. Let’s just have a day off. So, we do. Lovely Ruth and her house guest (that’s me) headed off for…

Another relaxing day at Ruth’s. I could get used to this. In the evening we went to some neighbours who were intrigued by my trip to the West Bank. They were immigrants – of course – but seeing as they’d been here since the 1960s… we can forgive them that.…

People milled around the hotel lobby, looking at Banksy originals with their calculators out, paying bills and waiting for cabs to take them back to the light. I had been toying with the idea of going to Hebron. The unease felt in Ramallah was long in the rear-view mirror and…

When I was younger I went to Jamaica, stayed on this holiday resort compound. It was lovely but cut off from Jamaica. Could have been anywhere and it felt really uncomfortable, life as a posh tourist drinking overproof, overpriced rum, while the locals pressed their noses against the glass and…

I’ve been a bit caught up with what to do, how to plan it. This business of taking each day as it comes, not booking anything, making it up as we go along, this works in most places, but Israel, as we all know, isn’t most places. You can travel…

If Tel Aviv was all about good looking boys and girls silently whizzing around on electric scooters with the soundtrack being expensive laughter and chat, Ramallah is very different. There are a few women on the streets but it’s almost exclusively blokes. Groups of young-ish men mostly in their twenties…