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.

Lot and His Daughters by Francesco Furini

Image: Lot and His Daughters (alternative names: ‘Loth und seine Töchter’ or ‘Lot et ses filles’), a 1640 oil on canvas painting by Italian Baroque painter of Florence Francesco Furini (1600 or 1603-1646), size 123 cm x 120 cm, located at Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

The theme of ‘Lot and His Daughters’ is from the Book of Genesis of the Holy Bible. For some strange reasons, or because of the unusualness of the story itself, this theme has attracted several artists who created works of the same name as this painting, or variants of it. The story goes as follows.

On the advice of the angels, Lot escaped to the mountains with his two daughters, when the god destroyed Gomorrah, Sodom, Zoar and cities of the plain, and lived in a cave. While running away from the city, Lot’s wife looked back, ignoring the premonition of the angels and she was turned into a pillar of salt (known as ‘Lot's Wife’, as seen on Mount Sodom, on the shores of the Dead Sea in Israel now, many people believe). The elder daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth. Come let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father”.

And they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he did not perceive when she lay down or when she rose. The next day the elder daughter told the younger, “I lay yester night with my father. Let us make him drink this night also, and you go and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father”.

Thus were both the daughters of Lot with children by their father. And the firstborn bore a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of Moabites unto this day. And the younger daughter also bore a son, and called his name Ben-am’mi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day. (Excerpts from Chapter 19, Genesis)

Lot's Wife Pillar on Mount Sodom, Israel

Mount Sodom, a hill along the southwestern part of the Dead Sea in Israel, is made almost entirely of halite (rock salt). It is about 5 miles long, 3 miles wide, 742 feet above the Dead Sea water level, and yet 557 feet below sea level. Weathering separated sometimes portions of rock formations. One such separate pillar is known as ‘Lot's Wife’, because the pillar resembles a woman wearing a cloak, with reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, as mentioned in the Bible.

The story of Lot is in chapters 11-14 and 19 of the Book of Genesis in the Bible. In Genesis 19, when God plans to destroy the five cities, he sends angels to the city of Sodom where they meet Lot, the nephew of Abraham, and the son of Abraham's brother Haran (Genesis 11:27). Lot prays to the angels to spend the night in his house, against their wish to spend the night in the city street, and they agree to stay with Lot. By now all the men of Sodom surround Lot's house to ‘know’ (traditionally, carnal knowledge) the angels. Lot offers the men his daughters instead, who, he claims, are virgins, but the men are not interested in Lot’s daughters.

The angels forewarn Lot of the disaster about to happen and ask Lot, his wife, sons-in-law, and daughters to escape from the place. The sons-in-law ignore the warning. So, the angels forcibly take Lot, his wife, and his daughters out of their house, saying, "Save yourselves with all haste. Look not behind you. Get as fast as you are able to the mountain, unless you be involved in the calamity of the city." Lot entreats the angels, who consent that he might retire to Zoar, which was one of the five doomed cities but was spared because of Lot’s desire to seek refuge there. His wife, looked back on Sodom, and she was turned into a pillar of salt, which is purported to be Lot's Wife, as you see in the picture above.

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.