Israel
Discover Israel
Introduction
Israel is a narrow country on the eastern Mediterranean, small enough to drive end to end in a day and varied enough that the drive passes through four distinct landscapes. The coastal plain holds most of the population and Tel Aviv, a Bauhaus-era city with a beach along its whole length. Inland and uphill sits Jerusalem, whose walled Old City contains sites central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam within a single square kilometre.
North of these, Galilee is green and hilly, running down to the Sea of Galilee — a freshwater lake two hundred metres below sea level — with the Golan Heights above it. South, the Negev desert takes up more than half the country’s land area and almost none of its population, ending at Eilat on the Red Sea, where the coral reef begins immediately offshore. Between them lies the Dead Sea, at around 430 metres below sea level the lowest exposed land on earth, and dropping.
The compression is the thing to plan around: Jerusalem to Tel Aviv is an hour, Tel Aviv to the Galilee two, and Masada, the Dead Sea and the desert canyons are all inside a day trip from either. Public transport stops from Friday afternoon until Saturday night for Shabbat, which shapes any itinerary more than distance does.