Bethlehem

Some of the people you meet around Bethlehem quote from the Bible, some recite from the Koran, some chant from the Torah. Some show you their fields, some point to their olive groves; some invoke history, some envision the future. Some pray with knees on the ground, some with foreheads on the ground, some with feet firmly planted but but with torsos turning and swaying. Some throw stones and some drive tanks and some wrap themselves with explosives. But when you get right down to it, when you boil away the hatred and the politics and the wars that have shaken the planet, the one thing most people are talking about, when it comes to Bethlehem, is land. A tiny scrap of land. A wind-scoured, water-starved, rock-strewn bit of ground.

(Michael Finkel, Christopher Anderson, National Geographic)