messianic tours to israel 2023

M² Archaeological and Cultural Experience of Israel

December 27, 2023 – january 8, 2024 hosted by matt nappier and matthew vander els, let's go to israel.

“Jesus walked on these steps?” I asked as I kneeled, pressing my palms against the cold, smooth, steps on the mount. “Yes. These were the steps to the main entrance of the temple. If Jesus went to the temple, these are the steps he would have used”.

This was one of the many life-changing experiences during my very first trip to Israel in 2005. I have returned several times accompanied by friends or simply with my wife. Israel is a special place, but for a Christian believer, it’s a sacred place. From standing on top of the temple mount, once home to the ark of the covenant, to standing in the place where Israel worshipped a golden calf at Tel Dan, the stories from the Bible are experienced.

A visit to the land of Israel is more than just visiting significant Biblical sites; it is also an amazing cultural experience. From watching the shops shut down at 3 pm on Friday to prepare for the coming Sabbath to engaging with Jews, Arabs, and Israelis from all different backgrounds, Israel leaves its mark.

Going to Israel many times, we knew both aspects were extremely important, but we had never experienced a tour that both emphasized learning and archeology as well as cultural experience, exploring Israel not as a tourist but as a person. Eating at unique restaurants, talking with locals, and simply exploring the beauty of what Israel is. That is why we crafted this tour to combine the best of both worlds.

If you have ever wanted to grow deeper in your faith, visit the places you’ve read about in the Bible, and experience the holy land of Israel, we invite you to join us, December 26th – January 5th, for adventure, cultural exposure, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

-Daily Itinerary-

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27 – DALLAS/FORT

WORTH OR CHARLOTTE, NEWARK: Depart by United

Airlines to Newark. Continue by connecting wide-bodied jet.

Meals and snacks are served as we fly across the Atlantic.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28 – TEL AVIV, CAESAEREA

MARITIMA, MT. CARMEL, HADERA: Fly nonstop from

Newark and arrive in Tel Aviv in the morning. We visit the

important sites in Caesarea, once the capital of the Roman

province, and see the harbor from which Paul was taken to

Rome. Continue to Mount Carmel for a wonderful view of

the area before transferring to the Ramada Beach Resort in

Hadera for dinner and overnight.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29 – HADERA, BEIT SHE’ARIM,

MEGIDDO, MOUNT TABOR, JORDAN RIVER,

TIBERIAS: Our excellent guide will arrive at the hotel after

breakfast to begin the days touring. We begin by visiting Beit

She’arim. Then proceed to Megiddo overlooking the Jezreel

Valley and considered the Armageddon of the New Testament,

including a visit to Ahab’s tunnel. On to the top of Mount

Tabor and then to the Jordan River to visit the traditional

Baptism site. Arrive at the Ceasar Hotel in Tiberias located

right on the Sea of Galilee for three nights.

DAILY ITINERARY

Matt Nappier Matt Nappier resides in West Monroe, La with his wife Malissa and five children

ages 2-11. He is an active duty servicemenber with more than 21 years of service thus far, and he is

retiring this year. He co-founded and co-pastors Lighthouse Messianic Fellowship in Monroe, La.,

a congregation going on seven years and the only one of its kind in Northeast Louisiana. Matt has

a bachelors in Social Sciences, a Masters in Old Testament, and is currently a doctoral candidate

working towards a PhD in Old Testament at Amridge University where he studies in light of the

ancient Near Eastern cultures and languages along with the literary styles and structures of the

Bible. Matt is excited to continue leading tours in Israel, the Promised Land from our King.

Matthew Vander Els Matthew has been speaking and involved in pastoral ministry since

2010, emphasizing the Jewish background of the Christian faith. Matthew’s passion is showing

the beauty of the Bible by bringing to light its cultural and historical background. His sermons

have become known as being applicable and informative by presenting Yeshua as the trajectory

of the Biblical narrative. Matthew pastors Founded in Truth Fellowship in Rock Hill, SC,

and travels for speaking events often. He operates his digital marketing agency and serves

the county board of special needs as an information systems analyst. He’s been married to

Jenny Vander Els since 2009, and they have been active foster parents since 2019. Their family

consists of their son Benjamin Wallace and their daughter Evelyn Rae.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30 – MAGDALA,

CAPERNAUM, MOUNT OF BEATITUDES,

CHORAZIN, TEL DAN, CAESAREA PHILIPPI: Our

day’s touring begins with a visit to Magdala and then to

Capernaum. See the Synagogue and Peter’s house, center of

Jesus preaching ministry. Drive to the Mount of Beatitudes

where the Sermon on the Mount is remembered. Visit

Chorazim and the ruins of a synagogue where Jesus preached.

Visit Tel Dan before driving to Caesarea Philippi, site of

Peter’s confession of the Messiah and then back to the hotel

for dinner and overnight.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31 – GALILEE BOAT RIDE,

JESUS BOAT MUSEUM, SEPPHORIS, NAZARETH

VILLAGE, CHURCH OF ANNUNCIATION: Take a

boat ride on the Sea of Galilee as did Jesus and His apostles.

See the “Jesus Boat” recovered from the shore of the Sea of

Galilee in 1986. Continue to Sepphoris, an ancient city that

Jesus, and his father, Joseph, might have walked to each day

to work as builders. Then go to Nazareth, Jesus’ home, and

see the oldest Church of the Annunciation with Mary’s Well.

Visit the Nazareth Village. This is an excavated village dating

from around 1 AD. The excavations have carefully renovated

the synagogue and houses to give a unique insight into village

life and agriculture, as it would have been at the time of Jesus.

Finally, return to the Ceasar Hotel for dinner and overnight.

MONDAY, JANUARY 1 – BEIT SHEAN, MOUNT

GILBOA, QUMRAN, EIN GEDI, DEAD SEA: We drive

to Beit Shean, Biblical Scythopolis, to visit the Roman theatre,

paved road and the excavations. Visit Mount Gilboa and then

the freshwater oasis of Ein Gedi where David hid when he

was on the lam from King Saul. On to Qumran where the

Essenes lived and see the caves where they hid the Dead Sea

Scrolls.. Proceed along the Dead Sea to the David Dead Sea

Hotel for a swim in the Dead Sea, dinner and overnight.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 2 – MASADA, TEL ARAD,

BEERSHEBA, JERUSALEM: Drive to Masada, site of the

Zealot’s last stand against the Romans. Take a cable car ride to

the summit for sightseeing and a wonderful view of the Dead

Sea. Visits to Tel Arad and Beersheba and on to Jerusalem for

dinner and five nights at the Olive Tree Hotel.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3 – TEMPLE MOUNT

SIFTING PROJECT, ISRAELI MUSEUM, TEMPLE

INSTITUTE, YAD VASHEM: Today we join the Temple

Mount Sifting Project to help search for ancient artifacts then

visit the Israel Museum and Temple Institute. We end our day

at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the

Holocaust. Return to the hotel for dinner and overnight.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 4 – WESTERN WALL,

WESTERN WALL TUNNELS, TEMPLE MOUNT,

BURNT HOUSE, HERODIAN MANSION, JEWISH

QUARTER, POOL OF BETHESDA: Visit the Wailing (or

Western)Wall for a tour of the Western Wall Tunnel. Then up

to the Temple Mount with the Al-Aksa Mosque and Dome of

the Rock. Continue to see the Pool of Bethesda where the

angel ruffled the water. Passing the Stations of the Cross,

come to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, site where Jesus

was crucified and buried, and rose again. Visit the Jewish

Quarter to see the Caredo, ancient Synagogue, Burnt house,

Herodian Mansion and the Tomb of the Kings.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5– DAVIDSON CENTER, CITY OF

DAVID, HEZEKIAH’S TUNNEL, POOL OF SILOAM,

MOUNT OF OLIVES, GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE:

Our day begins with a trip to Davidson Center, the Jerusalem

Archaeological Park. From there visit the City of David

where we can wade through Hazekiah’s tunnel and the Pool

of Siloam. We will go to the Mount of Olives for fantastic

view of the Old City and descend this well-known hill for our

Garden of Gethsemane visit, where Jesus agonized in prayer

just hours before His crucifixion.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 6 – BETHLEHEM AREA,

CHURCH OF NATIVITY, SHEPHERD’S FIELDS,

HERODIUM, RUTH’S RESTAURANT: Morning visit to

Bethlehem to see the Church of the Nativity and on to the

Shepherd’s Fields. Continue to Herodium, Herod’s dramatic

and glorious palace fortress with views of Jerusalem and of

the Judean Wilderness.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 7 – LACHISH, AZEKAH, QIRBET

KAIYAFA TEL AVIV: Today we visit Lachish and Azekah,

fortified cities of Judah, which were the last to fall to the

Babylonians before the conquest of Jerusalem. Also, visit the

site of Qirbet Kaiyafa, known as the Elah Fortress. Farewell

dinner in the evening before transferring to the airport. Late

night flight departing Tel Aviv.

MONDAY, JANUARY 8 – NEWARK, DALLAS/FORT

WORTH OR CHARLOTTE: Arrive Newark in the

early morning. After clearing U.S. Customs, continue by

connecting flight to Dallas/Fort Worth or Charlotte, arriving

mid-morning.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27

Depart by United Airlines to Newark. Continue by connecting wide-bodied jet. Meals and snacks are served as we fly across the Atlantic.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28

TEL AVIV, CAESAEREA MARITIMA, MT. CARMEL, HADERA

Fly nonstop from Newark and arrive in Tel Aviv in the morning. We visit the important sites in Caesarea, once the capital of the Roman province, and see the harbor from which Paul was taken to Rome. Continue to Mount Carmel for a wonderful view of the area before transferring to the Ramada Beach Resort in Hadera for dinner and overnight.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29

HADERA, BEIT SHE’ARIM, MEGIDDO, MOUNT TABOR, JORDAN RIVER, TIBERIAS

Our excellent guide will arrive at the hotel after breakfast to begin the days touring. We begin by visiting Beit She’arim. Then proceed to Megiddo overlooking the Jezreel Valley and considered the Armageddon of the New Testament, including a visit to Ahab’s tunnel. On to the top of Mount Tabor and then to the Jordan River to visit the traditional Baptism site. Arrive at the Ceasar Hotel in Tiberias located right on the Sea of Galilee for three nights.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30

MAGDALA, CAPERNAUM, MOUNT OF BEATITUDES, CHORAZIN, TEL DAN, CAESAREA PHILIPPI

Our day’s touring begins with a visit to Magdala and then to Capernaum. See the Synagogue and Peter’s house, center of Jesus preaching ministry. Drive to the Mount of Beatitudes where the Sermon on the Mount is remembered. Visit Chorazim and the ruins of a synagogue where Jesus preached. Visit Tel Dan before driving to Caesarea Philippi, site of Peter’s confession of the Messiah and then back to the hotel for dinner and overnight.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31

GALILEE BOAT RIDE, JESUS BOAT MUSEUM, SEPPHORIS, NAZARETH VILLAGE, CHURCH OF ANNUNCIATION

Take a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee as did Jesus and His apostles. See the “Jesus Boat” recovered from the shore of the Sea of Galilee in 1986. Continue to Sepphoris, an ancient city that Jesus, and his father, Joseph, might have walked to each day to work as builders. Then go to Nazareth, Jesus’ home, and see the oldest Church of the Annunciation with Mary’s Well. Visit the Nazareth Village. This is an excavated village dating from around 1 AD. The excavations have carefully renovated the synagogue and houses to give a unique insight into village life and agriculture, as it would have been at the time of Jesus. Finally, return to the Ceasar Hotel for dinner and overnight.

MONDAY, JANUARY 1

BEIT SHEAN, MOUNT GILBOA, QUMRAN, EIN GEDI, DEAD SEA

We drive to Beit Shean, Biblical Scythopolis, to visit the Roman theatre, paved road and the excavations. Visit Mount Gilboa and then the freshwater oasis of Ein Gedi where David hid when he was on the lam from King Saul. On to Qumran where the Essenes lived and see the caves where they hid the Dead Sea Scrolls.. Proceed along the Dead Sea to the David Dead Sea Hotel for a swim in the Dead Sea, dinner and overnight.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 2

Drive to Masada, site of the Zealot’s last stand against the Romans. Take a cable car ride to the summit for sightseeing and a wonderful view of the Dead Sea. Visits to Tel Arad and Beersheba and on to Jerusalem for dinner and five nights at the Olive Tree Hotel.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3

Today we join the Temple Mount Sifting Project to help search for ancient artifacts then visit the Israel Museum and Temple Institute. We end our day at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Return to the hotel for dinner and overnight. manuscripts) and the Model museum.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 4

Visit the Wailing (or Western)Wall for a tour of the Western Wall Tunnel. Then up to the Temple Mount with the Al-Aksa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. Continue to see the Pool of Bethesda where the angel ruffled the water. Passing the Stations of the Cross, come to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, site where Jesus was crucified and buried, and rose again. Visit the Jewish Quarter to see the Caredo, ancient Synagogue, Burnt house, Herodian Mansion and the Tomb of the Kings.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5

Our day begins with a trip to Davidson Center, the Jerusalem Archaeological Park. From there visit the City of David where we can wade through Hazekiah’s tunnel and the Pool of Siloam. We will go to the Mount of Olives for fantastic view of the Old City and descend this well-known hill for our Garden of Gethsemane visit, where Jesus agonized in prayer just hours before His crucifixion.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 6

Morning visit to Bethlehem to see the Church of the Nativity and on to the Shepherd’s Fields. Continue to Herodium, Herod’s dramatic and glorious palace fortress with views of Jerusalem and of the Judean Wilderness. Charlotte, arriving in the evening.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 7

Today we visit Lachish and Azekah, fortified cities of Judah, which were the last to fall to the Babylonians before the conquest of Jerusalem. Also, visit the site of Qirbet Kaiyafa, known as the Elah Fortress. Farewell dinner in the evening before transferring to the airport. Late night flight departing Tel Aviv.

MONDAY, JANUARY 8

Arrive Newark in the early morning. After clearing U.S. Customs, continue by connecting flight to Dallas/Fort Worth or Charlotte, arriving mid-morning.

From Dallas/Fort Worth

• Transportation

 Air transportation is included from Dallas/Fort Worth or Charlotte by economy class jet. Cancellation fees are imposed by airlines if the air reservations are cancelled within 60 days of departure. Land transportation is by private motor coach.

Accommodations are in first-class hotels based on sharing twin bedded rooms with private bath. Supplement for a single room is $1280.

A full breakfast and delicious dinner daily including a farewell dinner on the last evening are included.

All transfers between airports and hotels are included as well as the handling of one average sized suitcase per person.

• Sightseeing

All sightseeing as outlined in the itinerary is included with entrance fees and the services of an excellent English speaking guide.

• Tips and Taxes

Baggage handling tips at airports and hotel service charges and taxes are included.

• NOT Included in Cost

U.S. passport fee, personal and baggage insurance, tips to guides, drivers and hotel staffs, items of a personal nature and any other items not specifically mentioned as being included. A charge of $150 will be made on the final billing to cover the tips to guides, drivers, and hotel staffs. Tour host will then care for all such tipping

• Reservations

A deposit of $400 per person is required to secure space on the tour. ACT NOW! Balance of the tour cost is due 75 days before departure.

• Baggage Allowance

The free air allowance is in a state of change by many airlines at this time. We expect that one bag weighing no more than 50 pounds will be allowed. However, to be certain, we recommend that you check with your airline nearer to

• Cancellations

The deposit is fully refundable until 90 days before departure. From 89 days to 60 days before departure, a $200 penalty will apply. All monies paid are subject to forfeiture after this time. Trip cancellation, travel accident and baggage insurance is recommended.

• Important Notice

Tour prices are based on rates in effect May 1, 2022 and are subject to adjustment should rates change.

• Responsibility

FOWLER TOURS LLC and its representatives act solely as a booking agent for travel services and related products, and disclaim all other responsibility regarding the travel services and related products described above. Once a booking is obtained through FOWLER TOURS LLC any funds received by FOWLER TOURS LLC are sent directly to the actual supplier, who assumes all responsibility for providing the services and products purchased. FOWLER TOURS LLC and its officers, directors, employees and other representatives, will not be liable for the acts or omissions of suppliers, such as airlines, cruise lines, other transportation providers, hotels, and tour or ground operators; nor will FOWLER TOURS LLC or any of its officers, directors, employees or other representatives, have liability for any loss, injury or damage (including consequential damage) to persons or property in connection with any accommodations, transportation or other services or products purchased. FOWLER TOURS LLC and the ground operators may make changes to the daily itinerary as deemed necessary for the safety and comfort of the tour members.

From Charlotte

Matthew vander els.

Matt Nappier

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Download the registration form below

• Download and print out the registration form
• Mail it in along with a check for your deposit
• Start preparing yourself for an experience like never before

TOUR CONDITIONS AND INFORMATION For payment by check or cash, the tour cost is $5795 from Dallas/Fort Worth or $5715 from Charlotte. Costs from other cities upon request. Features included in the tour price are:

TRANSPORTATION: Air transportation is included from Dallas/Fort Worth or Charlotte by economy class jet. Cancellation fees are imposed by airlines if the air reservations are cancelled within 60 days of departure. Land transportation is by private motor coach.

HOTELS: Accommodations are in first-class hotels based on sharing twin bedded rooms with private bath. Supplement for a single room is $1385.

MEALS: A full breakfast and delicious dinner daily including a farewell dinner on the last evening are included.

TRANSFERS: All transfers between airports and hotels are included as well as the handling of one average sized suitcase per person.

SIGHTSEEING: All sightseeing as outlined in the itinerary is included with entrance fees and the services of an excellent English speaking guide.

TIPS AND TAXES: Baggage handling tips at airports and hotel service charges and taxes are included.

NOT INCLUDED IN COST: U.S. passport fee, personal and baggage insurance, tips to guides, drivers and hotel staffs, items of a personal nature and any other items not specifically mentioned as being included. A charge of $180 will be made on the final billing to cover the tips to guides, drivers, and hotel staffs. Tour host will then care for all such tipping.

RESERVATIONS: A deposit of $400 per person is required to secure space on the tour. ACT NOW! Balance of the tour cost is due 75 days before departure.

BAGGAGE ALLOWANCE: The free air allowance is in a state of change by many airlines at this time. We expect that one bag weighing no more than 50 pounds will be allowed. However, to be certain, we recommend that you check with your airline nearer to departure time. During the land portion, tips for handling one bag per person are included. CANCELLATIONS: The deposit is fully refundable until 90 days before departure. From 89 days to 60 days before departure, a $200 penalty will apply. All monies paid are subject to forfeiture after this time. Trip cancellation, travel accident and baggage insurance is recommended. IMPORTANT NOTICE: Tour prices are based on rates in effect May 1, 2023, and are subject to adjustment should rates change. RESPONSIBILITY: FOWLER TOURS LLC and its representatives act solely as a booking agent for travel services and related products, and disclaim all other responsibility regarding the travel services and related products described above. Once a booking is obtained through FOWLER TOURS LLC any funds received by FOWLER TOURS LLC are sent directly to the actual supplier, who assumes all responsibility for providing the services and products purchased. FOWLER TOURS LLC and its officers, directors, employees and other representatives, will not be liable for the acts or omissions of suppliers, such as airlines, cruise lines, other transportation providers, hotels, and tour or ground operators; nor will FOWLER TOURS LLC or any of its officers, directors, employees or other representatives, have liability for any loss, injury or damage (including consequential damage) to persons or property in connection with any accommodations, transportation or other services or products purchased. FOWLER TOURS LLC and the ground operators may make changes to the daily itinerary as deemed necessary for the safety and comfort of the tour members.

SEE YOU THERE!

• CJFM Canada
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Rob Styler & Friends Israel Tour

April 28 - may 11, 2023, sample itinerary.

Experience Israel from a Messianic Perspective as you visit Jerusalem, Masada, the Valley of Megiddo, Galilee, and many other sites.

per person based on double occupancy (contact us for single supplement price)

Learn More & Get in Touch

Request a brochure       Call us at (210) 226-1075      Email us at [email protected]

Price includes:

• Roundtrip airfare to Tel Aviv, Israel
• Arrival transfer from airport to the hotel 
• All entrance fees to sites
• Tips for driver, guide, and hotels
• Departure transfer to Tel Aviv airport

Not included

• Any services not shown in the itinerary
• Beverages with meals (coffee and tea are included)
• Travel and medical insurance

WISDOM PASSAGES

A Passionate Teacher

Dr. Tim Sigler has over 25 years of experience in biblical/theological studies and higher education. 

Teaching in the Land of the Bible

Study the Bible in the lands of the Bible. Wisdom Passages offers educational tours in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Turkey.

Walk in the footsteps of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles—and learn to follow Jesus in the land where he lived and among the people he loved. Meet local experts and taste the local cuisine.

Through his extensive travels in Israel and the Middle East, Tim seeks to equip others with an understanding and appreciation of the historical and cultural world of the Bible, the Jewish roots of the Christian faith, and the ongoing role of Israel in God’s redemptive plan.

Tim has been studying the Bible in the lands of the Bible since 1989, and he will personally accompany you each step of the way. His friendships and local connections will offer your group unique opportunities to meet the experts, gain private access, and obtain special pricing on purchases so you can take home a piece of Bible history with you.

Linda Creamer

I enjoyed an awesome trip to Israel and Jordan with Tim Sigler in 2016.  Our trip itinerary included so much more than expected. I was excited to walk in Jesus footsteps. Now I'm going to Greece and Italy with Tim in 2018.  He has planned this trip to give an experience of walking in The Apostles Paul's footsteps.  It's a don't miss trip of a lifetime!

Patty Grove

Dr. Tim’s ability to weave wit with wisdom, created a truly memorable & impactful travel experience. I had the pleasure of recently touring with Dr Tim in Israel and was impressed by the depth of  his knowledge of biblical history, archaeology, & culture. He made the tour a rich experience through his talks, stories, & humor while introducing us to his personal network of  renowned archeological experts.  The experience was a most memorable trip & created a hunger to learn more.  I highly recommend Dr. Tim & Wisdom Passages  for a rewarding travel experience. 

Laura Grimaldi

Get ready for the trip of a lifetime! Our group with the expert help of Dr.Sigler had an amazing experience in Israel and Jordan. I am here with Eli Shukron a world renowned archeologist Eli spent the afternoon with all of us explaining his find at the pool of Siloam. How blessed I am to have had this opportunity! Next trip is Italy/Greece can’t wait for our next adventure with Dr.Sigler!!

Assisting Educators

Do you need to create curriculum or academic programs? If you would like assistance creating undergraduate, graduate, online, study abroad, or traditional academic programs or curriculum, Wisdom Passages can help!

Our subject matter experts and course designers can provide content and shape to your curricular needs. Carefully crafted course descriptions, objectives, outlines, and assessment tools aid in building quality educational programing . Let us help you define and describe your educational goals using the trusted framework known as Bloom’s taxonomy.

The Association of Christian Continuing Education Schools and Seminaries (ACCESS) awarded Moody Online its Course of the Year Award in 2004 for Tim’s online course in Hermeneutics.

Invite Dr. Sigler to address your institution or group for public presentations and lectures in a number of his areas of scholarly research or personal interest.

Hermeneutics / Biblical Interpretation and Exegesis

The Song of Songs

Hebrew Poetry and Wisdom Literature

Historical Geography of the Ancient Near East

Museum Tours

Bible Conferences and Retreats

Strengthening Communities

Does your organization need assistance with executive communications, conflict resolution, or strategic planning? Wisdom Passages can help you apply biblical principles that seek to honor the Lord and serve His people.

Consultation with Boards and Executive Teams

Applying Biblical Concepts of Conflict Resolution

Crafting Executive Communications

Biblical Mediation Services

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March 3-10 2023 ISRAEL TOUR w/ Ron & Elana Cantor

Jerusalem, Israel

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About this trip

WHY THIS TOUR?

Ron Cantor is an Israeli Messianic Jewish teacher and pastor, and his wife Elana is a native-born Israeli. Together, they have put together the most amazing Israel tour. "Elana and I have 30 years of experience in leading Israel tours," shares Ron. "We know what makes a life-changing experience and we never tire of seeing people draw closer to the Messiah on our tours." In addition to everything you would find on another tour, you will get:

• On-site teaching from Ron Cantor, an expert in Israel's history and Jewish Roots of the New Testament.
• Learn about growing up in Israel from Elana (and her family!).
• Worship with local Israeli believers and hear their testimonies. 
• Visit a Tel Aviv Messianic Congregation.
• See some of the hidden gems that most tourists never see.
• Learn about the history of modern and ancient Israel.
• You will laugh, cry and have a life-changing experience! 
• And all kinds of amazing surprises. 

Trip Information

What’s included.

• Excellent 4-star hotels You will not spend much time in the hotels, but when you are there, you will have a clean, comfortable room with free wifi.
• Breakfast and Dinner Delicious Mediterranean cuisine!
• Entrance fees Enjoy amazing sites in Israel from ancient ruins to national parks.
• Bus and Guide We will have a brilliant tour guide, air conditioned bus and wifi to share pics and thoughts in real time with your friends and family.

What’s not included

• Air travel Enjoy the freedom of booking your own flight. Just meet us at the hotel on Day 1.
• Lunch Be prepared to spend between $10-$15 a day. Many skip lunch as the breakfast and dinner buffets are bountiful.
• Travel Med. Insurance Medical insurance is required! If you need medical attention, you will need a credit card. Medical Travel Insurance is cheap and very smart!
• Tips and Gratuities $100 per person and will be collected on the very first night. When you eat in a restaurant, a tip of 10-15% is sufficient. You do not need to tip hotel staff, as we do that for you.
• Anything not mentioned

Available Packages

You will be sharing a room with your companion. If you were coming by yourself you'll be paired up with someone of the same gender. 

You will have an entire room to yourself.

Shalom! You will arrive in the Holy Land! Welcome to the re-birthed nation of Israel. Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel said that God would regather His people to this land, and now you are standing here! We will meet you at the hotel and give you a good meal and overview of the tour. 

We will tour Jaffa, the oldest port city in the world, and learn about Israel’s Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv at the Museum of Independence. We will take a 10-minute hike to the stunning overlook of the Mediterranean Sea. This is one of those hidden gems that 99% of tourists never see. Then we’ll continue to Herod’s port city of Caesarea. Here, Paul was imprisoned for two years and Peter immersed the first Gentiles in water. This was Israel’s most modern city when Yeshua was alive. We‘ll take a walk on the beach at the ancient Roman Aqueduct.

Next, it is off to Mount Carmel, where Elijah called down fire from heaven. You'll have an amazing view into the valley of Megiddo (Armageddon). Overnight near the Sea of Galilee.

Let’s take a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee as we imagine Yeshua walking on the water and calming the Sea. Here, we will have morning devotions. 

Once we get to the other side of the Sea, we will visit the newly discovered ancient city of Magdala and see a synagogue in which Yeshua preached. Next, you’ll enjoy a "St. Peters fish" lunch and head to Yeshua's adopted hometown of Capernaum. We’ll end the day like Yeshua started His ministry, with baptisms in the Jordan River. Overnight in Galilee.

We’ll start the day in the Hula Valley, where we will visit the Hula Valley Nature reserve. When the Jews returned to Israel in the 1800s, it was a malaria-filled swamp—now it is one of the most amazing places in Israel. We will enjoy a leisurely hike. Bring your zoom lens so you can see the water buffalos. Nearly 400 species of birds pass through the nature reserve every year—half a billion in total as they migrate. 

Then, we’ll head to the beautiful Tel Dan Nature Reserve for an easy hike next to the Dan River, where King Jeroboam tried to build a “second Jerusalem.” Next, we'll head to Caesarea Philippi. This is the place where Peter made his confession in Matthew 16 next to the infamous “Gates of Hell”.

We will take in the Golan Heights and tell you the story of Israel's miraculous victory at the Valley of the Tears. Overnight in Galilee.

Masada was the last Jewish stronghold against the Romans in 70 CE. We’ll ascend Masada and see how the Jews lived on this mountain fortress, holding off the Romans. Elana will take those who want to ride the cable car, while Ron will lead the others on a hike, that the Jewish rebels no doubt ascended. 

Then we’ll visit the hiding place of King David, En Gedi (one of Ron’s favorite spots!) where you will see gorgeous waterfalls, wildlife and more. David wrote many of the psalms here. We’ll visit Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found—an amazing story!  And then take a dip (or float) in the Dead Sea —the lowest place on earth. 

Overnight in Dead Sea Region or Jerusalem (final details soon)

Wake up in Jerusalem—the City of the Great King!

We’ll begin our day at the epic Mount of Olives, taking in the breathtaking view of the Old City and the site where Jesus will return. Ron will teach about the significance of the region in regards to the Second Coming. (You're going to be blown away!) We’ll travel down the Kidron Valley and proceed to the Garden of Gethsemane. 

Next, we’ll head to Mt. Zion and visit the Upper Room where we'll see the first Messianic synagogue building. From here, we’ll continue to the Western Wall, the most sacred site in Judaism. We’ll go back in time as we walk through the Tunnel Tour (another favorite of Ron's) on the same grounds that date to the time of Messiah. Then it is a quick walk to the Garden Tomb for the Lord’s Supper and a time of personal reflection.  

This morning, we will head over to the Jerusalem Base of Tikkun Global, where Ron serves as CEO. We will worship with Israeli believers in Hebrew and hear a powerful message from Asher Intrater!  People always tell me that this is the most meaningful day of the tour—worshipping with local believers. 

Afterward, we will tour the world-famous Jerusalem Shuk (outdoor market) and have lunch. 

Next is one of the most amazing museums—the Friends of Zion, where stories of some of the greatest Christian Zionists are told. Bring tissues! We’ll end the day with a prayer walk on the Old City wall of Jerusalem. Yes, you will be a true watchman on the wall (another favorite!). 

We’ll begin this morning in the Ir D’vid (City of David), at the Gihon Spring. We will learn how the city was taken from the Jebusites by King David. We’ll walk through Hezekiah’s tunnel (an amazing experience—bring a small flashlight!), then proceed to the Southern Wall Excavations. Imagine coming with your sacrifice to the Temple. Here is where Peter preached his first sermon to 3,000 Jewish men, who were soon after immersed in the local mikvot (immersion tanks). The first Jewish-flavored mega Church! 

In the afternoon, we will visit the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. This is one of the most powerful and meaningful exhibits in the world.

We will enjoy a farewell dinner, and exchange emails and social media. Airport transfers.

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Messianic Tours

• More than 20 years working with Messianic communities
• Experienced guides
• Best hotel prices

Messianic Israel tours are tours of Israel that are designed specifically for Messianics. These tours typically include visits to important religious sites in Israel, such as Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan River, as well as other places of historical and cultural significance. The tours are often led by Messianic Jewish guides who provide information and perspective on the biblical and historical context of the sites being visited. Messianic tours also include teachings from the Bible, as well as opportunities for worship and fellowship with other Messianic believers.

Messianic Jews and Christians who visit Israel often do so as a way to deepen their understanding of the Bible and their faith. Many believe that visiting the land of Israel and experiencing its history, culture, and religious sites firsthand can help them connect more deeply with the biblical stories and teachings that they have studied. Some Messianic travelers may also visit Israel as a way to connect with the Jewish roots of their faith, as Messianic Judaism emphasizes the importance of understanding the Jewish context of the Bible and Jesus' teachings. Additionally, visiting Israel can be a way for Messianics to connect with other believers and form a sense of community.

Directory of Messianic Organizations in Israel

Kehila News Directory is a searchable list of congregations, ministries, and businesses related to the Messianic Community in Israel

Aharon Levarko

Arieh bar david, arthur du mosch, avinoam marcus, gershon nerel bible study tours, hanna ben-haim, herzl ein eli, ishai nerel, israel college of the bible tours, isra home tours & travel, jerry bulow, jerusalem eternal tours, keren ben or, keshet journeys, kira frusen.

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SkyWatchTV’s Tour of Israel

Skywatchtv’s 2023 tour of israel: search for the travelers.

Join Derek Gilbert and Sharon K. Gilbert with special guest messianic Rabbi Zev Porat, in the Holy Land from March 19-30, 2023 !

We guarantee this will be different from any other tour of Israel!

For the LORD has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: “This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it.” Psalm 132:13-14, ESV

We’ll visit God’s “mount of assembly,” Zion, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem — site of the prophesied Battle of Armageddon. The tour will include key sites in the long war between God and the rebellious “sons of God,” such as:

• Mount Hermon, site of the Watchers’ rebellion and assembly of the pagan gods of Canaan
• Banias, the Grotto of Pan
• Shiloh, where the Tabernacle stood for centuries before Solomon built the Temple
• Golan Heights, the long-ago kingdom of Bashan ruled by Og, last of the Rephaim
• Joshua’s Altar on Mount Ebal
• Qumran, where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered
• Gilgal Refaim, the mysterious “Wheel of the Giants”
• Beit El, where Jacob had a vision of angels traveling between Heaven and Earth
• The Red Sea, where God humbled Pharaoh–and his personal gods
• Argaman, where Israel placed a symbolic “footprint” on the way to Zion
• The mysterious dolmens, megalithic tombs of the Travelers — the Rephaim!

And more—especially if you take advantage of the optional three-day extension to Jordan. See Mount Nebo, where Moses got his only look at the promised land, the red desert of Wadi Rum, and the breathtaking beauty of Petra.

Click here for a sample tour itinerary from Lipkin Tours! (Note: Link opens PDF file.)

As a bonus, come with us for an optional tour extension to Jordan!

Join SkyWatchTV’s Derek and Sharon Gilbert on a unique tour of the ancient land of Moab! We’ll visit Mount Nebo, the “mountain of the Travelers,” where Moses got his only look at the Promised Land—and from which you’ll see the site of ancient Sodom and the place where Ezekiel foresaw the destruction of the end times army of Gog.

Then we’ll visit Petra—carved into the mountains of Seir by the Nabateans, lost to civilization until re-discovered by the Swiss explorer John Burkhardt, and made famous by  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade . And you’ll hear evidence that will convince you that Petra is far more important in the long supernatural war than you ever imagined!

Take advantage of this opportunity to see breathtaking natural beauty and Jordan’s fascinating connections to the Holy Land!

Click here for a sample itinerary of the optional three-day tour extension to Jordan! (Note: Link opens PDF file.)

For more information and to register for the SkyWatchTV tour of Israel March 19-30, 2023, with optional three-day extension to Jordan,  click here to go to the Lipkin Tours website .

See the SkyWatchTV documentaries of our 2018 and 2019 tours of Israel in full HD!

Follow the evidence with SkyWatch TV hosts Derek and Sharon Gilbert as they tour Israel, Jordan, and the mysterious megalithic towers of Sardinia! Special guests include Timothy Alberino, Spanish explorer Anselm Pi Rambla, and Aaron Lipkin.

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown… – Genesis 6:4

Click here  to stream  Wars of the Gods Vol. 1: Search for the Titans  in full HD for just $2.95!

Or click here  to buy  wars of the gods vol. 1: search for the titans on dvd — just $19.95 at the skywatchtv store.

The groundbreaking new documentary Search for the Rephaim  takes you on an eye-opening tour of the Holy Land — ground zero in the long war with the fallen realm.

SkyWatchTV’s Derek and Sharon Gilbert take you to mysterious Gilgal Refaim, created for the veneration of the dead, and show you a jaw-dropping, previously unknown serpent-shaped mound covered with megalithic tombs that’s far older and larger than the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio!

The Gilberts lead you to the altar of Joshua, through the tunnels beneath Jerusalem’s Old City, show you the real locations of the Crucifixion and burial tomb of Jesus, and then up to the Temple Mount, where the final battle of the ages will be fought — Armageddon.

They also take you to Mount Nebo overlooking the ancient plains of Moab and show you the site of biblical Sodom. They explain Sodom’s connection to the veneration of the Rephaim that brought disaster on Israel, and how it connects to Ezekiel’s end times prophecy of the war of Gog and Magog.

Finally, they take you on a one-of-a-kind tour of Petra to show you the forgotten, original location of Islam’s most sacred relic.

This two-hour tour of the Israel, with special guests Pastor Carl Gallups and messianic Rabbi Zev Porat, will open your eyes to the physical, historical reality of the supernatural war that’s been ongoing since Eden.

Click here  to stream  Wars of the Gods Vol. 2: Search for the Rephaim  in full HD for just $2.95!

Or click here  to buy  wars of the gods vol. 2: search for the rephaim  on dvd — a two-dvd set that includes four hours of additional teachings by pastor carl gallups, messianic rabbi zev porat, and skywatchtv’s derek gilbert for just $24.95 at the skywatchtv store.

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Sherry Moore

Yosher tours, jerry feldman israel tour 2023, may 28, 2023 to jun 12, 2023, join us as we explore the holy land of israel .

Price of tour with flights: $5,755*

You can formally register with a nonrefundable deposit of $200. 

* Price for 21 passengers and more, if more than 26 passengers sign up, price will decrease. 

What's included in this trip:

• Round Trip to TLV – Airlines do not confirm group flights until 10 months before departure.  
• Hotels with breakfast & dinner daily, One Fish Lunch in Galilee 
• Meeting and assistance at the airport in Israel upon arrival
• Transfer between airport and hotels for passengers arriving and departing with group flights
• English-speaking guide throughout the tour
• Baggage handling, hotel taxes, service charges

What's not included in price:

• Lunches not mentioned in itinerary
• Luggage fees at airport if applicable (See Booking Information below)
• Travel Insurance ( required ):  available at  AIG Travel Guard
• Single occupancy
• Gifts/personal expenses
• Land Only passengers are not guaranteed airport meeting and assistance, including transfers to & from the airport
• Tips for Guide, Bus Driver and hotel staff (*See comment below)

Day 1: Sunday, May 28 : Depart Kansas City for Tel Aviv

Day 2: Mon, May 29: Arrive at Ben Gurion Airport - Overnight Eshel HaShomron, Ariel

Day 3: Tues, May 30 :  Mt. Ebal (Joshua’s Altar) with Aaron Lipkin, Roman Sebastia, (Biblical Samaria),  Mt. Gerizim (13:30) (Mt. of Blessing) – Samaritan Village and Shechem overlook (Jacob’s Well and Joseph’s Tomb), Elon Moreh/Mt. Kabir (view what Abraham saw, receiving the Land Promise) – evening Biblical Gardens Tour (8:00 PM)– Overnight Eshel HaShomron

Day 4: Wed, May 31: Shiloh Children’s Fund Terrorism Healing Center, Shiloh (8:30 AM), Tabernacle Site,  Beit El (Jacob’s Ladder with Aaron Lipkin), Nabi Samuel, Hass Promenade (vista view of Old City Jerusalem) – overnight Jerusalem Dan Panorama.

Day 5: Thurs, June 1: Leave Hotel at 7:30 AM - Temple Mount (conditions permitting), Pools of Bethesda, City of David 11:00am, Pool of Siloam, Pilgrimage Road to Southern wall excavations, Jewish Quarter, Hurva Synagogue (1:30pm), Temple Institute (2:15pm), Western Wall Tunnels at (3:30 PM). Overnight Jerusalem Dan Panorama.

Day 6: Fri, June 2: Yad Hashmonah Biblical Garden (guided tour) 8:30, Israel Museum, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum (11:20),Fun & food at Machane Yehuda Open Market, Garden Tomb (3:30 PM), Mt. Of Olives, Dominus Flevit, Gethsemane Overnight Jerusalem Dan Panorama.

Day 7: Sat, June 3: Herodian, Schindler’s Grave, St. Peter Ingaligantu at Caiaphas’ House, Upper room, David’s Tower Museum 2:00 PM, Kishle (Praetorium), Church of the Holy Sepulcher - Overnight at Jerusalem Dan Panorama.

Day 8: Sun, June 4: Early departure. Hebron, Tel Romeida, Lachish,  Sde Boker (Ben Gurion’s desert home, gravesite & breathtaking Zin Valley), Mitzpe Ramon Observatory 3:30pm. Overnight in Eilat on the Red Sea.

Day 9: Mon, June 5 : Morning visit to full size replica of the Tabernacle in the wilderness at Timna National Park 9:30am, Red Sea Aquarium & Underwater Observatory 2pm, Coral Beach Red Sea snorkel. Enjoy late afternoon Hotel to relax at pool and in the sun.

PETRA OPTION: - All day roundtrip to Petra, Jordan (extra cost TBD) - Overnight  Eilat

Day 10: Tues, June 6: Masada 10am, Ein Gedi Oasis, Qumran: Dead Sea Scrolls Caves (time permitting), Kalyia Beach Dead Sea swim (float)– Overnight at Kibbutz Kalyia

Day 11: Wed, June 7: 7:45 Departure, Qaysir El Yehud (Baptismal site), Beit Hogla: Jordan crossing & Elijah’s ascent), Jericho: Tel El Sultan, Gilgal Argaman, Bet Shean, Arbel Cliffs (time permitting) - Overnight at Nof Ginnosar

Day 12: Thurs , June 8: Gamla, Lunch, OZ 77 (1:30pm), Tel Dan Nature Reserve, Caesarea Philippi (Banyias), Kibutz Misgav Am (4:30 PM) overnight at Nof Ginosar.

Day 13: Fri, June 9: Migdal (Magdala), Almagor, Kurzain,  Church of the Primacy (Peter restored),  Capernaum, St. Peter’s Fish lunch (12:30) (incl.), Susita (Decapolis City), Galilee Boat ride Nof Ginnosar to Nof Ginnosar (5 PM) – 0vernight at Nof Ginosar.

Day 14: Sat, June 10: Tel Jezreel, Mt. Precipice View of Nazareth, Megiddo, Haifa – Mt. Carmel, Indian Army soldier cemetery, Caesarea Maritima – Netanya Ramada afternoon pool and/or Mediterranean beach swim - overnight hotel in Netanya.

Day 15: Sun, June 11 :  Eretz Israel museum, Anu Museum 11am: History of the Jewish People (Diaspora Museum), Palmach Museum (1:30 PM), Jaffa (Peter’s Vision) & Farewell Dinner at Babai Restaurant 6:30pm in Jaffa. Depart for Airport late Evening flight.

Day 16: Mon, June 12: Morning Arrival home in Kansas City.

- Itinerary subject to change-

Flights from the USA

May 28, 2023

United#1753

Departs Kansas City At 1:47 PM, Arrives at Newark at 5:24 PM.

Departs Newark at 9:00 PM, Arrives in Tel Aviv at 2:25 PM, the next day.

Flights from Israel :

June 12, 2023

Departs Tel Aviv at 1:00 AM, Arrives at Newark at 5:45 AM.

Departs Newark at 10:36 AM, Arrives in Kansas City at 12:43 PM.

Itinerary subject to change

Basic Airport / Flight Information

• Your airline ticket will be issued electronically.  When you arrive to the airport, please be prepared to present a passport to an airline representative in order to receive your boarding pass.
• All group seat assignments are under airport control.  Seat assignments online are not available for groups.  Pre-check in is not available to groups.
• You should arrive at the airport two hours before your flight departs.

Luggage (per person) limitations:

• Checked:  weight = 50 pounds max Maximum Size:  total of length + width + depth = 62”
• Carry-ons:  you are allowed to bring one piece that will fit in an overhead compartment (up to 14”w x 22”h x 9” deep) plus a smaller piece that will fit under your seat (up to 10”w x 17”h x 9” deep).
• All carry-on luggage items such as liquids, gels and aerosols must be in 3.4 ounce (100ml) or smaller containers.  Larger containers that are half-full or toothpaste tubes rolled up are not allowed.  There is not a limit on the types of liquids, gels and aerosols in your checked baggage.
• Hazardous materials see:   https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/resources/media/PackSafe_for_Passengers_English.pdf

Booking Information:

• Registration requires a $200 nonrefundable deposit. The remaining balance can be paid online (with a 4% convenience fee) or by check, according to the payment schedule below. 
• Air & Land package price of tour will decrease if more than 26 people sign up and pay for tour.  We will update the price and refund the amount if this happens!
• DEPOSITS AND PAYMENTS: A non-refundable deposit of $200 is required from each traveler along with their reservation form to guarantee the booking as soon as possible.  The remaining balance is due in 3 payments. • The first payment of $2,300 is due on December 28, 2022. • The second payment of $2,300 is due on February 28, 2023. • Final Payment is due on April 28, 2023.
• A $35 fee will be applied for your checked bag on the United flights to and from Kansas - you will pay this at Airline desk.

Please Note: Though tips are not included in the published tour price, tips are set at industry standards and are not optional. They will cover daily guide, bus driver, hotel baggage, housekeeping, dining room and front desk; all who rely on tips as their primary income. This tour is twice as many days as a traditional tour and therefore tips in total will reflect that, approximately $225 p/p for 14 touring days. You will submit the tips (in cash) to Rabbi Feldman upon arrival in Israel. Any additional personal tipping will be your prerogative. Again, this designated amount reflects standard tipping practices for all tours. 

Yosher Tours can answer most of your questions (see above contact) as they are happy to serve and accommodate your needs. Contact for Rabbi Jerry Feldman: [email protected]

Available Packages

Air & land package - price: $5,755 unavailable as of april 4, 2023, $5,755.00 deposit: $200.00 per person.

Price per person in shared room.

DEPOSITS AND PAYMENTS: A non-refundable deposit of $200 is required from each traveler along with their reservation form to guarantee the booking as soon as possible. The remaining balance is due in 3 payment.:

Land Only Package - Price - $3,910 Unavailable as of May 31, 2023

$3,910.00 deposit: $3,910.00 per person, extra options, single occupancy - price $1,370 unavailable as of may 31, 2023, petra day trip - june 5, 2023 - price : $370 unavailable as of may 31, 2023.

Noah Tours Ltd. Tour Operator in Israel

ISRAEL MADE SIMPLE

Testimonials

Essential Updates

Make sure to download "what's app" and "destinationbook" apps before leaving., please pack your luggage tags and badge in your carry-on to have access when you arrive., when you arrive at the airport and make your way to the arrivals hall, turn right to look for the airport host holding a “rock, road, rabbi israel tour” sign. the guide  will be close to steimatsky bookstore., shuttles on arrival will be at 12pm, 3pm, & 6pm..

There are tours of Israel and then there are journeys with a Rabbi. Experience the Holy Land from a fresh yet ancient perspective, as Messianic Rabbi Jason Sobel leads you through the landscape of the heroes of the Bible. Your soul will be invigorated as you discover the roots of your faith and journey deeper.

Rabbi Jason Sobel,  New York Times Best Selling Author

Raised in a Jewish home in New Jersey, Rabbi Jason Sobel dedicated much of his life to finding truth. After years of seeking and studying, he encountered the Lord and found his true destiny as a Jewish follower of Jesus (Yeshua). Suddenly, all the traditions Rabbi Jason grew up with took on new depth and meaning as God connected ancient wisdom with the teachings of the Messiah.

He received his Rabbinic ordination from the UMJC (Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations) in 2005. He also has a Bachelor of Arts in Jewish Studies and a Master of Arts in intercultural studies and is currently founder and president of Fusion with Rabbi Jason, a resource offering insightful teachings reconnecting modern faith with its rich roots.

Caesarea Maritima

Mount of Beatitudes

Mt. Precipice

Nazareth Village

Sea of Galilee

Garden of Gethsemane

Herodian Temple

City of David

Holy Sepulchre

Pool of Betesda

St. Anne's Church

Garden Tomb

Pontius Pilate's Praetorium

Pool of Siloam

Western Wall

Via Dolorosa

SINGLE OCCUPANCY

for Solo Traveler

DOUBLE OCCUPANCY

Per Person based on Double Occupancy

TRIPLE OCCUPANCY

Per Person for 3rd Adult

or Child in a room

*Guests must be over the age of 14

Price Includes:

Welcome Packet

1 Group ground transfer from the airport to the first site.

Daily breakfast and dinner at the hotels

Entrance fees to all sites

Professionally guided sightseeing

Air-conditioned transportation by deluxe coach

Sailing on the Sea of Galilee

All gratuities and taxes

All hotels are included in your tour package dates October 18, 2023 check-in through October 26, 2023 check-out.

(Separate purchase; not included in land price)

Book your flights to arrive in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, between 11:00 AM-1PM.  A group shuttle will be provided to take the tour guests to the first site. Shuttles will run starting at 2pm and the last one will be at 7pm (need to arrive by 6PM). It is imperative that you contact PREMIER to let us know your flight information once you book.  We will need this information to coordinate your arrival and departure from the Tel Aviv airport. 

Book departure flights from Tel Aviv at 10:00 PM or later on October 26, 2023.

Jackson Travel -  [email protected]  - is the preferred provider for Premier Vacations & Events. We highly recommend using Jackson Travel to assist the group with booking any flights, coordinating arrival times, and any flight questions that may arise. To get started, click here .

Travel insurance is highly recommended. Policies including a "cancel for any reason" policy offers the broadest coverage. It is best to purchase within 14 days of booking your reservation. This covers travel interruptions and the land package part of your trip. 

Contact Premier:   [email protected] or 800-889-5265

What is the real Hamas?

How Israeli, Palestinian and US political actors understand Hamas is not merely a theoretical question – it will determine what kind of agreement can be reached to end the current war, and what the future of Gaza will look like

I n late October 2023, the veteran Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin published an open letter denouncing a man he had long called a friend – Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official. Baskin, an architect of the deal that freed the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in 2011, is one of the only Israeli citizens who has maintained consistent contact with leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement. Hamad, a former journalist with a degree in veterinary medicine, was also involved in the Shalit negotiations and served as deputy foreign minister in the 2012 Hamas government. Prior to the 7 October attacks, for more than a decade and a half, Hamad and Baskin had exchanged frequent phone calls and text messages. These mainly concerned negotiations around prisoner swap deals, and sometimes the possibility of a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas. The pair developed a warm working relationship based on mutual trust.

After 7 October and the start of Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, that relationship started to unravel. Hamad insisted that the attacks were entirely justified, and denied that Hamas fighters had carried out atrocities during their incursion into Israel. On 24 October, in an interview for a Lebanese TV channel, Hamad vowed that Hamas would commit the same acts “again and again”. He said that “Al-Aqsa Flood”, Hamas’s name for its armed offensive, “is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth”. Once considered a thoughtful observer of Palestinian politics, Hamad now declared that “nobody should blame us for what we do – on 7 October, on 10 October, on October 1,000,000. Everything we do is justified.”

To Baskin, this did not sound like the man he had come to know. The proclamations by Hamad, “thought to be one of the most moderate people in Hamas”, Baskin noted, landed like a betrayal. Baskin had long argued that it was possible to broker an agreement with Hamas for a “ hudna ”, or a fixed-term armistice, in exchange for opening the land, air, and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, which Israel has enforced, with Egypt’s support, since Hamas came to power in 2007. Baskin had believed that Hamad could help move Hamas toward acceding to a two-state solution. In the months before 7 October, Baskin had been trying to organise a meeting with him in Europe to discuss the prospect of a long-term truce.

But after 7 October, Baskin, too, shifted his position. “Hamas has forfeited its right to exist as a government of any territory and especially the territory next to Israel,” he wrote in an article for the Times of Israel on 28 October. “Hamas now fully deserves the determination of Israel to eliminate them as the political and military body that controls Gaza.” More recently, Baskin has proposed exiling Hamas leaders such as Yahya Sinwar from Gaza as part of a potential ceasefire deal. He has also proposed that Hamas be barred from contesting future Palestinian elections unless they renounce violence. It is not that Baskin has given up on peace – he remains a fixture in international media coverage as a lonely, even desperate Israeli voice calling for an end to the war. It is that he no longer believes Hamas can be part of the equation. Since October, many Israelis, even or perhaps especially on the centre left, have gone on a similar journey.

In late December, I sat with Baskin in the basement of his home, in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Born in New York, Baskin is a stocky, energetic man in his late 60s. He answered the door wearing the silver dog tag engraved with the words “Bring them Home”, which has become an emblem of the movement calling for the return of the more than 100 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas .

One question looms over the story of Baskin’s exchange with Hamad: did Hamas change, or did Baskin simply misunderstand the group all along? Baskin believes it was the former. “Most of the years previous to 7 October, there was a willingness to explore pragmatic, long-term ceasefires,” he told me. “In retrospect it became clear – there were signs, but none of us read them – that from two years before 7 October, Hamas had made a decision that there was a no-go on a long-term modus vivendi [with Israel] and that they were beginning to make their plans for an eventual attack.”

Baskin recalled his final exchange with Hamad in late October. “During the early days of the war, when I heard that his house was bombed, and I didn’t know he wasn’t in Gaza, I said to him: ‘Ghazi, if they’re going after you, there is no one in Hamas who is safe.’” (Ahead of the war, Hamad had departed for Beirut.) “He responded to me: ‘We have lots of surprises, and we will kill lots of Israelis.’”

That was when Baskin posted his open letter to Hamad on social media. “I’m sorry to say that you were someone who I actually trusted and thought that we could help bring a better future to our peoples. But you and your friends have brought the Palestinian cause back 75 years,” he wrote. “I think you have lost your mind and you have lost your moral code.” And with that, Baskin severed their ties.

F ive months into Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, more than 30,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed. The Israeli ground invasion has displaced 2 million Palestinians within the Gaza Strip, many of them now forced into makeshift tents in and around the southern city of Rafah. In northern Gaza, vast swaths of which have been flattened by relentless Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling, international experts warn that “ famine is imminent ”. Gazan children have already begun to die from lack of food.

As the war continues, how Israeli, Palestinian and American political actors understand Hamas is not merely a theoretical question; it is as much a material factor on the ground as bullets and tanks. It is one of the factors shaping military strategy, and will determine what kind of agreement can be reached to bring the current war to an end, and what the future of Gaza will look like.

The disintegration of Baskin and Hamad’s relationship thus reflects a larger and older debate about Hamas, one that has only become more urgent. At its core is a question about the essence of the organisation: whether it is primarily a nationalist group with an Islamist character, which could be a constructive player in a meaningful peace process, or whether it is a more radical, fundamentalist group, whose hostility to Israel is so unwavering that it can only play the role of violent opposition.

One camp in this debate, chiefly composed of western counterterrorism experts and US and Israeli security analysts, has long seen the group as defined by its violent hostility to Israel’s existence. According to this view, there was nothing surprising about 7 October. Instead, in the words of Matthew Levitt , a former Bush administration official and the author of a 2007 book on Hamas, it “demonstrated in the most visceral and brutal way that Hamas ultimately prioritised destroying Israel and creating an Islamist Palestinian state in its place”. Analysts of this school tend to point to Hamas’s vast tunnel infrastructure as evidence that the group protects its own fighters while leaving Gazan civilians above the surface to fend for themselves, without any system of bomb shelters.

An opposing, more heterogeneous camp, comprised of academics and thinktankers, many of them Palestinian, sees Hamas as a multifarious, complex political actor, divided between radical and moderating tendencies. Hamas, they argue, is the product of the reality under which Palestinians live – brutal occupation and blockade – and therefore potentially responsive to changes in those conditions. The problem, according to this view, is that even when Hamas leaders have appeared to be open to moderation, Israeli policy has made it impossible for the group to pursue this line without losing its credibility among Palestinians as the last-standing bastion of meaningful opposition to Israel and its occupation.

When we spoke in January, the Palestinian scholar Tareq Baconi said that “the major misconception” at the core of the dominant discourse about Hamas is the idea that “if Hamas as a security threat was undermined, Israel will have no issue with the Palestinians”. But if “Hamas were to disappear tomorrow,” he said, the Israeli blockade on Gaza and military rule in the West Bank would remain. “There’s this tendency to suggest that this is a war between Israel and Hamas rather than a war between Israel and Palestinians, which places Hamas outside of Palestinians,” he added. “It’s an inability to address the political drivers animating Palestinians.”

Khaled Elgindy, who is a former adviser to the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership on negotiations with Israel and now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute thinktank, argues that any postwar arrangement that excludes Hamas will be doomed to repeat the mistakes that led to the current war. “It’s exactly this notion of: ‘We’re going to make peace with this group of Palestinians while we make war with that group of Palestinians,’” which had served as the rationale for Israel’s economic suffocation and periodic bombardment of the Gaza Strip, he told me. “That’s nonsensical in terms of conflict resolution.”

“Hamas is a fact of political life in Gaza and in the Palestinian scene in general. And if anything, it is much more relevant today than it’s ever been,” Elgindy said. In an article for Foreign Affairs published late last year, he expanded on his view that Hamas must form part of a postwar settlement. The goal, wrote Elgindy, should be to incorporate Hamas and other hardline militant factions into the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the umbrella group dominated by the secular-nationalist party Fatah, which is recognised as the sole official representative of the Palestinian people on the world stage.

Elgindy believes that Palestinian politics could contain Hamas’s rejectionism alongside the Palestinian Authority’s cooperation with Israel, just as Israeli politics includes parties that support and those that oppose engagement with the Palestinian Authority. In the short term, he acknowledged, that might make “achieving a two-state solution harder, because they’re going to have a veto the same way any opposition does”. But in the long run, Elgindy continued, integrating Hamas into the PLO might begin to heal the persistent split in the Palestinian national movement, which has provided Israel with a convenient excuse for refusing to participate in any negotiations. If Hamas were to agree to abide by the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO, not only would this increase the chances that a peace agreement might last, it would also curtail Hamas’s ability “to act as a free agent and be the spoiler it can be”, Elgindy said.

At present, though, it seems highly unlikely Hamas leaders, in Gaza or abroad, would be willing to agree to a programme of the kind that Elgindy and others in what’s known as “the Middle East policy space” have sketched out. In early March, representatives from Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian political factions reportedly met in Moscow for unity talks. Since the 2007 Hamas-Fatah war, there have been more than a dozen similar reconciliation attempts sponsored by a range of Arab and Muslim-led governments. None have translated into any durable arrangement.

But if Palestinian unity with Hamas may prove elusive, it is equally difficult to imagine a future without the militant group. “I think people believe this basic line, that if we destroy or at least marginalise Hamas, that will make peace more likely,” Elgindy said. In practice, he continued, this position rationalises Israel’s devastating continued assault on Gaza. This view is wrong, he said – not just strategically but morally.

H amas was formed in 1987 by members of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood against the backdrop of the first intifada, the popular Palestinian uprising ignited when an Israeli truck killed four Palestinian workers in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. The group’s name, which means “zeal”, is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah , or the Islamic Resistance Movement. Historically, Palestinian Islamists had inclined toward political quietism , believing that Palestinian society had to be Islamicised if the fight against Israel were to be successful. Yet as demonstrations mounted, the struggle appeared to them as one they should lead.

Hamas’s founding leaders were, for the most part, refugees who had been born in what is now Israel and forced to flee to the Gaza Strip during what Palestinians call the Nakba, the displacement of roughly 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the group’s spiritual leader, was born in 1936 in the village of Al-Jura, near the city of Ashkelon, in the south of present-day Israel. Diminutive and softly spoken, Yassin, who dressed in a white shroud and used a wheelchair owing to a childhood accident, seemed to his followers to embody the suffering of his people. In 2004, Israel assassinated Yassin, as it would many of Hamas’s leaders, when Israeli helicopters fired on his entourage as he left a mosque after prayers at dawn.

The organisation’s 1988 founding charter is a mixture of Qur’anic quotations, disquisitions on Islamic doctrine, nationalist declarations and conspiratorial antisemitism. The document defined the land of Palestine as a waqf , or Islamic trust, “consecrated for future Muslim generations until judgment day”, of which no inch could be given up. It accused Zionists of instigating the French and Bolshevik revolutions and labelled groups like “the Freemasons, the Rotary and Lions clubs” as “destructive intelligence-gathering organisations” that facilitated the “nazism of the Jews”. It subsumed the Palestinian national struggle under the banner of religious war. It was, in other words, an unlikely charter for a movement that, within a decade, would bid to represent the Palestinian cause, which had for the better part of the previous half-century been led by avowedly secular groups.

Whether the Islamic radicalism of the founding charter represents the operative ideology of the organisation has been debated almost since the group’s creation. Some scholars of Islamist politics see Hamas’s religious rhetoric as mainly a framework in service of its nationalist goals, which are its central concern. According to Azzam Tamimi, author of the book Hamas: A History from Within, the movement’s leaders realised that, as it grew, it needed a more accessible way of defining itself to the broader world. A document titled This Is What We Struggle For, written in the mid-90s in response to a request by a European diplomat for clarity on the group’s objectives, defined Hamas in rather different terms to those in the founding charter. Hamas was “a Palestinian national liberation movement that struggles for the liberation of the Palestinian occupied lands and for the recognition of Palestinian legitimate rights”. In a sense, the question of how to understand Hamas grows out of the gap between these two rhetorical modes: between uncompromising jihad and the language of anticolonial resistance, between fundamentalist ideology and political pragmatism.

“There is no single ‘Hamas,’” Tareq Baconi writes in his book, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance . “It is an exercise in futility, as well as fundamentally inaccurate and reductionist to try to suggest that the movement is some form of monolithic actor,” Baconi continues. There are, within the organisation, hardliners and pragmatists, religious conservatives and comparative moderates, those who prioritise the armed struggle against Israel, and those, at least until recently, who sought gains through political means. Hamas has “always sought to play between the violent and the diplomatic tracks, to shift from one track to the other, whenever it saw its best interests as either”, says Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East expert and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Yet if Hamas’s leadership was not always unified on matters of vision, the persistence of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza gave the group unity of purpose. In 1993, when the PLO, led by Yasser Arafat, recognised the state of Israel and renounced violence with the signing of the first Oslo accord, it was Hamas that claimed the mantle of armed resistance and commitment to liberating all of historic Palestine. The agreement between Israel and the PLO was a disappointment to many Palestinians, and not just supporters of Hamas. In a prescient 1993 essay, the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles”. Arafat had agreed to give up armed struggle against Israel and discounted the Palestinians’ “unilateral and internationally acknowledged claim to the West Bank and Gaza”, Said wrote, while “Israel has conceded nothing”.

Throughout the 1990s, Hamas, adamantly opposed to Oslo, intensified its fight against Israel. In its early years, its attacks had mainly taken the form of small arms fire, low-intensity roadside bombs and low-tech attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers. That changed on 6 April 1994, when a Palestinian man, dispatched by one of the leaders of Hamas’s armed wing, blew himself up at a bus stop in the northern Israeli city of Afula, killing eight Israelis. It was expressly an act of vengeance in response to the massacre of 29 worshippers at the Ibrahimi mosque, carried out two months earlier by an Israeli extremist hoping to derail peace talks between the Israeli government and the PLO. The suicide bombing was also an expression of Hamas’s emerging military strategy. Hamas leaders saw civilian deaths as Israel’s weak spot, believing they would erode Israelis’ sense of personal security and, ultimately, reduce Israeli resolve.

The collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, and the eruption of the second intifada, marked the transformation of Hamas into something more than just a spoiler. It emerged as a genuine challenger to the PLO and the institutions of the recently formed Palestinian Authority. The more Israel pursued settlement construction, and the more it entrenched the apparatus of military occupation, building checkpoints and walls, the more Fatah and the PA appeared to have capitulated, and the more Hamas’s uncompromising position gained in appeal. As the group mounted more suicide attacks through the 2000s, it also diversified its arsenal. In 2001, Hamas fired its first rockets from the Gaza Strip.

For Hamas’s leaders, this strategy of violence appeared to be vindicated in August 2005, as Israel began to withdraw its military and more than 8,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip. (By contrast, for Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, the disengagement was a tactical move intended to sabotage future peace negotiations.) “Today you are leaving Gaza humiliated,” proclaimed Mohammed Deif, Ayyash’s successor and commander of the Qassam Brigades, in a videotaped message after the disengagement. “Hamas will not disarm and will continue the struggle against Israel until it is erased from the map.”

O ne perhaps surprising outcome of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was that while it seemed, to many in Hamas, to reflect the success of armed struggle, it was at this moment that the group appeared to shift its focus toward more conventional politics. Previously, Hamas had largely boycotted the electoral process, on the grounds that participation would have amounted to a recognition of the Oslo accords. Now, buoyed up by the Israeli withdrawal, Hamas contested the January 2006 legislative elections, running on an anti-corruption and law-and-order platform. To the shock of many in the PA, Israel and the Bush administration, Hamas won an outright majority. “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said at the time. The group that had long rejected the institutions created by the Oslo framework now had a popular mandate to lead them.

In contesting the elections, Hamas appeared to be deprioritising violence in favour of political engagement. “There are certain fundamental principles that they will not relinquish, but ultimately, they are not rigid in their approach,” said Tahani Mustafa, Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to give up the fight to liberate Palestine,” Mustafa added. “It’s just recognising what they want, and what reality will allow, and then trying to figure a middle ground between them.” Ahead of the legislative election, Hamas, led at the time by Khaled Meshaal, had signed on to the 2005 Cairo declaration, which affirmed the PLO as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” and called for the establishment of the Palestinian state.

“Hamas had de facto acquiesced between 2005 and 2007 to a political programme that [might], if leveraged correctly, have led to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and the dismantling of the occupation,” Baconi wrote in an essay for Foreign Policy last November. But whether a Hamas-run Palestinian Authority would have used its popular mandate to pursue a Palestinian state alongside Israel, or if it would have harnessed the PA to pursue an intensified armed conflict, as Israeli leaders feared, we will never know. “Hamas’s gamble” – its shift to participation within the PA framework and endorsement of a Palestinian state on ’67 lines – “paid off,” Baconi writes in Hamas Contained, “in the sense that its bluff was never called.”

In response to Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory, Fatah members refused to join the Hamas-led government. Israel tightened its enclosure of the Gaza Strip. The US and European Union soon cut off aid . By the autumn of 2006, groups of Fatah and Hamas gunmen were carrying out assassinations, kidnappings and torturing each other’s loyalists, even as unity talks between Abbas and Meshaal continued. On 14 June 2007, after five days of fierce gun battles in Gaza, Hamas expelled the PA from the territory – and suddenly Hamas found itself in an entirely new role. It was now responsible for daily life in Gaza.

S heikh Yassin once claimed that, during the first intifada, he had turned down an Israeli offer to take over the Gaza Strip. “It would have been crazy for us to consent to be mere stand-ins for Israeli rule,” he said. But now Hamas found itself with the task of administering a territory besieged by air, land and sea, and subject to near-routine aerial bombardment and artillery shelling by Israel.

Gradually, through the next decade and a half, Hamas consolidated its rule over the coastal enclave. To some, it seemed that Hamas had transitioned from a militant group with an ideology of armed opposition to a pseudo-state governing force. A quarter of its first elected cabinet boasted US graduate degrees. “They were never democratic or soft authoritarian, as some of the literature says,” Khalil Sayegh, a Gaza-born peace activist, told me. “They were hard authoritarian, but they were smart enough to deceive the west in how they dealt with the situation.” After expelling Fatah, Hamas moved on to limit the power of Gaza’s clans, which represented an alternative base of power. To clamp down on dissent and enforce conformity, Sayegh added, Hamas relied on tactics that ranged from public shaming to blackmail and torture.

Hamas never implemented sharia law, despite the push from some of the movement’s hardliners, but it did attempt, rather haphazardly, to legislate public morality. “Islamising measures are put forth tentatively, then retracted when citizens object,” a 2011 report by the Crisis Group found. At the same time, Hamas faced criticism from more radical Salafist groups for failing to impose strict Islamic law on the territory. In 2009, when al-Qaida-aligned Salafists declared an Islamic State in the southern Gaza Strip, Hamas forces violently crushed them during an assault on a Rafah mosque.

Hamas developed its elaborate system of tunnels to get around the harsh conditions of the blockade, as well as to shield its fighters from Israeli airstrikes. In particular, the tunnels connecting Gaza to Egypt became the besieged territory’s economic lifeline and a primary conduit for the smuggling of weapons. According to one estimate, in the mid-2010s, tunnel revenue provided the Hamas government with roughly $750m a year. Yet this was not nearly enough to prevent what the American political scientist Sara Roy has called the “de-development of Gaza”. While the first years of Hamas rule saw economic growth, between 2007 and 2022, real GDP per capita declined at a rate of 2.5% a year, as the population rose sharply. For much of the last decade and a half, UN officials have warned that Gaza was on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.

During these years, Hamas and Israel developed a mode of relating to each other – what Baconi calls an equilibrium of belligerency. Hamas rocket fire from Gaza became a means of negotiating with Israel. In return for pausing fire, Hamas would seek eased restrictions of the blockade or work permits for more Palestinian labourers crossing into Israel. In turn, Israel would retaliate to Hamas rockets with airstrikes and shelling – “mowing the grass”, as Israeli military strategists described it in their grisly euphemism – until it could claim it had sufficiently “deterred” Hamas from fighting until the inevitable next round.

For Israel, Hamas became useful as the functional government in Gaza, responsible for supporting the besieged Gazan population and containing the activities of other armed militant groups, much like the PA did in the West Bank. At the same time, Hamas maintained its claim to represent unbowed resistance to Israel. “There seemed to be some kind of modus vivendi between Israel and Hamas,” says Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and senior legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership. (In the month leading up to 7 October, she added, “there was greater interaction and engagement between Israel and Hamas than there was between Israel and the PA.”)

To Netanyahu, this arrangement had an additional advantage. By keeping the PA-run West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip under separate administrations, Israel also kept the Palestinian national movement divided against itself, and therefore easier to manage. Over the course of a decade, Netanyahu’s governments helped prop up the Hamas administration in Gaza, facilitating the transfer of billions of dollars from Qatar to the Islamist group. “Netanyahu has always had a strong unspoken partnership with Hamas, which he has regarded as an invaluable asset in preventing the creation of a Palestinian state,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, told me via email. “His incredibly cynical divide-and-rule strategy, which he does not appear to have fully surrendered yet, led inexorably and virtually inevitably to 7 October.”

But Netanyahu was not merely cynical. He, like much of Israel’s defence establishment, appears to have genuinely believed that the burden of governance had led to a fundamental shift in the group’s strategic considerations – that Hamas, in effect, had been pacified.

I t is now clearer than ever that Israel’s policy towards Hamas was built on a contradiction. On the one hand, Israel justified its punitive blockade and periodic bombardment of Gaza on the grounds that Hamas was a bloodthirsty terrorist group that sought Israel’s destruction. On the other, in Israel’s actual dealings with Hamas, it behaved as if Hamas had abandoned not just its commitment to destroying Israel but any alternative vision to occupation, and would be satisfied managing Gaza into perpetuity.

From within Hamas and among its supporters, however, the perception was very different. “2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2021 – it’s continuous war,” Azzam Tamimi told me by phone from Istanbul, summing up this view. “Hamas has not been pacified. It’s just been fighting, and then there are breaks in the fighting.” This analysis is not so different from how much of Israel’s security establishment sees the group today. “Hamas has never stopped preparing for operations to respond to Israeli provocations,” Tamimi added. “I mean, the preparations for 7 October are not the sort of thing that happens overnight.”

Indeed, within Israeli defence circles, the cumulative failures of 7 October have been taken as proof that Netanyahu’s governments understood Hamas all wrong. A new common sense has begun to emerge. “We felt that if we bribed the organisation by providing it money or by enabling it to develop the economy, then it would become a more responsible and accountable sovereign,” said Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a thinktank with close ties to Israel’s military, when we spoke in late December. “This is an illusion.” As Michael sees it, Israeli leaders failed to recognise that Hamas, at its core, is a “messianic” organisation that cannot be managed. “Theirs is a very religious way of thinking, which is irrational,” he said. “It was convenient for us to think that they are similar to us.”

As the war grinds on, Israeli policy analysts increasingly argue that the bellicose, maximalist rhetoric of Hamas’s leaders should be taken literally – that when they pledge to fight until Israel is destroyed, they mean it. “I read the other side’s writings in their original language, and I believe them, I simply believe them,” Michael Milshtein, an Israeli former intelligence officer, has said of Hamas’s Arabic publications and communiques. In his view, one major reason for the Israeli military’s colossal failure on 7 October was that the intelligence agencies and, even more fatefully, the country’s political leaders, forgot the nature of their enemy and failed to take notice of the manifold public threats issued by Hamas leaders that a massive armed operation against Israel was in the offing.

In the eyes of most Israelis, any semblance of peace will only be possible when Hamas no longer exists. Yet when Gershon Baskin and I spoke again in March, he told me that he and Ghazi Hamad had reconnected. The re-establishment of contact was mutual. “The first communication was about two months ago, which was an unpleasant back and forth,” he said. “The basic question is, could it be possible for us to have a constructive role [in making] a secret back channel,” Baskin added. “It’s not yet clear.”

T oday, as 30 years ago, Hamas derives much of its popularity from Palestinian despair. “When oppression increases,” Sheikh Yassin told the late Guardian journalist Ian Black in 1998, “people start looking for God.” A survey conducted in December by the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki found that 72% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank believed that Hamas was correct in launching the 7 October attacks, despite the destruction Israel has unleashed. If, as many believe, Hamas will remain a force the day after the fighting stops – in what form, and with what consequences?

Proponents of incorporating Hamas back into the structures of Palestinian politics argue that the group’s leaders were once serious about pursuing the interim solution, of a Palestinian state on only part of historic Palestine, and that, under the right conditions, they might be willing to do so again. “It was real,” Hugh Lovatt said of Hamas’s openness to a two-state solution, which was expressed in the group’s 2017 revised charter . “There clearly is a political and relatively moderate wing within Hamas,” he continued. “The question is, what happens to them? Do they split from the movement? Will they be completely overwhelmed by the hardliners? Or do they find a way to steer the movement back toward the political track?”

Those who see a future role for Hamas in Palestinian politics as a necessity – a view that presupposes Hamas’s willingness to join the institutions it has hitherto scorned– argue that excluding Hamas would be undemocratic, as well as likely to guarantee future bloodshed. “Their inclusion is a prerequisite for creating a Palestinian leadership that is representative of its people,” Baconi told me when we spoke by phone, “regardless of what we think about their tactics or their ideology.”

At the same time, when I asked Baconi about the prospects of a return to the two-state paradigm after the war, he was not optimistic. “If there is a political process which would achieve a Palestinian state on ’67 borders – which I don’t think will ever exist, as in a state with real sovereignty – I do think Hamas, politically and strategically, would engage with it very effectively and would, I think, be pushed to recognise the potential of such a diplomatic process,” he replied. But against the backdrop of the total devastation of Gaza, talk of restarting the two-state process is mainly a distraction, Baconi added. “I don’t see any kind of effective political process coming out of this older discourse that takes us back to the 90s and early 00s.”

In all likelihood, the Hamas leadership’s willingness to re-engage in the political track may not be tested. “The idea of incorporating Hamas [into the PLO] is, I think, a brilliant one that is now politically impossible,” said Nathan Brown, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “You basically need the existing generation of American leaders to die off before it becomes politically feasible,” Brown said of the possibility of the US shepherding a process that saw Hamas enter the PLO. “And it’s unthinkable in Israel.”

Israeli public opinion has lurched even further right after the 7 October attacks. Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity has tanked, but his replacement will not be a dove. And though it is true that, in the late 1980s and early 90s, the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to talks with the PLO and Yasser Arafat, considered by most Israelis to be an unrepentant terrorist, the signing of the Oslo accords was only possible after the PLO had agreed to comply with a raft of preconditions. By contrast, no Hamas leader could ever totally renounce armed struggle or agree formally to recognise Israel.

There is a tendency to view events such as 7 October and the ongoing war through the prism of rupture. The death and destruction on such a massive scale appear to signal a shift in paradigm, the emergence of a new phase. But part of what makes Israel’s prosecution of the current war so chilling is that, after killing more than 30,000 Palestinians, and after 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas on 7 October, the basic political framework of Israel/Palestine may, the day after the war, remain the same as it was on 6 October.

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Blinken adds Israel stop to latest Mideast tour as tensions rise over Gaza war

Matthew Lee

Associated Press

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP)

JEDDAH – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Israel this week as part of his sixth urgent mission to the Middle East since the Israelis' war with Hamas began in October, as relations between the two countries have soured dramatically in recent weeks.

The visit comes amid a flurry of calls, planned trips by U.S. and Israeli officials and public airings of severe disagreements over the state of the conflict — notably Israeli plans to mount a major military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and what will happen to Gaza after the war ends.

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The State Department said the Israel stop would cap Blinken’s latest Mideast tour that started in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and will continue in Egypt on Thursday. The top U.S. diplomat will be in Tel Aviv on Friday after talks with Arab leaders and foreign ministers in Jeddah and Cairo focused on the war in Gaza.

“In Israel, Secretary Blinken will discuss with the leadership of the government of Israel the ongoing negotiations to secure the release of all hostages,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. “He will discuss the need to ensure the defeat of Hamas, including in Rafah, in a way that protects the civilian population, does not hinder the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and advances Israel’s overall security.”

Tensions between the U.S. and Israel over the prosecution of the Gaza war have been mounting for months over rising civilian casualties. And they have intensified as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he will ignore President Joe Biden's warnings not to start a large-scale ground operation in Rafah without credible plans to protect innocent Palestinians who have sought refuge there.

Biden, facing a tough re-election campaign ahead of November's presidential election, is under growing domestic pressure to rein in Israel's military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. Opposition to the war in the United States, Arab nations and much of the rest of the world has shaped the evolution of Blinken's frequent trips to the region since October.

His first two visits were largely focused on re-affirming U.S. support for Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, but as civilian Palestinian casualties began to multiply and humanitarian conditions in Gaza deteriorated, his emphasis shifted to boosting humanitarian assistance and protecting innocents.

Since late last year, Blinken has also used his visits to stress the importance of Arab support for “day after” plans for Gaza and trying to coax Israeli leaders into accepting a status for the Palestinians that could help ensure Israel's long-term security.

As that shift has taken place, though, the situation in Gaza has gotten worse and relations between the U.S. and Israel have nosedived. Public disagreements between Biden and Netanyahu have become more frequent and more intense.

In a phone call with Biden on Monday, their first in more than a month, Netanyahu agreed to send a high-level delegation to Washington to discuss plans for the proposed Rafah operation, and the Pentagon said Tuesday that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant would visit the U.S. capital next week.

In his talks in Jeddah, Cairo and Tel Aviv, Blinken is expected to focus on attempts to negotiate a cease-fire and hostage release deal, increase humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza by land, air and sea and plan for the territory's post-conflict future.

In the Red Sea city of Jeddah, Blinken met with Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. The prospect of normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel is seen as a potential point of leverage in pushing the Israelis on easing civilian suffering in Gaza.

Blinken and Prince Faisal “discussed the urgent need to protect all civilians in Gaza and immediately increase humanitarian assistance to those in need,” the State Department said, adding that “resolving the conflict” and “preparing for the post-conflict phase” remain a top priority.

Blinken also “emphasized the United States’ commitment to achieving sustained peace through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel," the department said in a statement.

But the Saudis have made clear that normalization won't happen unless it is accompanied by a clear commitment from Israel to accept an independent Palestinian state by a date certain. Netanyahu and many members of his far-right government are opposed to a Palestinian state.

In Cairo on Thursday, Blinken will see Egyptian officials as well as meet with a six-member Arab committee that includes foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco and the Palestinian Authority, according to an Egyptian diplomat.

This group has been charged with exploring ways to revamp, reform and revitalize the Palestinian Authority for a possible governance role in Gaza once the war is over. The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority has committed to reforms and replaced some of its top leadership.

Blinken's discussions are also expected to touch on the cease-fire negotiations that have taken on new urgency as the humanitarian situation in Gaza has become increasingly dire.

Qatari officials, whose country is the main interlocutor with Hamas, said this week they were “cautiously optimistic” after talks with Israel’s intelligence chief in Doha. But, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said Tuesday that an Israeli ground operation in Rafah would set back any talks.

At least 31,819 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. A United Nations food agency warned that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza .

Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people in the surprise Oct. 7 attack out of Gaza that triggered the war, and and abducted another 250 people. Hamas is still believed to be holding some 100 people hostage, as well as the remains of 30 others.

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