Palestine Marathon

Most foreigners (and most of the people running the marathon probably will be foreigners - I don't believe Israel allows its citizens to run it, and the number of Palestinians doing the full marathon is limited, but hopefully growing) will be a bit concerned and anxious about going to Palestine/West Bank . . . but don't be . . . absolutely nothing to worry about. My wife and I had a great all-round experience visiting Bethlehem (through the race we arranged a home stay with a Palestinian family) and had no issues at all. The race was well organized, and the start (and finish) will be less then 5 minutes from anywhere you might be staying, and the course was very varied, with the sights of the infamous 'wall', running through towns and refugee 'camps' (all totally non-scary) - the full marathon involves 2 loops of the course, with quite a few hills (and the odd detour round a flock of sheep or a donkey on the road). Good refreshments during the race, endless wonderful local dates at the finish . . . you will get a cultural (and dare I say it, political and social) experience as well as a good marathon. And a very nice evening after-party too. And of course Jerusalem is right next door and can't be missed! Just FYI, getting to Bethlehem was easy - we flew from the US to Tel Aviv, took a pre-arranged taxi directly to the home stay . . . afterwards we actually left overland via Jordan, which is a different story (but also very do-able).