To visit the Holy Land must be the dearest ambition of every Christian. To live in it as I have done for more than five years is a rare and wonderful privilege.

Even so my picture of the Holy Land is incomplete, for it has been tragically divided since the Jewish-Arab war of 1948 led to its partition between Israel and Jordan. The two countries are still at enmity, so the cleavage is absolute. Even the Holy City is rent in two, for the western suburbs have been developed to form Israel’s capital, while the eastern region, including the Old City, belongs to Jordan.

At an ordinary level there is no communication at all between the two countries, or even between the two halves of Jerusalem. Only diplomats and United Nations officials may move between the two with relative freedom, and by a special arrangement, tourists are allowed to pass—but not re-pass—from one to the other. For those like myself—and I am an Irish woman living in Jordan by reason of my husband’s employment—there are no such concessions. Never once in the years I have lived in Jerusalem have I set foot on the soil of Israel which lies only a few hundred yards west of our house.

To begin with I found this situation frustrating in the extreme, for from our windows we can clearly see people and cars moving about in the other Jerusalem which is so near—and yet so very far away. Gradually I have become resigned to the knowledge that I am never likely to see Galilee or Nazareth, which together with a great many places of purely historical interest, are ‘on the other side’.