East City Travel Guide

Jerusalem is frankly not a good place to go shopping - prices are high and there are few things that you can buy here that wouldn't be cheaper at home. Even if you're buying the kind of things that Israelis and Palestinians might buy, such as clothes and groceries, you'll find most prices rather high. Many stores in the Old City and downtown West Jerusalem generally sell items aimed at tourists, including generally shoddy Judaica (Jewish ritual and religious items), T-shirts and Christian paraphernalia, which might just interest collectors of kitsch, and boxes inlaid with mother-of-pearl and camel bone that are in fact imported from Egypt.

For general souvenirs , there are a few things worth considering however, including olive wood and mother-of-pearl carvings from Bethlehem, and blue hand-blown glass from Hebron. Also popular are the multicoloured round Jerusalem candles that are illumated from within as they burn. Hookah pipes (argila) are better-made than in neighbouring Egypt, but also several times the price; fine as ornaments, they are a little impractical to smoke, since they require special tobacco and have to be lit with charcoal (although tablets of crushed charcoal that can be ignited with a lighter are available from grocery stores in East Jerusalem, and the Old City in particular).

Cheap buys, especially in East Jerusalem and the Old City, include cassettes of Arabic music , although the quality of the tapes themselves is low. Olive-oil soap is also a good purchase; square blocks of olive oil soap from Nablus (sabon baladi Nablusi) can be found in certain Old City grocery stores, especially on Souq Khan al-Zeit. There are two qualities, of which white (abiad) is for bathing, and green (akhdar) for washing clothes. Several different brands are sold in Nablus itself, but in Jerusalem, the only white Nablusi soap available seems to be al-Jamaal (Camel brand), with a picture of a camel on the packet. In West Jerusalem you'll find soap and skin-care products made with Dead Sea mud and minerals, which, though not exactly cheap, will cost you less than at home. Westside too, good quality items of traditional and modern Judaica can be found and, though again not cheap, are still at lower prices than they would be in North America, the UK or Australasia.

Clothing is expensive, but a couple of items of headgear may be of particular interest. On the Arab side, the keffiya headscarf , a symbol of Palestinian resistance, is ever popular if a little old hat (so to speak) back home nowadays; it will also not go down well if you wear it in West Jerusalem. The colour of a keffiya also has a political significance: black-and-white tends to indicate support for Fatah, Yasser Arafat's party, while red-and-white tends to indicate support for left-wing (and hardline) Palestinian parties such as the PFLP and the DFLP. On the Israeli side, knitted yarmulkes (Jewish skullcaps) are available in all sorts of colours - Ethiopian Israelis often sport red, gold and green ones - but of more interest to a secular or non-Jewish tourist would be the larger and even more colourful embroidered yarmulkes worn by Yemeni Jews, which are more like a hat than a skullcap.

Food , generally speaking, will cost you more in West than East Jerusalem, but you will have more choice West of the Green Line. There, Mahane Yehuda market is your best bet for groceries at good prices. Locally grown fruit and vegetables can be a bargain - Jaffa oranges and other citrus fruit of course, but also exotic fruits such as fresh dates, persimmons, custard apples (sweetsops) and starfruits. Lovers of olives will have a field day, with untold varieties available. Also good value are the nuts and seeds known in Hebrew as bitzuhim, in Arabic as bizr; these include sunflower and pumpkin seeds, walnuts and almonds, and - a real treat but available only in West Jerusalem - candied pecans. Edible oils , especially olive oil, are not as cheap as you might expect, but they are good quality and usually cold pressed. Other unrefined cold- pressed oils are sometimes available in West Jerusalem supermarkets or the food depatment of HaMashbir, again not cheap, but often hard to find elsewhere. For a change from honey, date syrup (silan) is available at some food stores in Mahane Yehuda and the Old City, but only in rather large 900-gram jars. Israeli and Palestinian wines are often excellent value and well worth trying, although the best ones can require some seeking out.