A Day in the Life of Israel

Plot

It is such a small country, yet it occupies such a large place in the hearts and souls of so many diverse peoples. To Christians, it is the Holy Land. To Moslems, the lost land of Palestine. To Jews, it is Eretz Yisrael, the ancient homeland heroically reestablished after 2,000 years. This scrap of desert - center stage for many of the world's miracles and spiritual struggles for 5,000 years - was a rich subject for the world's top photojournalists during one 24-hour period in May 1994. More than sixty photographers from more than a dozen countries left the world's newsfronts to participate in A Day in the Life of Israel. They flew to Tel Aviv from Los Angeles and Lima, New Delhi and New York, Melbourne, Madrid and Moscow. Since many were Day in the Life veterans, they came expecting to make "extraordinary pictures of an ordinary day". But by chance, A Day in the Life of Israel turned out to be anything but ordinary. May 5 was a landmark in the country's history - the first day of official peace between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization since the founding of the Jewish state. The photographers witnessed a country at the crossroads. On this day, there arrived in Israel, the first real chance that all of the children of Israel might live out their lives in peace. What else did the photographers find during their marathon 24-hour photo shoot? In one small land - 260 miles long and less than 100 miles wide - they found Russian Jews just off the plane from Moscow and tribes of Bedouin that have wandered the Negev desert for thousands of years; Hassidim in black garb unchanged since the 18th century and white-coated scientists in the ultra-modern laboratories ofthe Weizmann Institute; fashion designers in Tel Aviv and fourth generation farmers on a kibbutz. They encountered deep love for the land and ancient tribal hatreds, all woven into the complexities of a modern political state.