My Wife's Turn At BBC

My wife on that BBC Nativity trek:

"If people think my views are extreme, then fine, I'm an extremist," said Batya Medad. "I have no problem with that."

Batya lives in the Jewish settlement of Shilo, in the middle of the "West Bank" (though Batya does not use that term, instead calling it by the Biblical regions it covers, Judea and Samaria).

Every country around the world, except for Israel, considers settlements like Batya's illegal, built on occupied Palestinian land. When I put that to her, she responded angrily.

"We (Jews) are the only ones with history here, we were here first and we should be here now. It's totally immoral to say we can't be," she says.

"I don't care what the world thinks. They didn't care when the Nazis started against the Jews and when Jews were murdered. So why should I care?"

Batya and her husband, Yisrael, were both born and raised in New York, but moved in 1970. She says she never had a feeling of belonging when she was in the United States, but that when she moved here, she instantly felt at home.

Israeli and Palestinian politicians, supported by the international community, are meant to be working towards an end to the Israeli occupation here and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

However, Batya says she thinks that the peace process will go nowhere, and that her future in Shilo is not under threat at all.

From Shilo, I continued south along a route through a valley it is believed Mary and Joseph, and indeed many prophets (including Abraham) before them, may have travelled.

Even in the past few decades, this landscape has changed considerably.

Like many other Jewish settlements, Shilo occupies a hilltop

On many of the hilltops were the gleaming, red-roofed homes of Jewish settlements. Down below them, the more haphazard, organic-looking, Palestinian villages. There is almost no interaction between the two sets of communities, only tension.

It was an uncomfortable walk, as I received suspicious looks from both settlers and Palestinians.

The settlers I passed, one or two of them armed, seemed to assume I was Palestinian, and so, perhaps, a potential attacker. "Assalamo alaikum," one settler said as he approached me, in what I felt was a test. I decided a "hi" might be better than the traditional Muslim reply in these circumstances. He relaxed and walked away.

The Palestinians, who heard me speaking English on my phone, seemed to assume I was an immigrant settler. "Mustoutan, mustoutan" ("settler, settler"), I heard a young boy shout as he ran into his house after clocking me.

I decided to quicken my pace and walk close to the main road.