Good Friday reveals some harmony in safer Israel

CHRISTIAN pilgrims, their numbers swollen by improved Israeli-Palestinian relations, retraced Jesus’s path toward crucifixion along the cobblestone alleys of Jerusalem’s walled Old City in the annual Good Friday procession.

Some wore crowns of thorns and carried massive crosses as they wended their way along the Via Dolorosa, or Way of Sorrows, under an Israeli security presence that visitors said was thinner than in recent years.

One woman, dressed as the Virgin Mary, and a younger man, portraying the bloodied Jesus, re-enacted Jesus’s Passion among a crowd that Israeli police estimated at 3,500 people.