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A bit too risky? Then how about a getaway to the Gaza Strip? Most people think of this section of the Israeli-occupied territories as a wretched, raging refugee camp. But it also offers a gorgeous, unspoiled slice of Mediterranean beach. The residents of Gush Katif, a collection of Jewish settlements on the Strip, bid visitors to come and swim, thanks to a new road from the Israeli border enabling tourists to skirt rebellious Palestinian villages -- and thus reduce the risk of a Molotov cocktail through the windshield. Although Gush Katif's Palestinian laborers have twice turned on their employers and stabbed two of them to death, spokeswoman Datya Herskovitz says not to worry: the attacks took place in the greenhouse district, not in the residential areas where visitors stay. She does caution, though, against roaming beyond the confines of Gush Katif. Several months ago, an Israeli businessman took a wrong turn into a Palestinian refugee camp and was shot dead.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that many travelers do their best to seek out infamous mayhem. Which may explain the explosion of tourism in Northern Ireland, where the 24-year feud between Protestants and Catholics offers a kind of terrorism theme park. So great is the demand that Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political wing, keeps running out of its "freedom map" of West Belfast, which pinpoints the cemetery where hunger striker Bobby Sands is buried, British observation posts, and the "peace line," a concrete barricade separating the city's Catholic and Protestant districts. Tourists who follow the route can watch young boys from both sides of the wall catapult rocks onto their unseen neighbors.
Serious connoisseurs of violence, however, should call Massimo Beyerle in La Spezia, Italy, who is accepting bookings for his October War Zone tour of Lebanon. For $25,000, travelers can spend two weeks hunting for shrapnel in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley, visiting the scene of the U.S. Marine barracks blown up in 1983 and dining in a Palestinian refugee camp. Beyerle says he also plans trips to Nicaragua, Somalia and parts of the former Soviet Union.
Traditionally, one of Europe's cheapest destinations has been Yugoslavia's Dalmatian coast, which once brought $2 billion a year into the province, now the Republic, of Croatia. But that was before war ravaged charming ports such as Dubrovnik. Croatian tourist officials are now repairing damaged buildings and discreetly moving refugees from beach hotels into the interior. Still, recovery is slow: car-rental agencies in neighboring countries have inserted into their contracts clauses canceling insurance the minute their vehicles enter Croatia.