January 3, 2001

Damascus Gate.

Elizabeth's brother had an early, early AM departure, and so we said farewell at maybe 4 AM. Afterwards, we slept. Hours later, we took off in different directions: Elizabeth and Mom went for a haircut and another look at the Old City suq (market); Marthame took care of multiple tasks and connected with several Christian groups who have housed themselves in East Jerusalem - the Mennonite Central Committee's Palestine Office (to deliver a gift through them to the Christian Peacemaker Teams we visited in Hebron), Sabeel (a Palestinian Christian ecumenical organization with whom Marthame is working on scholarship applications for Palestinian Christian students to attend North Park University in Chicago), and World Vision (a wonderful organization, doing wonderful work, but Marthame was just saying hi).

In the office of World Vision stood an Arab priest who had been attacked on the road by settlers on the West Bank. He was told that the damage to his car was not covered because the attack had been by Jews. Had it been Palestinians, the government would have paid for the damage. A rabbi in the same office confirmed the priest's story - his windshield had been smashed, and the government paid for all repairs in a local garage.

Once again rendevouzing (no thanks to cellphone technology), we departed our hotel for the Dead Sea and the Ein Gedi Reserve! Our road took us from Jerusalem through the West Bank to the Dead Sea - a bypass road we now traveled in an Israeli bus. A month ago we had traveled the same road in a Palestinian taxi. It's difficult to explain how different those two trips were, two sides of a very odd-shaped coin. But it's hard to believe it was the same road.