February 14, 2001 — Mudeif Productions

Happy Valentine's Day - a bit difficult to swallow when news comes of Israeli assassinations and Palestinian terrorism. More like a day for broken hearts. It continues to be difficult to digest everything that happens here. Following the murder of eight by the Palestinian bus driver, we hear that Israel will tighten the closures of the West Bank and Gaza. From here, nothing is clearer than the fact that the closures feed feelings of hopelessness and desperation - which in turn feed anger and violent responses.

But hope always resides, and our work moves forward. Elizabeth's adult English classes continued today, with fourteen students! This week, game time was quite a bit more successful. About half of the class stuck around to play Boggle and Scrabble and eat cookies. Just a little something to keep our minds off the nightly shootings here.