July 24, 2001

Elizabeth woke Marthame this morning with a squeal of delight. The toilet flushed! We have water! This is no small victory, and we celebrated with showers for everyone (our neighbors and classmates were most grateful).

Tuesdays are lecture days for our summer program at Birzeit.

Today being Tuesday, we had a special guest lecture. Today's lecture was of particular interest, "The History of Hamas." Our lecturer was a Birzeit Professor, Hisham Ahmad. His characterization of the party was quite interesting and squared with others we had heard recently. Hamas (which claimed responsibility for the Dolphinarium Disco bombing in Tel Aviv among other things) sprang out of the ruins of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s. Our professor said that they were strengthened by the PLO's loss of influence (particularly after Israel's attacks on Lebanon, where the PLO was in exile) and by an intentional choice of the Israeli government to allow their growth (i.e. not suppress their political actions and pursue their leaders as they were doing with the PLO) in an attempt to nurture discord in Palestinian resistance. Its aims are clearly nationalistic, and it has gained ground by capitalizing on the mistakes of others. Their espousal of Islamic rhetoric appears to be an opportunistic strategy rather than a sign of religious zeal - that is to say, their religious rhetoric serves their political aims. When Marthame asked about Christian involvement in Hamas (something that we have been informed has happened during this Intifada), he replied, "Yes. This is something I find shameful." We're not sure if he meant for the Christians or Hamas - probably both.

We returned to Birzeit to bemoan the state of all things political with one of our new friends who has been living in Jerusalem for the past year and studying at Hebrew University. New Birzeit friends of his were arrested and detained recently because one of them had a brother with a prison record (assault on an Israeli soldier, which apparently carries a sentence of fifteen years). This, along with a recent visit to Jewish friends in Jerusalem which showed hardening opinions there, left him rather dismayed and hopeless. Couldn't say that we disagreed much, for visions and ideologies give way to brutal realities here.

But we do have water.