July 4, 2001

The skyline of Tel Aviv, Israel, is barely visible from our Birzeit, Palestine, balcony.

Our Arabic professor was unable to make it to Birzeit today (not from Ramallah, but from the States), so we had another unintentional free day. Today for us passed without fireworks (being the 4th), which was probably a good thing in our neck of the woods.

But it was a little hard to feel like celebrating, anyway - word came of an assassination of three Palestinians in their car near Zababdeh (Marthame heard about it from one of his 8th grade students by email), most likely with American-made weaponry. The sad irony of Independence Day...