March 13, 2002

Just keeping up with emails about what is happening in the region is a full-time job.

The words coming through our emails, the images coming across our television screens (the constant companion of life here), and the stories coming from our friends are getting more and more disturbing. The Friends' School in Ramallah (where Marthame first visited Palestine eight years ago) is being used by the Israeli military as a base of operations. Students from Zababdeh who are studying in Bethlehem were pinned down for days (living on the edge of 'Azza refugee camp) and made a harrowing escape sprinting through the narrow streets - they eventually made it back safe and sound to Zababdeh, but their nearly hour-long run was full from beginning to end with the fear of death.

Meanwhile, the round-ups in the Tulkarem refugee camps have reached the abyss of Israeli immorality - men were bound with plastic handcuffs (like the kind used to bind electrical cords together) by the hundreds, corralled, and numbers were written on their forearms "to assist with the interrogation process" before most of them were released. At least the outcry from Israeli Holocaust survivors has been heard in response.