March 2, 2002

Coach Elizabeth and her girls.

Another cancelled school picnic today. This one was for the 10th graders - again, it just doesn't seem appropriate to enjoy a journey in the hills when many of their fellow students aren't able to sleep at night from the bombardment of Jenin camp. But missing the picnic wasn't such a hardship - Marthame was fasting today (and yesterday) in the fashion of the Greek Orthodox. Adults who wish to receive communion don't eat any meat or dairy for two days before Sunday mass. Sunday morning, the first thing that they eat is the eucharist. It's a spiritual discipline that they maintain strongly, almost canonically. We, on the other hand, are just spiritual practice opportunists...The girls' basketball game was cancelled, too, with a nearby village. Later in the morning, word came that Jenin was open - taxis were coming and going, but traffic was light. Perhaps things will open up again soon.

We visited with neighbors later on this evening, watching the near-constant companion of the TV News. Both Israeli and Arab channels brought the shocking scenes from Balata - the already squalor-like conditions have been brought lower with large holes busted between apartment walls to allow soldiers to pass from one to another more quickly.

A good friend of ours who works in Israel told us about his return trip home to Zababdeh. When he approached the border, the soldier leveled his M-16 at him and made him demonstrate - from a distance of some 50 meters - that he wasn't carrying any explosives. Attacks at checkpoints are on the rise, and the soldiers, many of them scared 18 year-old kids, are not taking many chances. But, beyond the call of security, people have also been shot, detained, beaten without reason, fearing for their lives.

After relating his trip, our friend was visited by a colleague who is a Jehovah's Witness. She stopped by to discuss religion and the Bible with us (yes, Jehovah's Witnesses in Zababdeh). The debate became a bit tiring (especially trying to dialogue with someone who claims with authority that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and that the word "Jehovah" appears 350 times in the New Testament in Greek, and that she has seen both with her own eyes - neither is remotely true). Our pleasant evening was topped off by the news of another suicide attack in Israel. More casualties, more deaths, more crippling of this place.