March 6, 2002

Deja vu - not a pleasant sensation around these parts. We closed school at 12:00 (an hour and a half early) today. Israeli tanks had apparently come to the edge of Tubas, so we were anxious to get our many Tubas students and teachers back home to their families. We had done the same back in September, so the students knew to be nervous when school was closed early. We lied through our teeth that nothing was wrong.

Several of the younger students were weeping and shaking on the drive home. It didn't help matters when some of the boys looking out the bus windows began shouting, "Tank! Tank! There it is - close to your house. And there's another one - it's moving!"

We dropped them all off near home, walking one distraught second-grader a good mile over the hills to her house. Fortunately, there was nothing happening within the village itself, but who knows what tonight will bring. The tanks are there for a reason.

Accompanying the children back home to nearby Tubas, with Israeli tanks on the edge of town.