June 2, 2003

At the school, Elizabeth worked mostly in the library today, sifting through disorganized shelves of books, most of which are Bethlehem University cast-offs. Antique Leather Working in Germany and A Comprehensive Account of the Oil Industry in Kuwait tomes are not exactly the most useful. But we do have a nice little collection of children's stories in English, which Elizabeth is trying to organize and label, with the hopes that color coding them will increase the odds of their actually being read and staying in one place. Without a librarian, the room has become more of a student holding cell than a functional library. But hopefully small changes like what Elizabeth is working on can improve its utility.

In the afternoon, she went to a local office/school supply/copy shop to get colored labels, which they didn't have, and would need to get in Jenin, if and when it was open. While she was in the shop, a couple of army jeeps went by. The shopkeeper said they'd been going by every few minutes all morning - on high alert because of the current push to negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Deep in the school library, Elizabeth had been blissfully unaware of the hubbub. Fortunately, there weren't any incidents with the military in town today; they just passed through a lot.

Marthame, meanwhile, made his was to Ibillin for the last class. Today was the first time in a while that Marthame was picked up in Jalame rather than having to walk up to the checkpoint - do miracles never cease...

The ancient city of Acco, Israel, provides some spectacular views of the Mediterranean.

While there, he read CNN's latest update on the Middle East, that Israel had "opened the West Bank and Gaza, after closing them on May 18th." Since Marthame travels every week in and out of the West Bank, such assertions seemed odd indeed. In the four months he's been going back and forth to Nazareth into Israel, the van picking him up and dropping him off has only entered twice. For non-internationals, the borders were closed far earlier than May 18th and have seen little improvement.

After class, Marthame and Fr. Hatem were treated to dinner by Fr. Chacour in Akko overlooking the Mediterranean before Marthame retired to the Ibillin Guest House for some rest.