Conflicts and Confusion

Hubby laughed on the way to work yesterday.

"Did you see that Arab guy wearing a t-shirt with "Celebrate Israel's 50th anniversary" on it?" and he couldn't stop laughing about it.

And when I went to today's meeting of the Interfaith coordinators at Notre Dame, I saw a group of Orthodox Jewish girls - some wearing right wing slogans on their t-shirts - being given a lesson on the place by their teacher, a young bearded man, while the Palestinians in the security booth looked at them and wondered what they were doing having a history lesson on the street in front of their place.

I still am totally confused thinking about Saturday's events - like - did the soldiers not want us to speak to Palestinians on Saturday or were they just simply following orders that we couldn't be in that particular area because of security reasons.

Were the two settlers sitting near the home where we were visiting just out for a Sabbath stroll or were waiting to see who was visiting their "enemy" and were they out to hassle us too? The fear was so great that our hosts asked that we climb a ladder in the other direction, through olive groves to get to our van waiting on a main street. This thing - which should have been no more than a 5 minute walk on a main road took us 15 minutes, through olive groves, brambles, steep dirt and rocky steps and through other people's courtyards and garbage dumps that I was thrilled to be back in the taxi.

Our Hebron host called me laterthat evening to make sure I got back ok. He gets hassled daily, but thinks of calling ME to make sure I'm ok. Amazing. Things like this make it worthwhile for me to go through the hassle of meeting the other.

Tonight is Eliyahu's peace party. I'm going and speaking and am curious who will show up. But say a little prayer for him because he needs to move out of his rented apartment and into another one by July 1st - and he needs a place with a big enough living room so he could continue having these monthly peace parties. He's also asked me to belong offically to the Jerusalem Peacemakers Circle - I accepted which means God will have to see to it that I have the time to undertake all of these important things.