Greetings From Bethlehem

October 8th, 2002
Bethlehem

Thanks for your emails. It felt good to be connected with home.

I am writing from the home of my host family tonight. They are an Orthodox Catholic family with two lovely daughters and two sons in San Francisco.

Our days in Israel have been long, exhausting and stressful. It is very painful experiencing the long days at checkpoints, roadblocks and other inconveniences for us that make life barely possible for most Palestinians. The situation is very bad. Today we saw the Israeli army in total occupation of Hebron. People are under curfew much of the time. It is an awful intimidation. We also met with a Jewish settler (a settlement is built for Israelis on land taken from the Palestinians). He does not experience any of this and is only concerned about maintaining a safe and comfortable life with his family.

We have met with Jewish students from Hebrew University. And also with Palestinian students from Bethlehem University. There is absolutely no tourism - we had the Church of the Nativity all to ourselves! The Palestinians who depend on tourism are hurting badly.

We also spent some powerful time in Gaza where there was an Israeli bombing of a neighborhood killing several people a short distance away.

It is a tremendous amount of experiences to comprehend and absorb. And the emotional load is great too. It will take a while to put this all together.

But we have met fabulous people and been treated so graciously. And we have had a couple very good meals - one on the shore of the Mediterranean in a hotel near a bombed out area of Gaza City - amazing!

Our time is short. We are scheduled to meet with Arafat tomorrow. We return to Jordan on Thursday after several more meetings. And fly out of Amman on Friday.

Julie and Mike are at another home tonight. But I know they feel like I do.

Peace and blessings

George