Traveling requires improvisation or may be impossible. I call Helen Shehadeh, a director of a school for the blind in Beit Jala. Herself blind, she is invited to go to Melbourne in Australia for an international conference of the World Blind Union. However, since Tel Aviv airport is presently closed for Palestinians from the occupied territories, she would have to go to the airport in Amman, a journey which due to local traveling problems is now too difficult for her. Many of her school children live in villages and are unable to attend school. Fortunately, she manages to reassure those children who are present. The school is located in the southern part of Beit Jala, a section that is not exposed to bombings.

The secretary at the Institute, Shireen, tells that her mother presently sleeps at a friend’s home in Beit Safafa, an Arab village which after the war of 1967 was included within the Jerusalem municipal boundaries. Usually her mother travels daily from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to go to her work as a cleaner at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. However, traveling to Jerusalem is barely possible these weeks. Shireen hopes that her mother can manage to come back for the weekend. Her family originally comes from Jerusalem. Her mother is formally registered as living in Jerusalem, and the family pays the “arnona”, the municipal tax. Residents of East-Jerusalem are eligible for social security and health allowances - an important asset in an area that lacks basic social services. However, her family (she, her mother, and an aunt who stays with them) cannot live in Jerusalem because the rents are too high. Shireen’s father, who died before she was born, was Armenian; her mother is Syriac – both parents likely descendants of people who came to the Holy Land for refuge. She would like to know more about her family history and is presently in search of good literature.

I myself encounter traveling problems when taking a taxi to Jerusalem. While the journey between Bethlehem and Jerusalem is normally some 7 km, the taxi takes a detour of probably some four times that distance, moving along rocky and unknown paths. Each time upon meeting another car, the driver asks “Is there army here?” He is quite nervous and wants to return, but the passengers – almost all elderly Moslem believers who wish to pray in Jerusalem – encourage and advise him. The extra pay helps, too. After arrival in Jerusalem I do an errand for the family, the buying of medicines in the Western part of the city. The Israeli pharmacist is very helpful and he takes time to call a Bethlehem doctor to check the prescription. It is good to feel that there are at least some friendly and helpful Israelis. Back in Bethlehem, I’ll meet my colleagues who have their own road stories to tell.

Ishmail Muqbal, a school principal, came that morning with ten students from Al-Arroub refugee camp near Hebron. Not all his students could come because last evening a youth was killed in a neighbouring village, and the resulting tensions led some parents to keep their kids at home. The story itself is depressing, like almost all stories nowadays. Driving in his car, the youth, who wanted to enter the village, apparently became trapped between demonstrators and soldiers. He did not obey the soldiers’ command to get out of the car, and in reaction he was, it seems wantonly, shot in the head. 

Ishmail presently works not in his own school, which is located in an Hebron area under continuous curfew, but in an United Nations school in a village outside Hebron. Although just a few kilometers far from home, it takes him more than 1,5 hour to travel. Without a car himself, he has to take collective taxis which are not allowed to pass the several checkpoints on the way. He has to get out, show his UN pass to the soldiers and walk through the checkpoint to take another taxi a hundred meter further. Many of the camp inhabitants, especially builders who used to work in Israel, are presently unemployed. Ishmail estimates the unemployment rate in the camp at 30%. Those who still have work are primarily staff of the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, the UN organization which works among Palestinian refugees. Many are teachers. They gather early in the morning near the camp’s entrance, uncertain whether they will reach their work in time or indeed whether they will reach it at all. As for his students, only 200 of his former 700 students can make it to the new school location. He tells that one of his students, eight years old, lost his way a few days ago. He unintentionally entered an Hebron area under curfew, and was forced by soldiers to lie down on the ground. He then was spat and kicked. Ishmail says that the journey back home is especially difficult for students and teachers. Usually tensions increase later on durng the day, and soldiers may announce the closure of an area. On Tuesday it happened that the tyres of about 30 taxis were shot near the camp’s entrance, and the car keys confiscated. Ishmail adds that the soldiers perhaps act out of a basic fear. In a similar story, told by my neighbour, it happened that an acqaintance of her, a truck driver, was stopped and, after not showing the right papers, was confronted with the choice to either drive his truck against a wall or to have all his tyres shot. Since his tyres were very expensive, he choose to drive against the wall and damage the truck’s foreside. After doing so, the soldiers shot his tyres.

Sawsan Hadweh, a computer teacher at Talitha Kumi in Beit Jala and Ph.D. holder in chemistry, was for some days unable to come at the Institute. She knew Dr Harry Fischer well, the German physiotherapist living in Beit Jala who was killed by a rocket on Wednesday night while trying to help and rescue a neighbour. She says that before leaving home, Dr Fischer told his Palestinian wife that he, as a German, would not run any risk when helping others. Sawsan tells that he was much loved within the community. She herself teaches his son and daughter, both peaceful and moderate youth. The doctor’s house has always been a place for hospitality, also during the Intifada of ten years ago when Beit Jala was, unlike now, a kind of “safe haven.”

During that same night of heavy shelling (till four o’clock in the morning), Sawsan’s house was damaged by a rocket which horizontally flew over the roof of the house breaking the solar heating and water tanks. It took her a day to collect the debris and find her concentration again. During the night she stays in bed with her mother, reading the Bible for her. Sawsan says that now over two hundred houses in Beit Jala are seriously damaged, a few of them completely destroyed. (Beit Sahour may count a similar number of damaged houses). The Millennium Hotel in Beit Jala has opened its doors for inhabitants who cannot or do not want to stay at home anymore.

I am called by the Dutch Representative Office for the Palestinian Territories who announce that they will organize their regular St Nicholas party in December. I cannot withhold a laugh, but the spokeswoman explains that such a party would be very helpful for the children. I have to agree. Jara and I now sing St Nicholas songs every evening. Few means are so helpful for releasing tension as singing. All the time I wonder what Jara feels these days. There are so many parents who are worried about their children. At one point during the week, Israeli airplanes broke the sound barrier above Bethlehem and the loud bangs scared the kids. While we were playing, Jara too was scared. Should we go inside the house? I decided to continue playing, as if the noise was only a minor nuisance. On occasion Jara shows more “political” understanding than I thought was possible at her age (almost three). She likes to imitate and when listening to the BBC news, she takes her little chair and sit next to me, seriously watching the radio. I ask her: “Do you know Clinton?” “Yes.” “Do you know Arafat?” “Yes, and I also know Koffi Anan.” “Do you know Barak?” “No,” she says, “he is ‘mish mniih’ (not good).” Mary laughs. Somehow I have the feeling that Jara transfers the moral schemes she learns from fairy tales onto the reality around her.

On Saturday, Bethlehem is suddenly full of people who do shopping. It is a surprise to see them laughing and relaxing. Ramadan is coming soon. There is news that confrontations may subside, at least for the moment. Who doesn’t want that? But later on, there is news of an attack on an armed Israeli school bus in Gaza, with two passengers being killed. Will there be any let-up during the weeks leading to Christmas?