Lucky for them, most students at FBS live in Ramallah. Travel around the West Bank is fraught right now. Ahmad, who comes from Nablus, told me today that he left home at 5:30 and arrived in Ramallah at 8:30 on a route that usually takes forty five minutes on public transportation. The checkpoints are closed and ID-checking is meticulous and time consuming. Visit from college representatives are cancelled this week. Two girls in my homeroom described to me how they had ordered food from a restaurant last night, then Israeli soldiers started making the rounds of the neighbourhood, and they called the restaurant to cancel the order, not wanting to bring the delivery person out, and not wanting to open the door to outsiders.
It feels strange to see headlines on Al Jazeera that are so close to home, yet feel no direct impact myself. I haven't seen soldiers in the streets of Ramallah, and my assessment schedule on poetry analysis is moving ahead as usual.
But there is a stress in the air, perhaps a lingering impression from the images of young Palestinian men holding white flags as they carry wounded protestors away from the scenes of action. In some ways it feels like a triumph for life to go on unperturbed, with students discussing the SAT II's they took on Saturday, and me planning the next grammar lesson. In other ways it feels as though everyone should be talking of nothing other than the clashes.
On Sunday at the Ramallah Friends Meeting Qavi shared a reading from the Britain Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice. It was about how hard it is sometimes, even for those who profess love of humanity, to feel neighbourly towards other imperfect human beings when they confront us. Here's the excerpt:
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| Qavi read the piece from Phyllis Richards |
I suppose the most profound thing we can do, when hatred fuels violence between factions of believers, is to love our immediate neighbours.
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