Bethlehem

So today, I went to Bethlehem and it was the shiznit. I spent my whole time walking around the streets of the old city/Nativity Square and other local streets near by. I first visited a few shops and got some shwarma (no meat on the farm so some chicken shwarma was great) and then went to the Church of Nativity. This is the church where Jesus was supposedly born. There was a massive crowd there which was annoying but it was a beautiful church. There was also a grotto underneath the church where the birth took place and where the holy family hung out for a little while. Afterwards, I stopped by some more little shops and headed to the Milk Grotto. This is the spot that is claimed to be the home for the holy family for the first years of Jesus' life. The story goes that Mary, while breast feeding, spilled some or something and it changed the entire grotto white, hence the name: Milk Grotto.

After visiting some other holy sites around Nativity Square, I hung out at a cafe. I saw the most remarkable thing as well: around 200-300 men all praying at the same time. They were all standing outside of a mosque just covering the streets and sidewalks for an entire block gesturing and bowing at the same time with the Call of Prayer going on right above us.

I later met up with some friends from the SIT Jordan program who are going to hang out at the farm for a couple days, work a little, see how it's done, etc. We had a Taybeh beer (very good by the way, claims to be the best beer from the Middle East, it's true), then took a sheirut back to the farm.

I'll talk about the whole political issue with Israel attacking the convoy heading towards Gaza the other day in a later post but first I'd like to talk about our own political issues here on the farm. For a while now, Daoud has had lawyers going to court to try to convince the Israeli government not to demolish much of the buildings on this farm. This is why we haven't been working on any building projects for example because if we were, that would give the Israeli government more incentive to start the demolition sooner. Yesterday, we found out that, with the help of German, French, and American embassies and organizations, the demolition is postponed for some time until a final decision can be made. This means that we'll start working on the cistern and the cave in the valley again. We have to be careful though because if the military sees us (which they're here everyday spying from outside the farm's borders so it's a good possibility), then they'll go to the government and let them know what's going on. I'll keep you updated but very interesting stuff, kind of excilerating too. Honestly, it's getting harder and harder not to lean towards supporting Palestine as time goes on.