Should I be just a bit troubled that the military was in the camp the other night and it just seemed commonplace to me? Yes, I got up and went to look out the window as the jeeps raced by late in the night but I wasn't worried, I was just curious since 5 of them were in the camp and they kept going back and forth. I heard that while I was in Turkey there were even soldiers on foot in the camp. But this is life here. Hard to believe that it won't be my life anymore in 6 weeks.

The leader of the Hamas party in Bethlehem was here in the restaurant today meeting with a Swedish group. I watched from a distance and so did many others from the center. Most of the translation was in Swedish so I only caught a few words when they were spoken in English here and there. The question was posed to him, "How do you go about removing the label terrorist from the Hamas party?" I really hope that I can come close to describing the stillness that captured the air even though there was a construction team downstairs working. I hope that I can come close to writing down his answer as well. It was very simple and went something like, "Well, that depends on how you define the word terrorist. Is it a terrorist act to defend your homeland?" I don't even want to try and get into a debate about this answer, about what people around the world think about Palestinians and Hamas. This man was a regular man, he sat down at the head of three rectangular tables pushed together, he ordered a cup of coffee, he spoke very softly in his long dark beard, his traditional lefh wrapped around his head, his hands sometimes folded on the table.

I think back to many conversations I have had, mostly with youth who ask me why the rest of the world thinks that they are terrorists. Yes, some Palestinians have chosen to take that route to fight back against the occupation but not all, many are just regular folks. The man who was here in Ibdaa today sits on the Palestinian parliament. I don't know him, I don't know what he believes in but he came here today to speak with this group so that they could understand more. Even though the air in the center was a little tenser than usual I think it was a good thing. I am going to set up a meeting with him in the next few weeks, I am curious and he said he would meet with any internationals that wanted to talk.

I remember how I used to take the bus in Guatemala, to fly around the hills and stare out the window, wondering what else I would want to be doing at that time since really there was no where else I would want to be. Today I was sitting in the Al-hadr soccer stadium with hundreds of fans. The soccer game was also a commemoration, a commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the death of a martyr from Bethlehem whose home was stormed one year ago to the day and he was killed. The ceremony was long winded but you couldn't deny the effect of the huge poster with his face on it held by two players from each team, the words of his father blasting out of the loud speakers, the music in the air.

I looked around the stadium, I listened to the sound of one man singing in Arabic through the microphone as it reached out to touch the hills around us, to fly over to settler road on our right, to bathe the buildings around us in the same soft light as the setting sun. I thought about where I was at that time, only one other international sitting one person over from me. I thought about the situation around me, about the reason we were all gathered together and again I thought, there is no place I would rather be. Don't ask me why?