Around 8:00 AM I left the hospital for downtown Hebron to find a computer store and Internet access. The Palestinians had been let out of their cages already and the bridge below was alive with pedestrians climbing over the barrier where the Jeep had been parked yesterday. No shots to be heard. At the computer store I got my blank CDs, and they let me sit at the Internet access for a half hour doing email and catching up on news.

I then wanted to make my way into the Old City where the CPT apartment is, so I took a taxi in very heavy traffic in very narrow streets. We were on a one way street when the driver told me to look back up the street at the tank that was throwing a smoke screen and rumbling down herding the cars in from of it. The tank was also headed to the Old City so we had the nasty acrid smoke to put up with all the way. I take it they put out that smoke to try to clear the way faster. People on foot did in fact start running away.

Eventually the driver was able to pull over into a side road, and let the tank roar by us. I got out, but was a bit lost, and called CPT on my cell phone. Kathy came out to meet me and escort me to the apartment. I put all my pictures and journal files on a CD for them, and then left to return to the hospital for a rest. The taxi driver told me that curfew would be lifted from 0800 to 1800 every day as far as he knew (Note added later: not true).

After a nap and some reading, I walked across the street to the hotel, since the ISMers want to take Dr. Ghandi, the Medical Director of the hospital, out for a meal. It was 1759 on my watch, so that should have been 1 minute before the curfew was to go back on. I heard shots being fired, and assumed that it was from the big house with the red roof across the valley that the Israelis have taken over. Inside the hotel, which has no guests, the young man, Tarik, was on duty by himself. He said yes, the shots are being fired at the bridge to make sure no one is foolish enough to cross. There was sporadic fire for sometime then quiet.

In the hotel Tarik showed me around the extensive damage caused by earlier shots at the hotel and hospital from the big house across the way. He has made a PowerPoint presentation of the damage to the hotel with sound effects. Impressive. Tarik, who grew up in Jordan of refugee parents wants to emigrate. I invited him to Canada, which is just possibly the best country in world.

The hotel can only serve pizza, there are no guests, and since there is a curfew, nobody can come to the restaurant even if they had the money to do so. Our contingent will go over about 2000 and order a few pizzas to eat there.

The meal was superb.

So ends the stay in Hebron.