Easing a Little

As people here sort of settle into the idea of the war, post is easing some of the restrictions they put in place just after all the violence kicked up. Most of it doesn't now and didn't then affect me. For example, they canceled all travel to the West Bank. Now we are back to being able to go there if it is neccessary for our work here. But I never need to go into the West Bank anyway unless we have really important company from DC, so that doesn't affect me!

There are still some tensions here. While we are allowed to go into the Old City again (they told us not to for most of last week), I am not sure it is a good idea. A tourist from Italy was stabbed to death there yesterday by a Palestinian kid. They say the motive was nationalism and the IDF has already made arrests. All the same, I don't go to the Old City all that often and I don't think I will start now.

Another change is the shabbat siren. They normally sound off this siren at sundown to let observant Jews know that shabbat has officially begun. But the siren sounds like the air raid sirens up north. But we have a lot of refugees from the north down here, and the siren scares them. So tonight, they played music instead.