We worked from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm at the workshop and then returned back to finish other work , writing reports and collect evaluation forms and see what the participants wrote in the evaluation forms and what they said about the workshop .

Back to the book . . . I got 3 phone calls and 2 emails today, all of them first thanking the Book team for the great work and then asking for copies. I told them that I will leave to Jordan for 4 days to attend the staff retreat with the Jerusalem Center for Women and then next week I will call them and arrange to give them copies of our book.

Today, I was told that my visa to Poland was issued and that I will leave between the 8th of December and the 15th of the same month to visit Poland. Now they are preparing my schedule for the visit and I’m so happy that I will be able to talk on behalf of the Palestinian Women and their needs, I will try to meet with Women Organizations and will address the needs of the Palestinian Women in general.

Thanks GOD , I was able to spend few hours with Memo today.

Tomorrow is Friday, my day off , I need to stay with Memo and I need to help him in Mathematics and I will try to finish few things related to the work. I need to reply to some emails and send few reports to Justvision about my work in the last week.

I finished discussing a few things with both Patricia and Ruth before I ran to take my Friday lunch with my family, then back to work to go to the Palestinian TV station to bring the DVD of the Book Launch that we did in Ramallah on the 4th of November. After that I met with a group of Palestinians to discuss a new youth project. And then, late at night, around 10:45 pm, I left Ramallah to run to Patricia’s hotel to leave the DVD for her.

Today, I started my day with a board meeting at the Jerusalem Center for Women to discuss few things related to work and projects. And then prepared a list of Palestinian Women Organizations both in the West Bank and Jerusalem to give them copy of Sixty years; Sixty Voices.

Good news, I’m collecting all the news and the articles that were published in the Palestinian Press after the Book Launch in Ramalla and we will put it up on the website. I already miss Patricia and Ruth so much — please take good care of yourselves and God Bless You.

Now we are at the reality of WOW!! The book is real, it has substance, presence, heft, weight, and tears come to people’s faces when they see it, touch it, open it, read it.

I cannot convey how touching it was to see the Palestinian women of the book together, with families, with friends, with media. We laughed, we hugged. I signed books, and signed books, and then we hugged more.

There were about 100 people there, including Ministers, the Brigadier General of security, the Palestinian television station (filming), heads of education departments, and the woman in the book who is illiterate and signed her authorization form with her thumbprint.

People were so happy, so grateful, and finding ways to get the book into their world. We all worked so hard, the key team of four, the designers, the women interviewed, and a dozen translators. And now we hold the book in our hands and it feels powerful!

There is a great poignancy, knowing as I do so well, that there is no way, none, for the ‘average Israeli’ – as though such a person exists! – to know the life of the ‘average Palestinian’ — as though such a person exists! — on the West Bank or Gaza. Just there on the other side of that 10 meter high wall. You can try to envision, but it is impossible, really.

It’s extraordinary that I, an American, can do what is illegal for an Israeli to do, visit the Palestinian Territories, and what is virtually impossible for most Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to do, come into Israel. Meet with each other. Talk with each other, share realities.

Arriving here for the Israeli and Palestinian book launches of Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women, knowing the book itself will carry the women’s voices to each other, knowing that an American woman, me, was the catalyst for a team determined to be a bridge across the wall and through the world is suddenly humbling.

When I ask deeply “why?” The answer comes, because there was a slot that needed to be filled. No heroics. Just simple.

Through all the year of immense work by the full team, we gained more than gave. The women in the book are the heroines.