"What source can you believe in order to create peace there?" a friend writes when I come back as a volunteer from Palestine. I have no answer, only this story:

      I am in Balata refugee camp in occupied Palestine. The camp is deathly quiet, all shops shuttered and all the windows closed. The quiet is shattered by sporadic bursts of gunfire, bangs and explosions. It is nearly dark, and Jessica and Melissa and I are looking for a place to spend the night. We are hurrying through the streets, worried. We need to be indoors before curfew. "Go into any house," we've been told. "Anyone will be glad to take you in." But we feel a bit shy.

      From a narrow, metal staircase, Samar, a young woman with a wide, beautiful smile beckons us up. "Welcome, welcome!" We are given refuge in the three small rooms that house her family. We sit down on big, overstuffed couches. The women serve us tea. I look around at the pine wood paneling that adds soft curves and warmth to the concrete, at the porcelain birds and artificial flowers that decorate a ledge. The ceilings are carefully painted in simple geometric designs. They have poured love and care into their home, and it feels like a sanctuary. Outside we can hear sporadic shooting, the deep 'boom' of houses being blown up by the soldiers. But here in these rooms, we are safe, in the tentative sense that word can be used in this place. "Yahoud!" the women say when we hear explosions. It is the Arabic word for Jew.

      We talk and laugh with the women. Around us young men are prowling with guns, houses are exploding, lives are being shattered. And we are in an intimate world of women. Samar brushes my hair, ties it back in a band to control its wildness. We try to talk about our lives. "Are you Christian?" Samar finally asks us at the end of the night. Melissa, Jessica and I look at each other. All of us are Jewish, and we're not sure what the reaction will be if we admit it. Jessica speaks for us. "Jewish," she says. The women don't understand the word. We try several variations, but finally are forced to the blunt and dreaded "Yahoud." "Yahoud!" Samar says. She gives a little surprised laugh, looks at the other women. "Beautiful!" And that is all. Her welcome to us is undiminished. She shows me the shower, dresses me in her own flowered nightgown and robe, and puts me to bed. Two of the children sleep with us. Ahmed, the little four year old boy, snuggles next to me. He sleeps fiercely, kicking and thrashing in his dreams, and each time an explosion comes, hurls himself into my arms.

      One night later, we again go back to our residence just as dark is falling, together with Linda and Neta, two other volunteers. But no sooner do we arrive than a troop comes to the door. We come forward to meet these soldiers, to talk with them and witness what they will do. One of the men, with owlish glasses, knows Jessica and Melissa: they have had a long conversation with him standing beside his tank. He is uncomfortable with his role.

      Ahmed, the little boy, is terrified of the soldiers. He cries and screams and points at them, and we try to comfort him, to carry him away into another room. But he won't go. He is terrified, but he can't bear to be out of their sight. He runs toward them crying. "Take off your helmet," Jessica tells the soldiers. "Shake hands with him, show him you're a human being. Help him to be not so afraid." The owlish soldier takes off his helmet, holds out his hand. Ahmed's sobs subside. Samar holds the little boy up to the owlish soldier's face, tells him to give the soldier a kiss. She doesn't want Ahmed to be afraid, to hate. The little boy kisses the soldier, and the soldier kisses him back.

      This is the moment to end this story, on a high note of hope, to let it be a story of how simple human warmth, a child's kiss, can for a moment overcome oppression and hate. But it is a characteristic of the relentless quality of this occupation that the story doesn't end here. The soldiers order us all into one room. They close the door, and begin to search the house. We can hear banging and crashing and loud thuds against the walls.

      When the soldiers finally leave, we emerge to examine the damage. The sanctuary is destroyed, the house turned into a wrecking yard. Every single object has been pulled off the walls, out of the closets, thrown in huge piles on the floor. Broken glass and china covers the floor. We begin to clean up. We know how to clean and restore order.

      That is, after all, why we've come: to make things not quite as bad as they would be otherwise. I don't know how the story will ultimately end. A boy whose baby dreams are disturbed by gunfire kisses a soldier. A soldier kisses a boy, and then destroys his home. Or maybe he simply stands by as others do the destruction, in silence, that same silence too many of us have kept for too long. And if there are forces that can nurture peace they must first create an uproar, a vast breaking of silence, a refusal to stand by as the boot stomps down.

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