Another ceasefire ending

It’s our second to last week in Israel and we’re at the end of another ceasefire. This one was five days, long enough that I stopped checking Israeli news obsessively and occasionally looked at other sections of the New York Times. But now as midnight approaches, I’m checking Ynet again and that feeling of tension is welling up inside me. They say there might be a deal that was just signed, but there’s no reason to trust Hamas, and I’m bracing myself for more rockets. In the end, either way, most of our summer here will have been during a war. Of course it changed things, though we never considered leaving. In fact, while one friend from Boston emailed me to see whether the I thought she should bring her small children to Israel for their scheduled vacation, heard much more of the opposite: both Americans and Israelis who are glad to be in Israel during the conflict. Israelis felt like if they left, they’d be betraying those who were risking their lives to defend them and their fellow citizens, and Americans like me who felt that there is little we could do from abroad, while by just being here, we might be able to offer support to Israelis and raise awareness back home. In any case, we are still here, but I wish it could have been different.