It became impossible to feel that the school was a safe place for the sisters, the 300 local girls, and the 12 boarding students. "The effects of curfew are powerful. In broad daylight, there is not a soul in the street, but I know that the girls are in the building, even though I can't hear them."

The crisis is escalating as fewer and fewer parents can pay any tuition, and the Israeli economy is also in a downward spiral. The maintenance work that the school has contracted is incomplete because workers and materials can't get through the checkpoint.

"It is edging toward anarchy . . . there are now settlers placing bombs in front of school yards."

The girls from the school now play "checkpoint," where students acting as Israeli soldiers make a Palestinian stand for an hour in the playground while they "check" her papers. There is now a nursery rhyme that students sing that mimics the curfew call that they hear from the Israeli jeeps. Parents come into the school in tears because, despite their message about non-violence and Christian love, their children are coming to see suicide bombing as an accepted retaliation. She remarked that Christ's entryway into Jerusalem (the road from Bethany) is now covered with mounds of dirt and cement blocks to prevent the road's use by Palestinians.