There and back again, a West Bank story

Today I spent the afternoon in Beit Sahour.  Osama, the regular driver for PAIDIA, picked me up just after the check point as usual.  As soon as I got in the car he apologized for being late and told me that I shouldn't be afraid.  I was a little bit confused as I thought he was just talking about busy traffic or not being able to get to the school on time, but then he went on to tell me that two families living between Bethlehem and Beit Sahour were fighting.  He explained how there are still tribal tendencies in the Palestinian culture and the families that he was talking about consisted of maybe 500 people or more.  Apparently the families were running around in the streets with machine guns shooting at each other.  On his way to get me bullets were flying very close to his car, and he told me that we would have to wait until the police had stabilized the situation.  About every five minutes or so he would call his friend who was a captain on the local police force and ask if it was clear, but we were told to wait time after time.  Later I found out that the entire Bethlehem police force had been deployed in order to try and get the situation under control.  Eventually we were able to skirt around the danger and get to where we needed to be.  Osama said that this was a fairly normal thing in the West Bank.  After teaching and getting through the checkpoint I saw that there weren't any buses heading to Jerusalem and I decided to just walk back.  This was the first time I had walked a round trip.  I enjoyed the walk, but unfortunately I didn't make it back in time for dinner so I walked over to the Old City and satisfied my hunger with falafel.  Good times.