"We need windows to the outside world—windows to let our story out, to let in the light.  We need you to be our windows.  Will you be a window?  Will you?  And you, and you?"

 The finger that points at me, the eyes that meet mine, the voice that locks itself into my consciousness, is that of "Amal," one of several Palestinian women whom I have met thus far.  I am in the West Bank as part of a delegation jointly sponsored by Christian Peacemaker Teams and the Reformed Church of America.  We have come to learn, to protest in nonviolent ways, to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis who are working for peace in this divided and war-torn land.

 Amal is an articulate representative of all the Palestinian women who have opened their hearts, their homes, their stories to us.  She lives in Deheisheh, one of several United Nations refugee camps for thousands of Palestinians who have been forced out of their villages by government order but who refuse to leave their home country—the "internally displaced."  Located within Bethlehem, Deheisheh is a maze of narrow, tangled streets and alleyways.  It is a community of contrasts.  Drab cement-block walls serve as canvas for painted murals, some depicting ancestral villages that exist only in the memory of the camp's oldest residents.  A kindergarten playground is surrounded with razor wire.  Here and there, a fig tree grows next to a fence covered with photos of young men who have "disappeared."

 The lined faces of women like Amal tell stories of suffering.