Food Distribution in Shoukba

On Thursday I went with our Palestinian partner to distribute food in Shoukba, a village of about 4500 near Ramallah. Like many of the villages in the area, it is set on a hillside. Our little car would hardly make it up the steep inclines. T
At the first house we stopped by there were three young men working on a car - all three unemployed. One many was 32 years old with four children. He had worked in Israel before the closure. The other two were in their early 20s and still single. They wanted to get married, but with the situation who could think of taking a wife. The next house up the hill we found a young man still asleep at 11 A.M.. He was a barber, but only opened his shop in the evenings; not enough business to bother opening the shop in the morning. One mother told us that when her children went to school that morning she had nothing to feed them. Without exception the residents were hospitable and gracious.