All moved in!

Hello everyone,

I am writing to you from an internet cafe in my new home - Ramallah. My roommate Bethany and I moved into a flat across the street from the school we're working in last night. So far we've been managing. We're still in need of a few important items (like internet), but it'll all come together after these next few days. We were hoping to pick up a few things today to complete our kitchen, but because it is Friday (the Muslim sabbath) almost nothing is open. In conjunction with Ramadan, it's been difficult know when stores and restaurants are going to be open. Typically on weekdays (everyday but Friday), stores are open until about 6pm and after 7:15 (the official time that fasting ends) the town is dead. Things begin to pick up around 9pm again and the city shuts down at 12am. Many bars and resturants do not serve alcohol out of respect for the holiday.
Ramallah is known to be a very cosmopolitan city or "Palestine's bride" as my guidebook so affectionately calls it. The population is younger and it is the epicenter for social change as the Palestinian Authroity is beginning to implement more social services in an attempt to develop itself. I am eager to watch as those changes as they occur. I still have a great deal of exploring to do, however it's difficult to navigate around the city due to the hills and curvy roads. Street signs are a luxury here.
These last few days of orientation have been filled with sight seeing, including an all-important visit to Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The museum was very well done - I wish I could compare it to the one in Washington DC, but I was too young to understand it at the time. It went through a timeline beginning with the rise of Hitler and the Nuremberg laws all the way to the establishment of Israel. Certainly this was a reminder of why having a Jewish state is very important to Jews and quite frankly, I don't blame them. They've been subject to persecution for centuries and after the horrors of the Holocaust, it's important to their survival that they have a homeland, but the phrase "promised land" as is so typically used to describe this region is distrubing.
To me, the biggest question is not whether Jews should have their own country, but at what expense. Presently, I have no alternative solutions to offer, but it's clear that the current situation is not working for either country - Palestinians are seeing their rights vanish before their eyes and Israelis pour billions of dollars into defense and security in order to feel safe in their own country.
At this point I don't sympathize with Israel, but as a believer in rationality (thank you, economics major), I am curious to find out more about Israel's rationale to beefing up security and why they haven't made greater strides at peace.
Beaches in Tel-Aviv in two weeks!
Thanks for reading.