Back in Jerusalem, walking along the Promenade that looks over a big part of the city, including the Old City. Hard to see from a distance, but what you can see is the Palestinian women sitting in a circle on the grass.

These are the scenes that make me happy. All kinds of Israelis—religious, secular, young teenager couples, grandparents pushing a baby carriage—and different Palestinians whose villages are below the Promenade and adjoin the Old City. Yes, I know the politics of it. I know of the villages that are being commandeered, the houses refused permits and then are demolished. You can read about it everywhere.

What you can’t read, or be told by AI, is the feeling of walking on the Promenade in the early hours of Saturday evening and seeing all these different groups meeting and walking right by each other. Do they smile and wave? They do not. Do they wish each other a happy holiday or Sabbath? No. They simply walk by each other, minding their own business, maybe nodding if your eyes meet. That’s the most you can expect in these tense, anxious days, and it’s a lot.

Gives you a chance to dream: Could it be that in a few generations, they’ll actually smile at each other? Give blessings and good wishes? Arab women could always compare hats and headdresses with orthodox Jewish women. I’m reminded of the great British Airlines commercial featuring Robert Morley, inviting Americans to England: “Come home, all is forgiven!”

A lot has to happen before then. Here in Israel, there is rage and despair over the agreement Trump is reaching with Iran, and more and more people, including Bibi Netanyahu’s most loyal adherents, are finding it in their hearts to finally say his time is up. But he has risen from the almost-dead before and we’ll see if he will again.

“I’ve made bets he’ll resign before fall elections,” my brother told me. Starmer just did that in the UK, didn’t he?

I’d like to counter with a bet that our president won’t finish his term but haven’t yet. Watching my money.

It’s hot but dry here, the desert close by to the east like a white 8×11 paper waiting for letters, drawings, or paint, but always starting out blank. God seems to be everywhere regardless of what kind of believer, or non-believer, you are. A friend told me years ago: “I’m whispering to you that I don’t believe in God because I don’t want Him to hear it.”

Here they don’t whisper. At dawn I can hear the muezzin’s call to prayer from a mosque further east, men wearing yarmulkes and white fringes drooping from beneath their shirts, women in hijab. And jeans and t-shirts and sundresses. Also, excellent coffee.

Construction everywhere: New apartment buildings, renovating apartment buildings, some of the tallest cranes you’ll see outside of China. They might be killing each other but they’re not aging; you can’t miss the youthful energy.

Maria Popova writes: “The great danger is to stand motionless on the bank as the river of your life rushes by. It is not easy, learning how to stop waiting and start living; not easy not to waste your life.”