So I got up early and accompanied a European journalist to Nazareth, where we had an appointment to interview the Palestinian-Israeli* Carrie Bradshaw. Her nom de plume is Salma Malak, and she writes a weekly Sex and the City-style column in Arabic for a Haifa newspaper called Madina (City). Among the subjects she has written about are her visit to a sex accessory shop to pick out a gift for a friend who was getting married, and her mother's attempts to find her a husband. And yes, her column has gotten a lot of attention.

On the way we stopped for a desperately-needed coffee at the restaurant on Kibbutz Mizra, which is famous for raising pigs. The restaurant, of course, specializes in pork products. And I am enough of a "nice Jewish girl" to find it sort of...tacky...to see Jews eating bacon and eggs (and bread and butter and cheese) for breakfast on shabbat. (so I'm provincial - shoot me).

Just as we were entering Nazareth, which was packed with weekend shoppers from all over the Galilee region, a Palestinian journalist called me from Ramallah: the IDF had targeted two cars carrying senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, in response to the dozens of Qassam rockets that had been launched from Gaza on Sderot over the previous night.

My first response was: Oh for heaven's sake, it's a beautiful sunny day and I really don't want to hear about this. Can't we have a little peace and quiet, please?

Then we went to meet Salma in a cafe. Our driver's eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw that she was a beautiful, sexy young woman with dark wavy hair, who was wearing figure-hugging jeans and a sleeveless black lycra top. He whispered to me in Hebrew, "She must be Christian. No Muslim girl would dress like that."

Salma turned out to be charming, articulate and very intelligent. We had a fascinating 90-minute conversation, and then she had to leave for a family luncheon. I went inside to use the washroom, and ran into Maya, the Palestinian-Israeli woman who had been one of the Arabic-Hebrew translators at the Amman workshop in June. She looked at me as if I'd come from Mars and asked what I was doing there. An interview, I explained, as we hugged each other and exchanged greetings.

And so the journalist and I went to take a quick, obligatory look at the churches that were built over Jesus's childhood house and Joseph's carpentry shop before driving back to Tel Aviv. The churches were not terribly aesthetic, so if they don't have any spiritual meaning for you then you might as well give them a miss.

And now I'm sitting here, realizing that I've been rolling three separate posts around in my head for the last month. I just don't know which one to write first, so I'm putting the decision to a vote. The choices are listed below; please indicate your preference in the comments section:

1) What really happened that day in Gaza City and Jabalya?
2) What was it like in Netzarim on the day of the evacuation?
3) And why am I so fascinated by the article I linked to in my previous post?

*She does not like the term Arab-Israeli, 'though she agreed with me that "Palestinian-Israeli" is problematic because it should include Israeli Jews who are descended from families that lived here before the establishment of the State of Israel.