Growing up, I have learned that the best journeys occur when I visit someone.
Even the encounter with Lebanon was like this, the first time was to visit the relatives of Syrian friends met in Italy, and then from the second time on it was a continuous greeting saying, "see you soon, inshallah", leaving with tears on my face for nostalgia of who I was saying goodbye and then return each time with a big smile hugging all those I previously had left.
Each time, more and more, and more and more often for four years.
This time it is different.
Each time it was a little bit, but this time I felt it inside me during the last days, before leaving.
The passage of time in recent years has shown me how people's lives go on, although I keep an eye on their daily lives depending on the period.
For some, things more or less remain unchanged, the "usual" life in the tent, with the "usual" work that comes and goes.
On others, god or destiny play yet another dirty trick, an unexpected illness, the death of a loved one, the beginning of a nightmare due to unjust persecution.

Finally we could afford to live in the house of our dreams.
The family house was located outside the center of Homs, large and spacious.
After years of hard work as a teacher, my husband had saved up enough money to renovate it.
I was glad, finally our children would have enough space to grow up happy.
I used to spend days with my sisters thinking about the furniture and the parties that we could have organized in that house.
The whole family would have been together, we would have all fitted in.
I still remember the marble countertop in the kitchen, it was shiny and new.
I could have kneaded bread and cooked all the food I wanted in that beautiful kitchen.
Everything was ready, all that was missing were the appliances, the beds and the upholstery.
I remember that long discussion with my husband.
That month he wanted to spend the money we had planned to spend on the furniture to buy a small car, as ours had suddenly broken down.
He insisted on spending the money for the car, I was angry because I wanted the washing machine, beds and carpets.
I wanted to move out as soon as possible.
After a long discussion, he won.
He had bought a car, small and ugly.
Every day I looked at it and it made me angry, that damn car had delayed the life I dreamed of in that house.
A few weeks later, that damn car became our home and our only way out.

 “A real Syrian hunt is underway” says Capannini, Project Manager for Lebanon.

“We express s the utmost concern over the recent events of racism against Syrian refugees in Lebanon. We ask that the international community intervene before the situation precipitates with even more serious violence and with the serious risk that it can spread to other cities ». This is what Giovanni Paolo Ramonda, President of the Pope John XXIII Community declares, regarding the expulsion of 1,400 Syrian refugees from the city of Bcharre, in northern Lebanon. An escalation that began last week, following the murder of a Lebanese citizen by a Syrian citizen, which led the municipality of Bcharre, under pressure from popular uprisings, to expel the entire Syrian community.

CURRENT SITUATION

 "Mario Paciolla represents - like few - all those wonderful people with whom we feel a connection  coming from the heart and our lives, the kind of person who do not believe in Italian, Colombian, French, Ecuadorian nationality or whatever it is, but believe that life need to be built by taking care of each other, recognizing each other, being critical and self-critical and by creating real alternatives in the face of what is happening".
Manuel Rozental, activist for the organization “Pueblos en Camino” in Colombia, used these words to describe Mario Paciolla during an interview for the Italian newspaper “Manifesto”.

The circumstances of Mario’s death, which took place on July 15th in San Vicente del Caguán, still remain to be clarified. In recent weeks, this episode has strongly re-emerged - as reported in the SIR article - when the Senator Roy Barreras, during a debate in the Senate, "asked Defense Minister Holmes Trujillo if the military indicated in a report the name of Paciolla as an informer, since he had interviewed the mothers of 8 children and adolescents who died when the army bombed the FARC’s dissidence ... ". By reading the article, we also learn that: “The senator revealed there was allegedly an intelligence report about an Italian UN humanitarian worker who was accused of leaking information about the bombing”.

Day by day a pervasive sense of uncertainty and insecurity is haunting the Colombian population who has been bent by the violent acts committed by many illegal armed groups such as the AGC (Autodefensas Gaetanistas de Colombia). At the beginning of October, this illegal armed group smeared walls and vehicles in several cities writing “AGC are present” and leaving flyers in many regions including Antioquia, Cordoba, Chocò and Sucre. By these gestures, they wanted to announce their presence and their determination to stay and control as many territories as possible.

CURRENT SITUATION

In the beginning of October, Israel reimposed a full national lockdown due to the second wave of Covid-19. The restrictions, which should have ended at the beginning of the month, lasted until October 18th, when a reopening phase started (implying the possibility to declare some cities as red areas). Among the measures included in the way out strategy, the reopening of religious sites in Jerusalem was planned. Although, legally Israelis still need specific reasons to leave their homes. This norm was considered as limiting the freedom to demonstrate. So, on October 3rd, a series of large demonstrations against Netanyahu were held throughout Israel. The decision to start reopening the country came after a significant decline in the number of new daily Coronavirus cases since June.
No lockdown was imposed in Palestine, but some restrictions were implemented to limit the movements in those areas where high number of Coronavirus cases were reported. At the end of October about 6,000 cases of Covid-19 were reported for a total of about 60,000 cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
On October 18th, during a meeting in Bahrain between an Israeli government delegation and the Bahraini Foreign Minister, 7 memoranda were signed besides the agreement reached the previous month between the two countries. In particular, these memoranda provide for a greater economic and political cooperation.
On October 23rd Sudan signed a normalization agreement with Israel as well, becoming the fifth Arab country to officially recognize the State of Israel (along with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain). The agreement was signed in front of a delegation from the United States, which welcomed this détente with pleasure. Hamas viewed the agreement as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.