The MPT International Team Committee regretfully decided to cancel the October trip to the West Bank because of uncertainty about the delta variant and the increase in covid hospitalizations. Israel has been slow to open its borders to tourists and it still seems that a two week quarantine is needed upon arrival. If that were still to be the case in October, it would cut greatly into a month long deployment which would be prohibitive; or even worse, Israel could decide not to allow entry to people from the US because of our high rates of covid cases. Due to such uncertainties, we did not think it would be a good idea to give the team the go-ahead to start making flight arrangements.
The team of five had already started the mandatory team training. We are now providing that as a weekly two hour session on Zoom rather than requiring all team members to come to Michigan for a week of face-to-face training. This allowed a team member from Cameroon to be on this team. In the time that we've been doing the Zoom team training together we have seen that this is a very strong team. Now, all five team members hope to be able to join the April team as long as their lives permit and perhaps we will be able to recruit a few more team members by then.
If you are interested in joining our next scheduled Peace Team to the West Bank call 517-489-2607 or visit https://www.metapeaceteam.org/international-peace-teams
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