The Problem With Dog Poop

Today it was about 75 degrees here in Jerusalem and tomorrow they expect the temperature to reach 80! After 3 fairly cold months this feels great but there is a problem with it.
As many of you know (or should know) trouble is brewing once again in the Gaza Strip. Hamas (a designated terrorist group) took over the strip last summer and since that time Israel has kept that small piece of land under siege. Everyday from behind the walls, people have been launching rockets at towns in Israel. Since last summer , around 2000 rockets and mortars have been sent into Israeli towns. This week the Israeli military raided Gaza Strip in an effort to stop the rockets. Now, the leadership here says that they will launch a full scale attack against Hamas when the weather gets nicer. (I guess problems in Israel are like dog poop. In the winter the poop freezes and you kinda forget about it for a while. Then when the weather gets warmer, that poop warms up and begins to stink).
Already this week the security is tighter and some protests have occurred throughout the West Bank and here in Jerusalem. It seems that everyone knows that there will soon be a war in Gaza but no one knows what this will do to the rest of the country. I have already been a bit more cautious on buses and I have been much quicker when visiting crowded public markets just to reduce the chance of being caught between retaliatory attacks.
My wife and I were in the World Trade Towers on September 10th, 2001 and we remember how strange it felt to wake up the next day and see what happened. But after that time, I never worried about entering a building or getting on a bus or train in America. Now we know that Springtime is here, the dog poop is thawing, and soon Hamas and Israel will collide. Our hope is that innocent people are spared.