A rumor of war: Local activists find themselves among hundreds of "internationals" who have stepped into a war zone in the West Bank. Why?

Here in Seattle, after a long and dreary winter, it is an utterly perfect, sunny spring Thursday. It is April, and I should be out in the garden or down by the lake, something to soak up the idyllic glory of Seattle's fleeting springtime.

Instead, I am on the phone talking with former Seattle resident (and Seattle Weekly editorial assistant) Kristen Schurr. Outside my window, kids are playing. Outside Kristen's, it is a war zone, and children are shot at every day.

It is life in a Palestinian refugee camp. Hers happens to be Al-Azzeh, outside Bethlehem. It's been a bad week.

"The first night I was here, just crossing the alley in front of the apartment, I was shot at," she says matter-of-factly. "They showed me how to duck and run." She's used her new skills regularly in the past few days. "Just today, I went into a little shop inside of camp; we got shot at."

During our four conversations last week, Schurr practiced the maneuver, pausing during a sentence as she scurried across some alley. There's a sniper tower in the adjacent Israeli settlement, and the Israeli army has taken over all of Bethlehem's tallest buildings. At times, as with my other conversations with people in the area, I could hear the gunshots and 18 mm shells over the phone.

Is she brave? Reckless? Stupid? Why on earth would someone choose to go into such a place? Especially now? Is it a martyr complex? An all-time bad vacation story for the grandkids?