First thing on the Saturday was an event at the picturesque Bethlehem University. Roddy Doyle, Ahdaf Soueif, Hanan al-Shaykh and Jamal Mahjoub joined Nathalie Handal – speaking now in her home town. Even though it was a Saturday and the university was buzzing with graduation ceremonies, the main auditorium was full of bright and eager, and mostly female, students.

The authors then split off to take eight separate workshops and the young people of Bethlehem were more than a match for those of Ramallah. Everyone had a class with at least ten students in it, everyone came out invigorated by the spark and energy and drive to succeed that they have now seen time and time again. As usual, though, the desperate situation that these students find themselves in had some people pretty shaken up by the time they left.

After lunch the Reverend Mitri Raheb, of the Lutheran church, took us on a tour of the Apartheid Wall, which now surrounds Bethlehem on three sides. We wound round from the north to the south of it and any notion that it was built for security reasons is, surely, now fully discredited. We crossed one bit of land, that is being lined up for the next section of wall – it will be the last time any of us cross it again.

We stopped in to Deheisheh refugee camp and saw Ibda’, a cultural/youth centre run by friends of Suheir Hammad.

People who wanted to wander to the Church of the Nativity did so while others stayed for a coffee and further discussions with the Reverend and Jimmy Michel, a BBC cameraman (and brother of Carol, co-organiser of festival).

Then to the event. Same venue as last night though this time, on a Saturday night in Bethlehem, we didn’t quite fill it. By all accounts, though, it was still a remarkable turnout. On first were Esther, Pankaj and Hanan – good readings, nice questions, a bit of a flow to the conversation picked up at some points. Hanan was particularly interesting on how her writing affected her relationship with her mother.

Next Andy, Nathalie and Roddy. Andy’s reading was a passage that was at once lively and poignant about an aggressive young man’s insistence that war is cool. Nathalie read three powerful poems about life as an Arab (or any Other) in America – and got plenty of woops as she sat down. Roddy, unsurprisingly, had the audience cracking up. Munzer Fahmi, who runs the Bookshop at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, had sold out of his books by Day 3.

Though tonight was less thunderous than the last three we were told that we have energized the city. Bethlehem, they told us, is being slowly strangled to death but this Festival has really given people a kick. So although we’re all now falling asleep on our feet, we really are achieving things. And I think people really feel like they’re doing something important.