United States

Three weeks after saying goodbye to Palestine, with the pictures and faces of all those I met at Aida still fresh in my mind, I received a much-needed wake-up call that profoundly changed my life in ways I never could have imagined or expected. Dina Elmuti writes for The Electronic Intifada.

I have been to Hebron three times, but each visit was like entering a different city. In May of 1967, the entire West Bank including Hebron was under Jordanian rule. On the occasion of the anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, Iris Keltz recalls her three visits to Hebron since the days before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.

On 13 October, Tulane University, an elite university in the southern United States, hosted former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a featured speaker. In response to his visit, a coalition of students, teachers, activists and community members — Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians and their allies — rallied in opposition and protest inside and outside the event. Emily Ratner writes from New Orleans.

”For this is what the Palestinian does: we wait. For an answer to be given, for a question to be asked … for exile to a better place and for return to the only place that knows us …” Laila El-Haddad writes about her deportation from Egypt while attempting to go home to Gaza.

We crossed into Gaza through the Rafah land crossing on 2 February 2009. Minutes after Palestinian officials stamped our passports, we were startled by a loud explosion. “Don’t worry,” said one of the officials, unflinching. “They’re only bombing the tunnels. It’s normal here.” Radhika Sainath writes from the US.

Having returned from Gaza, I am trying to come to terms with what I saw, what I heard and honestly, what I don’t think I will ever understand — the justification. While Israel’s recent offensive has been the most egregious of any historical attack upon the Palestinians in Gaza, it is just that, one of many. Gaza has been under Israeli bombardment and sanctions for decades. Reem Salahi writes.

Suppose that the US weapon makers had to use a tunnel to deliver weapons to Israel. The US would have to build a mighty big tunnel to accommodate the weapons that Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar have supplied to Israel. The size of such a tunnel would be an eighth wonder of the world, a Grand Canyon of a tunnel, an engineering feat of the ages. Kathy Kelly writes from Chicago, the United States after returning from Gaza.

My wife Linda and I went back to Beirut, Lebanon recently to visit the American Community School that I graduated from in the 1950s. One of the counselors at the school, an American named David Bakis, has started a project to bring some cheer into the lives of children in the Palestinian refugee camps near Beirut. No easy task. Curtis Bell writes from the United States.

”Let me tell you about Palestine, the way it used to be,” my grandmother said in Arabic. “The thing I’ll remember most is my childhood in the city of Jaffa. Every day we would go to the beach and play in the sand. It was just one block from our home, the apartment building that my father owned. At night we would sit on the balcony and watch the big ships sail by, listening to them whistle.” Sumia Ibrahim writes from the US.

I have a routine of sorts. I monitor the situation back home in Gaza all day — I keep Al Jazeera English on continuously as long as I am home, despite my son’s Yousuf’s nagging to switch to cartoons. He stopped asking several days ago, when, tearful and angry, I told him Gaza is being bombed, that Seedo and Tete (Grandma and Grandpa) are in danger. Laila El-Haddad writes from the US.