Diaa Hadid

Last week, before a new wave of work came in, we thought about having a press conference “what will happen in Palestine with a war on Iraq?” One of my colleagues raised an eyebrow - I had asked him to speak - he simply answered my question, “More of the same shit, Diaa, what else?” Diaa Hadid writes from Ram, occupied Palestine.

“It’s dark now, and outside of my office, most of the snow has disappeared under gritty car tracks. But I think for the first time since I’ve been here, happiness came from the skies,” writes Diaa Hadid.

The tragedy at hand is the reality of virtually no West Bank or Gazan having gas masks, the even more real fear that the war on Iraq, as it has already, will be used to carry out more willful killings, more extra-judicial assassinations, more home demolitions, more arrests, more closure, more curfew, more, always more of the same. Diaa Hadid reports about the surrealism surrounding the pre-war.

Last week, I went to visit a girlfriend who studies at Birzeit University. I reached there by taking a shared cab sneaking on settler roads, which put the fear of God into me. Ramallah was closed, so I couldn’t take the usual route to Birzeit. Diaa Haddad writes from the village.

I met up with a group of friends, including a few of my favourite village boys. These boys are not a politically minded bunch. Who are you going to vote for? I asked the boys. I didn’t normally ask questions like this, simply because its previously been a conversation killer.

I have a headache today. I’m not the only one. The woman in the apartment building in Silwan, where I was this morning also has a headache. So does her children. She told me herself.

Today, between 5,000 and 6,000 people — Israeli peace activists, Palestinians in Israel and Palestinian MK’s in the Israeli Knesset — marched to the Kalandia checkpoint.