On Friday, March 29 while sitting in an Armenian coffee shop in Jerusalem’s Old City, a radio broadcast came on in Arabic with gunfire in the background. Something was amiss, and all the owner could tell us was that it involved Ramallah. The attacks had begun on the very day I had hoped to pay a visit to the city with my friend visiting from Belgium. Read more about The Invasion - a West Bank journal - Part I 

Writing an update of the situation in the West Bank today requires few changes to the updates of the previous ten days; names of villages, numbers of wounded, and the names of the dead appear to be the only difference. Read more about West Bank update 

The sun was finally shining, I start to feel a little better but the feeling is temporary - were I at my place in Ramallah right now, it wouldn’t even be safe enough to step out on the balcony. The shutters would be drawn, I would be in darkness, and my usual short supply of food would have been exhausted long ago. Read more about 'There's a terrorist coming' 

Imagine that you have been locked inside your house for 10 days. You cannot leave your house because there are tanks and soldiers in the street, on every corner there are snipers who shoot to kill. Imagine you cannot go to work, your children cannot go to school or to the nursery and you have to do your best to explain to them what a tank is and what the soldiers are doing in the streets of your city. Read more about Rape of the cities 

A two year old girl, along with a growing number of other civilians, has been killed in a village where I have friends. Terrified people have been calling, telling us that they and their entire family are under a table and everything is exploding or asking to please help to get an ambulance because their wife’s breathing became so strained that she is miscarrying and close to bleeding to death. Read more about The television 

Conditions worsen by the day. All of our attention is on Nablus and Jenin. As the world watches, these areas, esp Jenin Refugee Camp is being burned to the ground with its residents inside. Such actions anywhere else in the world by any other military force other than Israel would have moved the US to send troops to protect the civilians. But when only Palestinians are being killed I guess the powers-to-be can give a damn. The Palestinians will not forget this chapter of their history. Read more about Ramallah update 

In Nablus, currently under fire, Medical Relief has set up six field hospitals; the situation in two of them is dire. One of them, a mosque in the old city, reports 50 people injured, three of those in critical condition, 15 in serious condition. Read more about Westbank overview 

Things change here, but its almost impossible to notice. People are perpetually happy, unless they are dying, or angry over someone else’s death. The look on the face of the average Gaza City resident in the past 2 weeks has not changed. The kids still yell “Whats your name?” at me, the women still shyly look away and the shopowners still say “Welcome.” Prospects for peace haven’t changed any of that. Although I begin to wonder if its because no one is at all hopeful. Read more about Musings During the Lull - March 23, 2002 

The fears arose on Monday night. Through my contact Jose, I had been introduced to two other Americans working at different NGO’s here, Darryl and Nathan. Both had strong academic, dare I say nerdy backgrounds (they began talking about Voltron cartoons after not too long), yet it had enabled them to pick up Arabic in a relatively short time. They also had been here for much longer. Read more about Gaza - Bombing begins - March 4-7, 2002 

I set out to Rafah with Mahmud from work on mid-Thursday. The route to Rafah crosses two roads used exclusively by Israeli settlers, which for us Palestinian kinfolk entails long waits at military checkpoints. On this day we managed to only spend about 30-45 minutes waiting in the sun, as once a few scheduled Eged busses full of Israeli settlers passed, we were free to cross in our taxi. Read more about Life in Rafah - March 2, 2002 

There was an announcement on Al-Jazeera (news station based in Qatar) that foreign governments were evacuating their essential personnel in Ramallah. The Israeli government warned them that they were planning another incursion into the West Bank towns, beginning with Ramallah. Several friends asked me if I wanted to leave, but I decided against it. I just moved here and I’m tired of going back and forth between Ramallah and Jerusalem. Read more about Diary of the Invasion of Ramallah 

Israel intends to launch an unprecendented global propaganda blitz within days in a bid to reverse what it sees as its rapidly diminishing image following 10-months of conflict with the Palestinians. Read more about Israel to launch global public relations blitz 

Last week The Independent’s Robert Fisk accused the BBC of buckling to Israeli pressure to drop the use of ‘assassination’ when referring to Israel’s policy of knocking off alleged ‘terrorists’. Not true, blustered John Simpson, auntie’s world affairs editor in The Sunday Telegraph. The corporation, he insisted, had simply reaffirmed its house rules that only prominent political figures could be assassinated -though he didn’t offer an alternative term for the killing of ordinary folk. He bitterly resented Fisk’s allegation that the Beeb had been got at. Read more about The Middle East's war of words 

Alarm, wake up. beepbeepbeep. My hand hits an unfamiliar bedside table, no alarm. My mobile phone. Groggy with not having slept properly in days, feels like weeks. But alert - the exhaustion of adrenaline pushing through my veins, coffee and wine dried on my lips. I can hardly remember what my own bed feels like. Read more about Words 

Yesterday, late afternoon, just before I left the office, a colleague in Beit Jala informed me that the children, who lost their mom, 64 years old Sumaya, and her son Khaled yesterday, and the bodies have been evacuated. The children have been in the bathroom of their home in the old city of Bethlehem for two days, since Ambulances and medical personnel, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been prevented access by the Israeli forces, despite the desperate humanitarian crisis. Read more about These children, again 

As you have already heard and seen on television, scores of people have been arrested over the past few days, and many homes were invaded. This catastrophe did not spare the Birzeit University community, be it the students, the faculty or the staff. Due to the curfew and the disconnection of phone lines and electricity, the below information is all we were able to get concerning our staff, faculty and students. Read more about Faculty, staff and students of Birzeit University 

From my encircled apartment in Lower Ramallah, I write to you after 5 days without electricity or gas. Hopefully I will survive with my laptop and the lentil soup which I make bearable, day after day, with peppers. Vegetables, bread, and meat seem like a luxury. Read more about My apartment building 

“The children are in the bathroom, they are scared to watch”, said a woman who called me. “Their mother and their big brother have been killed and are in another room of the house. They are afraid to watch. Read more about A call from Bethlehem, these children 

Al-Jazeera TV footage showed the bodies of five Palestinian men executed when Israeli soldiers found out where they’d hidden in a building in Ramallah on Sunday. They had feared for their lives and apparently had good reason to do so. Four were shot with a single bullet to the head. One was murdered with sixteen bullets, mostly fired into his face and chest. Their weapons were confiscated. They lay on the floor, mostly face down. Dark streaks of dried blood covered the walls of their room. Clearly they’d been considered innocent until proven guilty by the great democracy of the Middle East. I wish this were the worst of the crimes now on film. Read more about Promises from Palestine 

The phone line went dead. The land line. Cut. The battery on her mobile phone went dead hours ago; she hasn’t had electricity for two days. Before the lines cut we could tell her where the tanks are in Ramallah. Where they tanks were moving. Ask her how much food she had left, how long her supplies might last. She could call other people in Ramallah, and find out where the Israeli troops were. The loud noises, the shelling, how close is it? What has been hit? Where are they? Read more about The phone line went dead 

I sit here trying to write the novel about my experiences in Palestine. I went there in August 2000, right before the beginning of the Intifada, searching for some way of aligning my identity. It’s important, I keep telling myself, for the world to hear this perspective. But everyday I find myself reading words I can make no sense of, because everyday the world seems increasingly senseless. Read more about Conflicting thoughts 

Not even the great Italian cinematic genius Fellini could have choreographed a more surreal and circus-like situation in the West Bank—the absurd siege of Arafat’s compound and the doubly absurd calls from Ariel Sharon and George Bush, Jr., that Arafat—confined to an office lacking electricity, running water, or a spare cell phone battery— ‘do more to stop the violence.’ Read more about The surreal and circus-like situation in the West Bank 

It has been about two hours since my electricity came back on. The electricity to my neighborhood was cut around 9:30am on Friday. Since then, I have relied on word of mouth and the occasional transistor radio for information. Comparatively speaking, this neighborhood has been relatively unscathed. We have tanks posted across the valley from us and every now and again they make their way towards our building, but as of yet, it has been quiet, save the occasional outburst of gunfire. Read more about Too many images to process now 

This has been the second day of the appalling war against the Palestinian civilian population in the West Bank and the first day of attacks, siege and curfews also in areas located in the Be [sic]. Throughout the whole day, thousands of new soldiers were deployed inside Ramallah and, as we write, even more are heading towards the already besieged and occupied city. Read more about Appalling accounts 

Reports from Hebron say that Israeli forces have entered Palestinian-controlled areas in Hebron, also known as “H1”. This area covers residential sectors as well as the commercial areas of Bab Al-Zawiya and Wadi Al-Tuffah, situated west of the Old City. Read more about Israeli forces enter Palestinian areas in Hebron 

Reports from Ramallah indicate that Israeli forces have started to round up all men between the age of 16 and 40 years old. They are currently rounding up Palestinian men and teens at the square of al-Omari Mosque near El-Bireh Municipality. Read more about All men between 16 and 40 years old 

This morning we received several reports of Israeli assaults on medical personnel and the wounded. At 11 o’clock this morning, Israeli forces stopped two ambulances near the Arab Bank in the old city of Ramallah. One ambulance belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the other belongs to the Ministry of Health. The crew, including paramedics, has been arrested. At this moment, Israeli forces in Ramallah are using the ambulance to move around in the city. Additionally, a few minutes later, another ambulance, belonging to the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees has been confiscated near the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. The driver and the injured have been arrested. Read more about Assaults on medical personnel and mistreatment of the injured 

I too woke up this morning in Geneva to a slew of reports of the Israeli offensive against Palestinians in Ramallah. After trying unsuccessfully to reach family and friends, I met with two Palestinian friends who have been in Geneva this past week, traveling from the West Bank at great personal risk to themsleves, to conduct advocacy work to protect Palestinian children. When they heard the news this morning, they packed their bags and made their way to the airport to try and get a flight back home, fearing for their families alone in the West Bank and of the possibility that they may not be able to return. We spent a tense day trying to fill the time from news report to news report, shocked at the images of tanks rolling down familiar streets. Read more about Sleepless in Geneva 

A 23 May 2002 alert from Amnesty International (Killing of Israeli civilians) notes that, “since 29 September 2000, 311 Israeli civilians including 53 children have been killed in suicide bomb and other attacks carried out by members of Palestinian armed groups and individuals.” People should respond en masse to this particular Amnesty alert. It is time that Hamas and Islamic Jihad understand that the citizens of the world consider attacks against civilians to be an illegitimate tactic that undermines legitimate Palestinian resistance to Israeli military occupation, which is their right according to international law. Read more about The nettle that must be grasped