As the Israeli army continues to promote the myth of withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, the situation on the ground remains highly critical for the Palestinian civilian population. Read more about Israeli aggression, siege and closure continue to kill Palestinian children 

There is a halo of blood on the ground where Huda died while sleeping last Tuesday night (4/30/02). Toddler-sized diapers lie strewn on the ground among the concrete heaps where the bedroom wall once stood, and a single blue sandal, tiny as my fist, sits perched in a corner of the room on a wooden slab. Huda was 11 months old. Read more about Blood and sand in Gaza: Impunity and the murders of children 

It has just taken me almost two hours to get through Qalandia checkpoint, have just stepped around the last of the barbed wire. There are a few more checkpoints to go before I reach the office. None could be as bad. Partly to settle my nerves, partly to check in, I dial a colleague’s number on my mobile. My hands are still shaking. Read more about Teargas, bullets and a cage: Trying to get home 

The breaking points are sometimes small, innocuous. You can’t sleep for a week because the Israeli shelling is so bad, there are continuous and horrible reports of death, but we’re fine- “I’m fine. No, I’m ok. Really.”—- then something as silly as trying to fold an omelette in the frying pan, it breaking, and then- the tears fall. Read more about Teargas, bullets and a cage: Getting to school in Palestine 

The makeshift tank barricade on my street is gone. The twin piles of sand were probably never meant to do much more than provide area residents like myself with some sense of security. Read more about Gaza On Departing 

We succeeded to get foodstuffs and ‘international protection’ into the Church of the Nativity. If you haven’t yet seen the reports, please see below. Read more about Israeli Army assault on foreign activists 

Jara and I play in the neighbour’s garden under the pleasant Mediterranean sun. ‘Do you have everything?’ she asks the neighbour. It is one of those routine questions which people now ask each other and which she has picked up as a normal way of showing concern. Read more about Letter from Bethlehem 

The Israelis didn’t see it coming. Clearly, after the failure to get people inside on April 28, they must have assumed that the International Solidarity Movement did not pose a threat to their siege of the Church of Nativity. Read more about Entering the Church of Nativity 

Almost 3am, and there is no point in trying to ignore the sounds and to try sleeping anymore. It is just too loud, too near. The heavy machine gunfire, the thuds of tank shelling. Read more about Can you hear the shelling?