Since Israel’s total closure of Gaza began over 16 months ago, the Palestinian residents of the tiny coastal strip have relied on smuggling to meet their basic subsistence needs. A recent United Nations report stated that Gaza’s local market is beholden to the tunnel trade or “death trade,” which has so far claimed the lives of 40 people. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports. Read more about Gaza's flourishing tunnel trade 

I have just emerged from a week-long frustrating experience. It was exhilarating to spend the week in the company of our good guests, friends to whom we owe much. Yet now I am left with a certain bitter aftertaste of disappointment. I am battling an inner feeling of guilt and shame at having failed to communicate to them adequately “the whole truth” about “my” country. Hatim Kanaaneh writes. Read more about Overcoming walls 

Experience of terror and trauma is the norm for children in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, especially those living in the Gaza Strip. As the Israeli siege creates a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, an entire generation of traumatized children suffers an absence of psychological care. Sameh A. Habeeb writes from the occupied Gaza Strip. Read more about A generation of traumatized children 

In November 2006 a horrible war crime was committed in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army. The operation was not directed at militants who were heading to fight Israel, but at a poor family. This action was committed by the same Israeli army which bulldozed Palestinian farms and crushed cars and houses. I remember every single detail of what happened that day in Beit Hanoun. Sameh A. Habeeb recalls the massacre. Read more about Remembering Beit Hanoun 

Aqaba Mayor Hajj Sami is permanently wheel-chair bound. He was shot three times in the back by Israeli soldiers when he was 16, and one of the bullets remains in his chest to this day. Yet he has tirelessly fought for his community’s right to remain on the land they have owned for generations. Paul Adrian Raymond writes from Aqaba. Read more about A West Bank mayor's struggle 

Once again, the holy month of Ramadan comes to end. Once more people are preparing for the Eid holiday, the feast of breaking the fast. Once more, people think how can they celebrate this Eid. Once more, we ask the same questions: how many checkpoints and roads will be open so that Palestinians can be able to circulate freely from place to place to visit their family and friends? Abdelfattah Abusrour writes from occupied Palestine. Read more about Eid wishes 

Ramadan al-Hour’s four children have not seen their father for the past year. Ranging in age from five years to four months old, Amal, Aya, Sulaf and Walid live with their mother in the town of Kufr Qassem inside Israel. Israeli authorities have prevented al-Hour’s wife and children from entering Gaza. Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza. Read more about No Eid with the siege 

On jagged roads, unpaved and covered in mounds of dust, enclosed by a monstrous, towering wall slithering like the venomous snake that it is, I await the bus that will take me to the place I’ve waited to see for far too long. Dina Elmuti writes from occupied Palestine. Read more about My occupied Utopia 

Many Palestinians that I met during my travels in the West Bank told me that to know what Palestine really was about and meant, I had to go to Nablus. Most of them also told me that Nablus was their favorite city. After spending five weeks there this summer, I understand why. Frank Barat writes of the city that teems with life. Read more about Nablus, vibrant despite it all