With 400 hard-line religious settlers packed tightly amidst more than 160,000 Palestinians in the center of Hebron’s Old City, violence is not a probability, it is a given. Add to that the nearly 2,000 Israeli troops assigned to “protect” the settlers and you can begin to understand how peace is a little more than a word in this part of the West Bank. Eddie Vassallo’s pictures tell a story of occupied Hebron. Read more about Photostory: Total occupation, a journey around Hebron
For a long time any discussion of the “Arab-Israeli conflict” has skipped one basic fact: Israel, whether one loves or hates it, was created at the expense of the Palestinians. An entire people and hundreds of communities that had lived for centuries in tranquility had to be ruthlessly and unjustly shattered to make room for the Zionist state. The story of my village, Battir, southwest of Jerusalem, is only one of hundreds. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah recalls his village’s story. Read more about Sixty years ago in Battir (Part 2)
Since the Israeli government enforced the crippling closure of Gaza, the majority of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents have become unable to afford basic commodities. The World Food Program estimates that 80 percent of Gaza’s population is now dependent on food aid. Rami Almeghari writes from the occupied Gaza Strip. Read more about No holiday for Gaza's labor sector
In their simple house made of metal sheets, Myassar Abu Me’teq was sitting next to three of her children having breakfast and holding her one-year-old baby in her arms. She listened to their daily complaints and loving quarrels, trying to comfort them and keep them away from the sound of the Israeli shelling close to their home in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. Najwa Sheikh writes from Gaza. Read more about No mercy
One afternoon in May 1948, my village Battir fell under heavy fire from the opposite slopes, across the railway line to the west, which had fallen to the Jewish fighters. We carried whatever belongings we could and headed east a few miles where there were vineyards and a small spring. We thought it would be a short escape, but we camped in that vineyard with many other people from the village all summer, our hopes dimming as the heat rose. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah recalls his village in the first part of a two-part series. Read more about Sixty years ago in Battir
As a third-generation Palestinian refugee, the Nabka is more than fleeing the homeland, and losing your identity. It is not having a single memory of the homeland that once was for your grandparents, and your parents. It is not having anything to tell your children, like the taste of your land’s fruits, the smell of its sand, about stories and experiences with your people. Najwa Sheikh writes from Gaza. Read more about My Nakba
Amna Abu Sido was waiting for a ride at the so-called Universities Junction in the heart of Gaza City on Tuesday afternoon when she explained how difficult her commute has become: “I take at least two taxis to go back home to the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood from the school I teach at in Talatini street. Taxis are scarce nowadays and this is really adding to our difficulties.” EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports on how Palestinians in Gaza are coping with the latest Israeli measure of collective punishment. Read more about In Gaza, fueling cars with cooking oil
My father was a man who always defied the notion that one can only be the outcome of his circumstance. Expelled from his village at the age of 10, running barefoot behind his parents, he was instantly transferred from the son of a landowning farmer to a penniless refugee in a blue tent provided by the United Nations in Gaza. Ramzy Baroud remembers his father who passed away on 18 March. Read more about No checkpoints in heaven
“Momma, when I’m big will I go to jail like Daddy?” That was little Adam’s question for his mother when I came to visit their house, just before leaving the village of al-Tuwani for a brief trip home to the United States. Adam is three years old. His mother tells me that he wants his father to come home from jail and bring him ice cream. “Adam is upset,” she says. Read more about "When I'm big will I go to jail like Daddy?"
Fedaa recounted that three days ago her husband woke her at 1:15 am and told her, “ ‘There’s Jewish in our area and I am afraid about Lara alone in her room. Go to her room.’ I said, ‘Nomair, I want to sleep.’ He come back angry and said, ‘Fedaa, wake up.’ Suddenly they shoot at us. I get out and go quickly to Lara’s room. They shoot us again in Lara’s room. Nomair started shouting at them, ‘Go! What do you want? Why do you shoot us? There is a baby here.’” Alice Rothchild writes from Nablus. Read more about Returning to Nablus: Collateral damage
