I heard my name called out as I walked swiftly past the main police station in Gaza City. One of the three policemen gathered there walked over to me, a cigarette dangling from his lips. I had met Ahmed the second week I was in Gaza, when I went to play volleyball with Palestine’s best team, located in the Jabalya refugee camp. Ahmed was their star player. Warming up that day I paired up with Ahmed, which lead to a slew of questions about my coming to Gaza and sparked the beginning of our friendship. Read more about Volleyball and Civil War 

Since the abduction by Palestinian resistance groups of Israeli soldier Gila’d Shalit on 25 June 2006, Israeli gunships have prevented Palestinians from fishing off the Gaza coast. This has severely affected both fishermen and food security for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Thirty-thousand people are dependant on Gaza’s fishing industry, but since last June, the Israeli naval forces have harassed those Palestinian fishing boats that dare leave the dock. In the main fishing site of Gaza City, called Almina, there are dozens of fishermen trying to feed their children under harsh economic conditions. Read more about Gaza's fishing industry under siege 

Nablus, 26 February 2007: Dr. Ghassan Hamdan, Director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Nablus, got up at five o’clock this morning after just two-and-a-half hours sleep. Until that time, he had been distributing medicines and food and providing emergency healthcare services to the residents of Nablus’ Old City, who had been under an Israeli-imposed curfew and thus forbidden from leaving their homes since early Sunday morning. He was woken up by a call saying that a house just outside the Old City had been set on fire by Israeli soldiers and that there may be civilian casualties. Read more about A Day in the Life of Nablus Under Curfew 

Leaving Gaza requires one to walk through a long tunnel made up of turnstiles, X-ray machines, gates, cages and passport controls. This past Wednesday I found the tunnel ending abruptly ahead of me, a crudely fashioned wall barred me from the usual way of entry — instead, an opening to the right lead to an unknown place. I turned the corner and found myself in an Orwellian passage leading to a huge building with four automatic doors that were shut tight. Along this fenced-in passageway runs an anachronistic, medieval ditch, beyond it a mound made of rubble and dirt of the once magnificently fruitful region of Beit Hanoun. Read more about Gaza: Non-Entity 

I spent my 25th birthday in Jabalya, Gaza’s biggest refugee camp. I have known Jamal, a taxi driver in Gaza, for almost two years. I could only protest so many times at his neglecting to host me in his home. In spite of the pleas of his children, whom I had met on a number of occasions outside his home, I realized today why he never did. I have often entered the homes of refugees while distributing food across the Gaza Strip and yet what struck me that day was the familiarity of Jamal sitting by my side against the unfamiliarity of his home. Read more about My birthday in Jabalya refugee camp 

“I’m still in New Orleans. It’s so much like Palestine it’s eerie. It’s a different kind of devastation than right after the storm. Some of the worst wreckage has been cleaned up — there are no longer throngs of people camping out on the I-10 Causeway or waterlogged bodies lining the streets. Now it’s the emptiness that is most striking. Some parts of the city are like a ghost town.” Writing from New Orleans, EI contributor Lora Gordan finds parallels between the struggle for justice in New Orleans and that in Palestine. Read more about The geography of dissent: New Orleans and Palestine 

Last October, I traveled to Palestine on a peace delegation with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPTs), a faith-based group committed to using nonviolent alternatives to war and conflict. Instinctively, whenever our group met with one of the many peacemakers of that region, be it Israeli, Palestinian or International we would ask, “What can we do to help?” Surprisingly, the most common response was not to donate money nor “sell all your belongings and follow me.” It was simply to go back home and tell our communities what we saw. To tell them about the suffering, of course, but also about the opportunities…the glimmers of hope. Read more about Tale of Two Visits: The Warrior and the Peacemaker  

Internal unrest in Gaza City since last Thursday, manifested in clashes between Fatah and Hamas supporters, has claimed 25 lives, wounded dozens of others and caused destruction to many public infrastructure such as universities and governmental buildings. Movement in Gaza city is almost paralyzed. The United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) announced it would keep all its schools closed starting from February 3 until calm is restored. The Palestinian Authority institutions were almost empty on Saturday, as employees refrained from going to places of work out of fear they might come across fire. Read more about "We don't need either Hamas or Fatah" 

GAZA CITY, GAZA: Despite the impression cast by corporate news coverage, there is never anything like “calm” here in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The casualty count for 2006 released by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports that Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, while 17 Israeli civilians were killed, 13 of them in the West Bank. The violence is often spectacular, as during the summer and fall siege operations in Gaza that killed more than 450 Palestinians under withering aerial bombardment, artillery barrages and two major ground invasions. But, as an unusually frank headline in the current edition of the Economist rightly stated, “It’s the little things that make an occupation.” Read more about Canadian Foreign Minister in Israel and Palestine 

This morning I opened the Haaretz Internet website to read the following headline: “Olmert decided: we will retain cease-fire; IDF has bombed a tunnel in northern Gaza Strip.” An inevitable coffee stain appeared on my shirt. Although this headline screams absurdity, it constitutes the essence of Israel’s propaganda, and many an Israeli will not find it ambivalent. I have to admit that a year ago, I would have found it reasonable as well. The logic is simple: army officials say that the IDF has a perpetual green light to operate against terrorist groups on their way to commit their suicidal operations inside Israel. Read more about The Façade of the Israeli Cease-fire