Yesterday, after a trip around Bait Hanun, Gaza’s northern breadbasket, I headed to the Erez Crossing to give some journalist friends a lift. They were headed to Jerusalem, where they were based, and to where I am I unable to travel.I hadn’t been to Erez in a while, namely because there is no point. I am forbidden from entering the West Bank based on the arbitrary decision of some official in the Israeli security matrix. Or maybe not so arbitrary. Because obviously with a pen in one hand, a dirty diaper in the other, I am a very real and potent threat to the Israeli security establishment. Read more about Where the Sidewalk Ends 

The cliche of the day was that Wednesday the 25th of January, the second elections of the Palestinian Legislative Council, was a festival of democracy. The Gaza Strip is a dusty stretch of land. But as the day passed and the night wore on we were surprised by the strength of the Hamas showing. Certainly anyone who has ever been to the Gaza Strip and witnessed Israeli human rights violations and the chaos on the streets because of the collapse of law and order is not shocked at a good showing by Hamas. Even more so after yesterday’s elections - now the world awaits the dusty political landscape to settle. Eoin Murray reports, Live from Occupied Palestine, in the Gaza Strip. Read more about Palestinian Elections: Forcing the West to awake to the voices of the people 

A year on and the groaning burden of the Israeli occupation remains in place – a constant feature of the political and geographical landscape. The impact of Israel’s occupation on the election for the 132-member Palestinian Legislative Council on 25 January 2006 remains unclear but certain key factors have to be taken into consideration. The pressures of occupation and poverty are undiminished, but the Palestine election is an opportunity for activists to promote a vision of change, finds Eóin Murray. Read more about Palestinians' time of choice 

Have I been blacklisted? What will happen when we are separated from the rest of the group? After fumbling through my bags on the terminal floor to find the gifts going into Gaza, I am flabbergasted, and a bit panicky. I am sent back to the desk to pick up a piece of paper so I can disembark on the Israeli side of the checkpoint. I feel nervous. I leave the desk and then return, thinking that the soldiers have not given me back my passport. They say they can’t find it, and after a cold sweat, I discover it in my shirt pocket, right where it belongs! Part of the art of living in this part of the world is being appropriately paranoid, without being excessively so. We all miss the mark at times. That goes for Israelis, Palestinians, and also human rights activists. Read more about WasPR Delegation Diary 6: Stuck at Eretz Crossing, Having Coffee with Kareem 

Today is my mother’s birthday. She called my cellphone as my dear friend Areej and I were walking in the late afternoon shadow of the brand-new Apartheid Wall and “terminal” seperating Bethlehem from the rest of the goddamn world. To prove that i was there, i held the phone up to the wall and slapped it as hard as i could. The “terminal,” as it is being called, is a cattle-catch maze of turnstyles and x-ray machines, all enclosed in an enormous building of wire and steel and sniper weapons with crosshairs tuned like a fiddle. This is on the “Jerusalem” side of the wall, which one is able to access only after papers are shuffled, cars are inspected, and people are humiliated and intimidated, or perhaps beaten and arrested and tortured. Read more about Suffocation in isolated Bethlehem 

The streets of Ramallah had a festive atmosphere last weekend as people bustled about the main commercial drag buying goods for this week’s four-day holiday Eid al-Adha. Campaign banners fluttered in the main square, and music blasted from political parties’ offices as official campaigning had just begun for the much-anticipated legislative elections to be held at the end of the month. However, conversation hushed in one corner shop in Ramallah’s old city when there was a televised update from Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, where Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been lying in a medically induced coma that will most likely be the end of his political career, should he survive. Read more about To Palestinians, Sharon was a man of war, not peace 

As stipulated by the 1997 Hebron Protocol, Hebron is divided into the H1 and H2 areas. The H2 segment is where the Jewish settlers live amongst the Palestinian population, and it is currently the segment of the city under curfew. Agoraphobia, the fear of leaving one’s home, is common amongst the Palestinian residents of H2. There they are surrounded by six settlements within the center of the city. The Palestinians in H2 become isolated within enclaves and are faced with daily harassment and violence. They become isolated from city services as well, and this is where Medecins Sans Frontieres and the International Committee of the Red Cross/Crescent come in. Read more about WaSPR Delegation Diary 5: Living In Isolation and Under Siege in Hebron and Bethlehem 

After our visit with Elyakim Ha’itzni, we visit the gravesite of Dr. Baruch Goldstein. Dr. Goldstein was a physician born and raised in Brooklyn who became a Kiryat Arba settler. In 1994, he opened fire on Muslims worshiping at the mosque of Ibrahim, killing 29 worshippers and injuring more than 100, before he was bludgeoned to death by the crowd. In Kiryat Arba he is treated as a hero. Downtown Hebron looks like a ghost town. Yesterday, two Israeli soldiers were shot, so now the entire center of the city is under curfew and Palestinians cannot leave their homes. Read more about WaPSR Delegation Diary 4: Hebron - Kiryat Arba settlement and the struggle for the heart of an ancient city 

East Jerusalem, March 7, 2005 — Tonight, the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility met with Mr. Mordechai Vanunu at St. George’s Hostel in East Jerusalem. Mr. Vanunu is famous around the world for exposing Israel’s secret nuclear weapon’s program at the Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev Desert in Southern Israel. Vanunu was convicted to 18 years in prison and spent 11 of these years in total isolation. He describes psychological torture intended to break his will and says Israeli authorities tried to brand him as a criminal. Read more about WaPSR Delegation Diary 3: Our Dinner with Mordechai Vanunu