The Israeli army invaded the Rafah Refugee camp last night in an operation that they said would go on for one week. Ambulance drivers, out of desperation resort to rough unpaved roads out of Rafah to try to evacuate the seriously injured casualties, this under threat of Israeli army tank and machine gun fire against anyone trying to circumvent checkpoints. Mona al-Farra reports. Read more about Rafah besieged and under constant attack
Tanks cut off the main road between Rafah and Khan Younis (the city just north of Rafah) by driving ten tanks right in front of the European Gaza Hospital, the only decent hospital south of Gaza City, and the road has been closed for days. The week before this closure, Rasha spent 5 hours one day waiting for Abu Holi to open so she could go home and the next day it closed all night, leaving her to sleep at her friend’s sister’s house in Gaza City after waiting for 4 hours in a hot taxi in line with hundreds of cars waiting for the checkpoint to open. I compare our worlds, like parallel universes, squinting at each other from both sides of a mirror. Laura Gordon reports from Rafah. Read more about The mirror of fire and tears
We were sitting outside a small shack at the edge of a Bedouin community in the Northern Gaza Strip region of Al-Sayafa. Abu Housa, one of the Bedouin elders, sat with us speaking in quick, expressive Arabic phrases, spreading his arms and flinging his hands about, the gestures adding emotional context to words that, for the most part, I could not understand. When we first arrived at the community we were quickly invited to sit in the shade of the shack and offered tea, as is customary here. Jacob Pace writes from Gaza City. Read more about Al-Sayafa: A Case Study in Dispossession
I am not a politician or a political analyst to write an analysis about Palestinian people’s life under 36 years of Israeli occupation. I am an activist in social and health work, I am one who has experienced and witnessed many acts of aggression, violence and injustice by the Israeli army against my people. Read more about A message from Gaza
Digging in the sand, late Wednesday night, outside Balata Camp. Four of us, crouched down near the mosque, next to the taxi rank. But there are no taxis - the streets are empty and silent. Everybody is inside, with the door locked - more soldiers are expected tonight. Two small piles of light brown sand lie at the entrance to the camp. We kneel around one of them, as Mustapha slowly sifts through the sand, turning over clumps and examining the underside of stones. ‘Move the light here. Now here. What’s this?’ asks Mustapha. Read more about Digging in the sand
Kathleen Christison and Bill ChristisonWest Bank18 September 2003
We spent three weeks in Jerusalem and the West Bank in August, working on a project to rebuild a Palestinian house demolished by Israeli bulldozers. What we were actually building — under the sponsorship of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) led by Jeff Halper — was a memorial and museum dedicated to the entire house-demolition/house-rebuilding phenomenon in Palestine-Israel. Although this building was not intended as a family home, it was constructed on the site of a home that the Israelis have demolished four times in the last five years, most recently in April 2003. Kathy and Bill Christison report from the occupied West Bank. Read more about Building the Beit Arabia peace center
One of my recurring nightmares is about a coming tidal wave. It’s my second least favorite recurring nightmare. My least favorite being the ones about the end of the world. In my tidal wave dreams, the scariest part is the waiting. I know it’s coming. I can see it and I know it will be bad but I also know i can’t run fast enough to get out of the way. Alternatively, I’m stuck and can’t move. Either way the dream sucks… Read more about Gaza: The coming tidal wave
“When my oranges bloomed” my mother used to tell us, talking about her family’s orange trees in Palestine before 1948, “You could smell their blossom all day and all night and for miles around.” We would be sitting around her absorbing every word she had to say about her family’s farm in old Palestine, about her father who was so good in grafting orange trees he was hired by neighboring farmers, both Arab and Jewish, to do theirs. I remember how a smile would slowly appear on her face whenever she talked about “her oranges”. Rick Ikhrais writes from Texas. Read more about The Smell of Home
It is now 11:59 PM, half an hour after the suicide bombing at Hillel Cafe. Just the night before, my wife and I and two of our friends were sitting at the Cafe until around 11:40 PM. The place was packed. I can now hear the sirens of the ambulances racing through the streets of Jerusalem. I cannot get the images out of my head; images of severed arms, decapitated heads, people with nails and pieces or iron stuck in their bodies, broken tables, the cake and sandwich bar shattered into thousands of pieces. Yitzhak Frankenthal writes from Jerusalem Read more about The Hillel Cafe Bombing
Jamal Juma’ is a busy man. As coordinator of PENGON, the organization spearheading the campaign to stop the construction of the Israeli Wall rapidly surrounding the future Palestinian ‘state’, he is constantly scrambling to reach as many people as he can, independent journalists and heads of state alike. If Mahmoud Abbas and the United Nations have publicly condemned the wall, it’s in no small part due to PENGON’s meetings with them. Diplomacy aside, however, troubling facts continue to appear on the ground across the West Bank which do not bode well for peace. Darren Ell writes following a trip to the West Bank. Read more about The World's Largest Open Air Prison
