Last night I returned from the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. I met with religious and political leaders from both sides, spoke with Red Cross workers and people from UNRWA returning from Jenin and Ramallah, and had talks with a Jewish American man and a Japanese woman who’d been trapped in Ramallah, both attempting to go back in with medicines despite the shrapnel still lodged in the Japanese woman’s leg. Read more about Letter from Los Angeles 

As a Palestinian-American I enjoy the rights of my country of citizenship. This makes it difficult for me to understand what it must be like to watch another nation’s tanks roll into your community and destroy everything in their path—your car, your neighbor’s house, electrical poles, gardens and community businesses. Read more about A letter from Oakland 

I sit here trying to write the novel about my experiences in Palestine. I went there in August 2000, right before the beginning of the Intifada, searching for some way of aligning my identity. It’s important, I keep telling myself, for the world to hear this perspective. But everyday I find myself reading words I can make no sense of, because everyday the world seems increasingly senseless. Read more about Conflicting thoughts