Young men and women out of high school have one of two options: pursue their degree, or get married. For men there is a third option — be lucky enough to connect your way to someone who is high up enough in one of the Palestinian factions to be bribed to find you one of the few jobs that exist, and magically you will be transported into the 15% of people who have found work here. This is the zahag. “Zahag”, an Arabic word for this long, heavy boredom that feels like a slow death. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about When boredom feels like slow death, what is left to lose? 

The courtroom at the Jaffa Military Court had never been so overcrowded. Special benches had been dragged in, filling the aisle and leaving hardly any room for passage. Activists, family members and journalists crowded into every available corner (there were four TV crews, who were chased out after the judges came in) and still as many as were in had to wait outside. At long last, the verdict in the trial of Noam Bahat, Matan Kaminer, Adam Maor, Haggai Matar and Shimri Tsameret was going to be delivered. Read more about Doing things the hard way - the verdict of five "refuseniks" 

There are no prayer mats to be found in this empty border apartment, only years of sand accumulated on the empty floors. A chandelier’s broken crystals spread in wide sunrays in the salon from the underground explosion some few meters away a few weeks ago — the army blowing up the imagined tunnels of its dream, those phantoms. Everyone knows they don’t exist on this street, which has meticulously rid itself of armed resistance and smugglers. Still, the army blow up dirt meters below the ground many times a week just next to the border homes, shattering their windows and shaking their foundations. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about Broken Crystal 

I’ve become enthralled with births and weddings — the creation of family — redemption from the ache of a war that systematically removes the most beloved burdens of a person’s full hands. A house, a brother, a mother. I count the marriages and the births like a high school student crosses off the squares of a calendar, measuring the distance between the dredgery of institutionalized education and the open arms of vacation. Every marriage is a triumph of construction in the face of this violent waste. Every birth is red ‘X’ on the calandar of the Occupation. Read more about Redemption in Gaza 

Israel’s separation wall is creating a new kind of humanitarian crisis for the Palestinians who live in its shadow. Cutting into Palestinian lands by up to six kilometres, the barrier takes different forms along its length - here an imposing concrete construction, there a steel fence and a tangle of barbed wire. The new dependency emerging in the communities destroyed by the barrier is yet another example of how the poverty afflicting the Palestinians is a human creation. Christian Aid’s Alex Klaushofer witnesses the devastation of communities. Read more about Divide and destroy 

The plot of Abu Jameel’s life unfolds like a tragic drama. His street, Abu Jameel Street, named after his grandfather, once the richest man in the area whose grandson used to scorn farmers, walk through the street as one known by face only, the untouchable man in the suit. Abu Jameel inherited the riches of his family and built a row of forty stores and several apartments with his two cousins and married a beautiful Egyptian woman who bore him a son and a daughter. These days fade to memories in black and white. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about Tension and depression 

Most of the time life in Rafah seems normal. A bustling city — taxis honking and speeding through the crowded streets, schoolchildren in their uniforms on their way to and from school, merchants of all types with their colourful wares lining the streets — fruits, clothes, household items — the perfume of life filling the air. Everywhere things seem normal, then all of a sudden something will happen and the facade of normalcy will disappear, and the ugliness of the reality will show through. Melissa writes from Rafah. Read more about Normal life in Rafah