AQABA, WEST BANK, 4 May (IRIN) - At the entrance to the small village, laborers continued to work on a cement divider, creating two lanes to make the road safer, while in a side room next to the village kindergarten, Haj Sami Sadiq, the head of the local council, carried on sorting out agricultural development projects for his residents. Sadiq pretends it is “business as usual,” but he knows that at any moment Israeli troops can arrive and begin demolishing most of the village’s structures and even some of the streets. Read more about West Bank village faces slow death 

In their simple house made of metal sheets, Myassar Abu Me’teq was sitting next to three of her children having breakfast and holding her one-year-old baby in her arms. She listened to their daily complaints and loving quarrels, trying to comfort them and keep them away from the sound of the Israeli shelling close to their home in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. Najwa Sheikh writes from Gaza. Read more about No mercy 

JERUSALEM, 30 April (IRIN) - Increased Israeli restrictions on the checkpoints around East Jerusalem have caused more delays and more lost man hours for UN staff in March 2008 than in all of 2007, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported. In the Humanitarian Monitor for March, released on 24 April, OCHA said “operations were significantly affected” and almost daily UN vehicles were delayed and even turned back by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints south of Jerusalem. Read more about UN facing increased delays at Israeli checkpoints 

One afternoon in May 1948, my village Battir fell under heavy fire from the opposite slopes, across the railway line to the west, which had fallen to the Jewish fighters. We carried whatever belongings we could and headed east a few miles where there were vineyards and a small spring. We thought it would be a short escape, but we camped in that vineyard with many other people from the village all summer, our hopes dimming as the heat rose. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah recalls his village in the first part of a two-part series. Read more about Sixty years ago in Battir 

JEET, WEST BANK, 27 April (IRIN) - It was difficult for 87-year-old Jamil Khader to discover that nearly all of the 1,400 olive trees his extended family planted in February had suddenly gone missing, having been uprooted and stolen. “He became very ill when I told him. He was hospitalized and was in bed for a week,” his son Khalil, from the small town of Jeet in the northern West Bank, told IRIN. Read more about West Bank farmers face ruin after trees uprooted 

JERUSALEM/GAZA, 23 April (IRIN) - Israel once again pumped industrial diesel to the Gaza Strip’s sole power plant on 23 April, just hours before it was scheduled to stop operations due to a lack of fuel. An Israeli official told IRIN about one million liters would be sent in, provided no “security incidents” took place. The plant said it needed about 3.5 million liters a week, though Israel has committed to transferring only 2.2 million. The amount sent in on 23 April could only be spun out for a few days. Read more about Gaza fuel supplies on a knife edge 

JERUSALEM/GAZA, 22 April (IRIN) - For families in the Gaza Strip with sons or daughters in Israeli jails, the past 11 months have been especially hard, as they could no longer visit their imprisoned relatives and have only had contact through brief written messages. “This issue is a humanitarian concern for us, for the families and the prisoners,” said Katharina Ritz, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem. Read more about Israel suspends family visits to prisoners