GAZA CITY, 16 June (IPS) - When the broiling sun sinks behind the rolling Mediterranean sea in Gaza, hundreds of fishing boats turn on their motors and assemble ragged nets to round up the evening catch. Flickering blue lights scatter across the shallow seas as the boats gather offshore in close quarters. Mackerel, sardine and grey mullet are caught in nets and dumped into plastic crates to be sold in the street markets. Read more about Net tightens around Gaza fishermen  

GAZA CITY, 15 June (IPS) - Mahmoud Abu Teior, 13, knows it’s Abdullah’s kite up in the skies, though he has never seen Abdullah. But that kite rises into the skies from across the Egyptian side of the border across from Gaza. And, Mahmoud knows Abdullah’s voice because they speak sometimes. They have never met, and likely never will, but they are connected through their kites. Read more about Kites rise above the divisions in Gaza 

Tuesday morning at 9:00am, 220 Palestinian children gathered at al-Sherouq and al-Amal children’s club in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp. Dressed in colorful clothes accompanied by cheerful smiles, the children lined up in rows to listen to their trainer. The children were attending their first day of a three-week-long program of training and activities at the club. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari visits this oasis in the besieged Gaza Strip. Read more about Shelter from the siege 

GAZA CITY, 6 June (IPS) - In the early hours of Friday morning, Israeli warplanes targeted a Hamas-run security post in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, injuring 29 Palestinian civilians, according to Gaza medical sources. In the eastern Gaza City neighborhood of al-Shuja’iya, a 27-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli special forces during another invasion. Read more about Palestinian leaders take step towards reducing rift 

On a massive and wide-ranging scale, every single aspect of life in Gaza is punctuated by the Israeli occupation and the blockade. There are 1.5 million people here, trapped and hermetically sealed, in this 22-mile by 6-mile strip of devastated open-air prison compound. Fuel is scarce and the streets are thick with the soupy smoke of cooking gas, falafel oil and benzene as Israel’s collective punishment policies force people to fill their cars with their families’ gas rations. Nora Barrows-Friedman writes from Gaza. Read more about Blue sky, toxic sea 

The West Bank is fragmented by checkpoints, settler-only roads, closed military zones and Israeli-declared “nature reserves.” The road barriers come in many forms — barbed wire, metal fences, cement blocks, dirt mounds, trenches and permanent border crossings or terminals like Qalandia around every Palestinian city. The one at Qalandia actually says “Welcome to Israel,” as though it was an international border. Cathy Sultan writes from the occupied West Bank. Read more about Hatred is too heavy a burden to carry 

Frankly, I’ve always been a little uneasy about explicitly Jewish actions around Palestine. Isn’t this a human rights issue in which all voices are equally needed and valued? What difference does one’s background make when one is speaking up for justice? I worry that people will listen more to what a group of Jews has to say than to Palestinians and other activists. I don’t believe in a a special “Jewish position” on Palestine. Deborah Agre writes from San Francisco. Read more about No time to celebrate