Despite its high-profile, the Fatah central committee meeting in Amman earlier this week seems to have failed to resolve the internal crises and divisions afflicting the movement. Veteran Fatah leaders, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Fatah chief Farouq Qaddumi voiced satisfaction at the decisions adopted by the movement’s top brass, especially an invitation to Hamas to join a possible government of national unity. The top Fatah leadership also reasserted its rejection of the concept of a state with interim borders as proposed by some in Israel and the US. Read more about Fatah meet a damp squib 

The trip to Tulkarem is not easy for our driver. He complains that the roads in the West Bank are changing fast. The Israeli regime is working full speed on the construction of the network of highways cutting right through the occupied Palestinian territories and incorporating parts of traditional Palestinian roads. Adri Nieuwhof and Bangani Ngeleza recently visited the occupied Palestinian territories. On a hot summer day, they travelled with a Palestinian guide from Ramallah to Jarushya, north of Tulkarem. The aim of the trip was to visit families that are affected by the Wall. The guide had contacted a leader of the community in Tulkarem and arranged for a meeting. Read more about Israel does not want peace 

Perched on a south Hebron hill, at first glance Mufaqara seems like a small quiet village sheltered from the troubles of its more famous neighboring city. But the settlers in the region have transformed the shepherds’ tranquil agricultural life into a hellish struggle against politics. Since the Havat Ma’on outpost was erected in 1998, daily life in what used to be an unknown and quiet fellahin village of the West Bank has become increasingly nightmarish. Villagers have the feeling that the settlers, as well as the Israeli army, are trying to “clear out” the area of Palestinian villages. Settler and army jeeps regularly drive back and forth in the area to intimidate the shepherds and make them move further from the settlement’s limits. Read more about Life under constant harassment 

The two sides of present-day Gaza are the poverty-stricken Palestinian population and the Israeli settlers who control about 45% of the land. But neither population is united; the divisions within each are as real as those between them. And the Israeli soldiers present in numbers to protect the settlers are now charged with overseeing their withdrawal - and if necessary, eviction - by August. The settlers are far from homogeneous. They include religious Zionists from Hebron, growing in numbers in the southern part of the Gaza settlement blocs, who believe that disengagement is a denial of the will of God; but there are also social-welfare recipients with their bags packed, who are ready to go upon payment of substantial compensation packages. What will Gaza become after Israeli occupation? Eóin Murray reports on embattled Jewish settlers and Palestinian fears. Read more about Welcome to Costa-del-Gaza 

Lid, an industrial pauperized city, not far from Israel’s Ben Gurion airport. Not a likely place for vistors and tourists to pass by. Lid faces the same problems as most metropoles and cities all over this world: drugs, pollution, unemployment, gangs, racism and violence. This is the dark side of Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East,” with its own black minority: the Palestinians who stayed after the Nakba in 1948. Lid is the home base of Israel’s first and best Palestinian Hip Hop band DAM (“Da Arabic Microphone Controllers”). DAM started to perform in 1998 and steadily built a reputation in Israel and abroad. They played in Europe and released a song with the French Algerian group MBS. Read more about Where There's the Ghetto, There's Hip Hop 

There’s a checkpoint between Birzeit and Ramallah. Out of the blue. Up until this moment, everything seemed normal: the honking of taxis, the flow of traffic over snakelike mountain roads, the odd calm of drivers as they vie for imagined lanes on hairpin curves. Suddenly it bottlenecks, then halts. “Hajiz,” shouts a taxi driver coming from the opposite direction. Checkpoint. The calm is replaced with frustration, both audible and visible. Arms flail out of car windows. Honking becomes more frequent. A baby, which until now I hadn’t noticed, cries in the back of my taxi. A gust of bluish bus exhaust empties into my open window. Nausea takes hold. Read more about Flying Checkpoints 

“You can’t just come storming in here,” barks Neta Golan to foreign activists who walk casually into her kitchen during their lunch break. “This is someone’s house you know - there’s a kitchen in the other apartment,” she tells them. “They don’t understand it’s rude to just barge into someone’s home here - they have a lot to learn,” says Golan about the internationals who have come to help support Palestinians in non-violent resistance. Just another day in cultural training for Golan and the ISM, during which the 34-year-old Israeli activist explains to foreign volunteers when they can snap pictures, how to behave in people’s homes and how to respect local Palestinians. Read more about Israeli activist bridges worlds  

I was invited to attend a reception in Ramallah yesterday by my former scholarship sponsors, the Academy for Educational Development. They said they’d take care of the permit, though no guarantees were made. A few days ago I received word my permit was one of several that were approved. “Congratulations, you’re going to Ramallah.” I am excited-it’s been 4 years since I’ve been to Ramallah. Though it is only an hour away, permits are rarely if ever issued to Gazan Palestinians wishing to travel to the West Bank. I call up all my friends, relatives, and colleagues there. I even wonder if I can make it to Jerusalem on Friday. Read more about The Crushed Citizen 

The Israeli human rights organisation, B’tselem, has accused the Israeli occupation army of whitewashing the murders of hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians. The organisation, which monitors Israeli human rights violations in the occupied territories, described Monday’s conviction of an Israeli soldier for the killing of British photographer and activist Tom Hurndall as an “exception than the norm”. “It is obvious that the prosecution and conviction of Tom Hurndall’s killer represents the exception, not the norm, as it is amply clear that the Israeli army refrains from investigating most cases involving the killing of Palestinians civilians by the Israeli army,” said a report released by B’tselem on Monday. Read more about Israel accused of covering up murders 

As with all dialects spoken by people who are close to the land in their daily cycle, the fallahee Palestinian dialect has a homely feel to it. Like the embroidered dresses that older fallahee women still wear in Palestinian refugee camps, villages and cities, this dialect, with its warmth and earthiness, is a national locus for a people whose identity the Zionist project in the Middle East has long tried to suppress, writes EI contributor Rima Merriman. In a PR stunt, Israel has placed people at checkpoints who speak the Palestinian dialect. But despite the smooth talk, what is Israel really saying to the people of Palestine? Read more about With Jerusalem not its capital