On April 1, Amin Abu Warda, 37, sat with his colleagues, tallying votes for the new board of directors at the Balata Refugee Camp Youth Center. Just before midnight, with the group exhausted from the long hours, 15 armed men broke into the room. “It was terrifying,” says Abu Warda. A video of the break-in shows one of the intruders busting up the blackboard scribbled with the number of tallied votes. Another kicked a ballot box, already emptied. A third man confronted an employee who was trying to hide a few remaining and unharmed ballots. At gunpoint, the man was forced to surrender the papers, another ripping them into pieces before firing a bullet at the ceiling and ordering everyone out of the room. Read more about The fugitives of Nablus 

Hamas, and its sister organisation, the Islamic Jihad, have decided in principle to join the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the PLO. The landmark decision, a result of prolonged internal deliberations, is expected to have far-reaching consequences for Palestinian politics and inter-faction relations, especially between the two largest political movements, the Islamist Hamas and nationalist Fatah. As such, the decision could strengthen Palestinian national unity vis-a-vis Israel, but is unlikely to significantly affect the peace process, especially in the short run. Read more about Why Hamas is ready to join the PLO 

“Nazis! Jew killers! Go back to Germany!” Suddenly everything seems chaotic. Five minutes ago a white pick-up came to a halt, and two young men exited. I and another international calmly approached them, remembering our training in de-escalation of possibly violent situations. One of the males was dressed in orthodox manner, complete with light colored loose clothing, head covered with a kippah and curly black locks of hair at the temples. The other was sporting a yellow Purim* mask, depicting a skull, and an Uzi. A military vehicle notices the episode and pulls up curbside. Three young soldiers get out just to stand around and do nothing, despite the fact that we repeatedly ask, as the settlers begin to kick and beat us. Read more about Falling through the Looking Glass in Hebron 

30 March 2005 marked the 29th anniversary of Yum El-Ard (“Land Day”) — the first mass political protest of Arab citizens of Israel, now commemorated as a national day for Palestinians worldwide. Sharif Hamadeh interviews Fr. Shehadeh Shehadeh, the activist-priest who headed the first protest in 1976. “People here are not very happy,” he says, referring to the Palestinian minority in Israel. “I’m always optimistic and I always pray for peace and work for peace - I even have a committee called Clergy for Peace - but at this time, I’m very pessimistic.” Read more about The First Yum El-Ard Protest: An interview with Fr. Shehadeh Shehadeh 

For the past few weeks, Israeli machinery and bulldozers have been working at the northern entrance of Bethlehem city to construct the Segregation Wall. The path of the wall is almost complete in the area, confiscating Palestinian land and olive groves, and segregating Palestinian houses in the vicinity. Yesterday (March 30), the residents of Bethlehem city went out to peacefully protest against the Israeli policies and the theft of their land for the on-going construction of the Segregation Wall. The demonstration was part of a national day of action to commemorate Yom Al-Ard (“Land Day”) in Palestine, commemorating the killing of six Palestinians by Israeli police in 1976 at a protest against land confiscations in the Galilee. Read more about Yom al-Ard in Bethlehem 

Kate Baillie, writer and travel-guide author, democratic-left activist and much-loved friend of all who knew her, passed away peacefully in France on 12 March after a debilitating fight with an untreatable cancer. She would have celebrated her 48th birthday on March 28. In her last days, she exuded the humour, tough realism and combative free spirit that she wore proudly throughout her brief life. Katy was thoroughly her own woman until the very end, when only her spirit remained unbeaten by disease. Read more about Kate Baillie - a life lived to the hilt 

Free postcards at a pub in West Jerusalem. One of the postcards shows a labyrinth. My Danish colleague Maria laughs and claims that the postcard is a map of the West Bank. To make her statement evident she takes out a pen and writes the words “checkpoint”, “road block” and “occupation” all over the postcard. The crowd laughs at this cynical interpretation of the free postcard. The laughter however dies when I find myself in the Old City of Hebron. Suddenly, I find myself in Maria’s enlarged version of the free postcard depicting the labyrinth. Read more about Doom in Hebron 

This week Palestine Report Online interviews Orient House Mapping and survey director Khalil Tufakji on the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank: “The expansion of Maaleh Adumim is part of this plan, which is to create facts on the ground, to annex the settlement blocs to Israel and finally to alter the demographic reality to Israel’s advantage in terms of Jerusalem and basically impose a twofold reality on the Palestinians: the first is the geographical aspect and the second, the demographic aspect.” Read more about Gaza disengagement means West Bank settlement expansion