During the first week of January 2004, Israeli minister of Justice Yosef Lapid warned his country about an international boycott. He told Israeli radio: “There is a very serious risk the World Court (International Court of Justice in the Hague) will rule against us …. and this is liable to prompt the General Assembly into imposing all sorts of sanctions against us”. Despite this, Israel has continued its occupation, including the construction of the Wall and expansion of the settlements in Occupied Palestinian territories. Lapid was right, the voice for economic pressure on Israel is becoming louder, especially from the churches. Read more about Churches speak out on economic pressure as a tool for peace 

Gaza, Al-Watan, September 27, 2005 — Israeli warplanes last night dropped thousands of leaflets directed at residents of the Gaza Strip. This is the the text of the Israeli army statement:”To the residents of the northern Gaza Strip: The terrorist actions originating from your areas are forcing the Israel Defense Forces to respond harshly to those who are subjecting the citizens of the State of Israel to danger….We warn you of the danger of remaining in the areas which are being used to launch terrorist actions and we advise you to leave your homes. We are not responsible for the consequences if you ignore our warning.” Read more about Israeli aircraft drop threatening leaflets on Gaza 

28 September 2005 — During the last few days, Gaza was awakened from its dreams of liberation with horrible explosions which have shattered our skies, shaken our buildings, broken our windows, and threw the place into panic. We have been bombed since Friday 23 September, day and night. Usually between 2:00-4:00am, between 6:30 - 8:00 in the morning during the time children go to school, and in the afternoon or early evening. The explosions are heard and felt all over the Gaza Strip with the same intensity. Read more about Stunning Gaza! 

On the night of Sunday, September 11, two days before our trip, the last Israeli soldier left the Gaza Strip, ending 38 years of Israeli military occupation. All of a sudden, Egypt was open to Palestinians. We were standing there on the edge of what was a graveyard of man and stone - the no man’s zone in which many Palestinians had lost their lives at the hands of the Israeli army. We were seven friends and coworkers, some of which had come to verify the rumors in Gaza about unchecked crossing into Egypt, while others were tourists, making their very first trip outside the Gaza Strip. Read more about Breaking psychological barriers 

He was a happy man, gracefully making his way amid the guests who filled his living room, distributing smiles as well as juice, while sharing jokes and social talk, with a smile that would not leave his face. “Nafez Abu Nahyeh was reborn today,” whispered one of the guests, while pointing at their host, who took the center of a rustic couch with his four children, tickling the youngest and caressing the hair of the eldest. For more than three years the Abu Nahyehs were prisoners in their own home, after Israeli soldiers had commandeered their house, which is situated right next to the Jewish settlement Kfar Darom. Read more about Gaza family's nightmare comes to an end 

For more than five minutes the grandmother of 19-year-old Khaled Al-Najjar has not stopped hugging or kissing him in the Salahiddine (Philadelphi) corridor on the Palestinian-Egyptian border. “I have not seen my grandson for 11 years. The Israelis prevented me from traveling to Egypt and prevented my grandson from entering Gaza,” said the crying grandmother. Khaled is a Palestinian resident of the Egyptian city of Al-Arish, with half of his family in Gaza and the other half in Egypt. The last time they met each other was in 1993. Read more about Rafah: A new kind of tears in the rubble 

At 3am on September 12th, the last Israeli soldier left Gaza and, at the same minute, crowds of Palestinian left their homes in the towns and villages of Gaza from north to south and vice versa, and towards the Israeli settlements. Curious, excited, and sensing the taste of freedom they have been denied for the last 38 years, the Gaza roads were jammed with cars, carts, and people. Read more about Gaza and the children who did not visit the sea for 5 years 

Yesterday, I joined thousands of Palestinians who streamed across the once impermeable and deadly wall that divided this battered border town into two, to visit family and friends they had not seen in decades, to shop, or simply to see Egypt for the first time. It was yet another journey into the surreal. There I was, after all, standing in the Dead Zone known as Philadelphi corridor by Israelis, the killing field by Palestinians, the very location where Israeli tanks once nested awaiting orders to pound this refugee camp, their tracks still imprinted in the sand, the Palestinian homes they destroyed spread out like carcasses in the background. The once deadly frontline of the Israeli army had become a porous free-for-all. Read more about Across the killing field 

After 38 years and 67 days, they were finally gone. They being the Israeli soldiers and settlers of course, that for so long made our lives miserable here in Gaza. I went to tour the vacated colonies-as a journalist, but also as an ordinary Palestinian. Like thousands of other Palestinians, I was simply curious, and, in the end, giddy, awe-struck, and in absolute disbelief. I got up early, wasting no time after the last of the soldiers left to take a peak at what lay beyond the once fortified colonies, that although only metres away, for Palestinians, may as well have been on a different planet. Read more about They were finally gone 

Despite the hot weather in Gaza, thousands of Palestinian citizens poured Monday into the evacuated colonies at the northern tip of the Gaza Strip. Elderly, youth, children, fishermen, farmers and family members were keen to have a historical look at the three settlements of Duggit, Eli Sinai and Nissanit. Fishermen pushed their boats into the sea, while hobbyists installed their fishhooks at the shore. Parents toured among the rubble of Duggit while teenagers were planting Palestinian and other different colored flags on the telegraph poles of the destroyed electric network. Sami Abu Salem writes from Gaza. Read more about Children of Gaza happy for "Bigger Prison"