I was part of a group of journalists and peace activists recently attacked by stone-throwing Israeli youths in an olive grove near the West Bank city of Hebron. Fortunately, I was not hit. Hazem Bader, a Palestinian photographer working for Agence France-Presse, was not so lucky and ended up needing eight stitches on his scalp and a night in hospital. Paul Adrian Raymond writes from the occupied West Bank. Read more about No reprieve from settler violence in sight 

As the rival Palestinian political parties are set to engage in serious national unity talks in Cairo shortly, they leave behind a series of division-based problems, primarily strikes of public services. For the past 16 months, the ruling Hamas party in Gaza and the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have been at odds. While Hamas has taken measures against Fatah in Gaza, in the West Bank the reverse has occurred. EI correspondent in Gaza Rami Almeghari reports on the impact the political strife has had on the educational sector in occupied Gaza. Read more about Politics versus civic life in Gaza 

Dear President-elect Barack Obama: I don’t know if you will read these words or not, but I do hope that such words that come from my heart will reach yours, and you can find the hope and strength our people still have in them. I do hope that you will fulfill your promise of change, that your daughters will remain proud of their father and his achievements. Right is right, and justice is justice. All people are equal, and no race or color is superior above the others. EI contributor Abdelfattah Abusrour writes from occupied Ramallah. Read more about A Palestinian refugee's open letter to Obama 

Israel seems to have little time for the irony that a modern Jewish shrine to “coexistence and tolerance” is being built on the graves of the city’s Muslim forefathers. The Israeli Supreme Court’s approval last week of the building of a Jewish Museum of Tolerance over an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem is the latest in a series of legal and physical assaults on Islamic holy places since Israel’s founding in 1948. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Travesty of tolerance on display 

RAMALLAH (IRIN) - Some 100 academics and mental health workers were denied entry to the Gaza Strip to attend an international medical conference, but the conference took place anyway — by video link, with one group gathering in Gaza City and another in Ramallah. “It made it harder to exchange experiences,” said Samir Qouta, a psychologist at the Islamic University in Gaza, told IRIN. Read more about Israel tries to block Gaza health conference 

The group of internationals I had traveled with to the northern West Bank city of Nablus had decided to park our car just behind the Huwwara checkpoint, where Israeli soldiers control Palestinian movement to and from the city. From the outset, I began taking pictures of an Israeli military outpost littered with heavy tanks and armored vehicles. Eddie Vassallo writes from the Balata refugee camp. Read more about Is Spain inside or outside the Nablus checkpoint? 

Ask Saif Abukeshek when he became an online activist, and he’ll give you the same answer as many of his Palestinian peers: after the second intifada erupted, in 2000. That explosion of violence in the occupied territories brought about a tough lockdown on Palestinian mobility by Israeli forces and produced the right conditions for a home-grown, grass-roots activism — frustrated youth trapped inside all day with nothing but the TV and the internet to turn to. Don Duncan reports. Read more about Palestinian youth bring their politics online 

This morning I walked to the Indian Ocean and made salt in defiance of the British Occupation of India. This morning I marched in Selma, I stood down tanks in Tiananmen Square, and I helped tear down the Berlin Wall. This morning I became a Freedom Rider. Ramzi Kysia of the Free Gaza Movement writes from the Gaza Strip. Read more about Freedom Riders on the sea