Last night, I counted at least 12 explosions. It was a difficult night. They just wouldn’t stop. I only heard 12; others say there were at least 18. They just kept going. The Israeli army announced yesterday that they were expanding their attacks into Beirut. And indeed they did, hitting areas in central Beirut! Today has been difficult getting online. Electricity is less and less. We are down to about two hours a day. Because there is a fuel and diesel shortage, it has become difficult to keep the generators going. You know in Beirut, everyone lives in apartment buildings; with the electricity shortage, it has become hard for the elderly to move in and out of their homes. Read more about It's raining bombs; only two hours of electricity 

The first time I met someone who was not from New Orleans who understood why I wanted to return after the city was nearly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina was when I met Rim from Beirut. I was at a writer’s residency, offered to me in the aftermath of last year’s disaster, when I was discussing with one of the people who ran it my difficulty, both logistically and psychologically, in getting to the place. The logistical part was clear, but I did not understand why it was that I had a very difficult time leaving the city to come to that clean, safe place. “It makes no sense,” I remember saying. A woman nearby overheard us and said “It does to me.” Read more about Searching for the truth under the rubble 

I haven’t been able to write. Words irritate me these days. Words distorted and twisted by power, words re-used by journalists and analysts like parrots. A country waging a war becomes a country under siege, resistance groups become terrorists. I do not want to use the language the new rulers of the world are using. I get irritated listening to myself uttering a single word they use. I haven’t been able to write also because words fail. I sat yesterday in front of the TV set, watching a broadcast about the Shayyah massacre where 43 people died. It is at the funeral; there are interviews with bereaved mothers. Read more about Words Fail as the Bombs Fall 

The water point in the southern Gaza town of Joret al Lout is the only place to get drinkable water for the more than 10,000 people who live there. Half of those in the poor and densely populated community are children. Many can be seen at the water point, filling bottles and jerry cans. Children like Mahmoud Abdullah, 13, help as best they can with the severe shortage of safe water. “We are filling water bottles because we have no drinkable water at home, and if water is available it is salty,” says Mahmoud. People in Joret al Lout have not had drinkable running water in their homes since 28 June, when the region’s only power plant was bombed. Read more about Crisis worsens Gaza's already severe water shortage 

A man steps inside his house. It’s a nice house, overlooking the beach. The man, however, doesn’t even look towards the window. He rushes to the kitchen, hugs his wife, takes his daughter into his arms, and makes funny faces to his toddler, trying to make him smile. The man looks tired, he hasn’t shaved in a while, and he certainly needs a shower. He takes a shower, eats lunch with his family, hands his wife a sum of money and goes to bed. The wife calls the children to go with her to the supermarket: they’ll shop for food and toys from the husband’s wage. The dad is an Israeli soldier. He works hard, Marwa knows that. Read more about Hallucinations 

The Bush Administration encourages Israel to crush Hezbollah, perhaps because many in the US think Israel is a settler society facing exactly the situation their own country once faced. But haven’t Israelis been here long enough to recognize that simplistic example of the eastward gaze called the war on terror? Lashing out will not make Israel safe; such a strategy is based on faulty “knowledge”: it is like plowing the sea. If crushing people will make them capitulate, the people of Gaza would long ago have become docile rather than defiant. Read more about Facing West from Arab Country