The outcome of Thursday’s local elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has underscored the competition between Fatah, the quasi-secular and ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, the Islamic resistance group. According to initial unofficial results, Fatah did well in many villages in the West Bank, wining as many as 50 of the 84 contested councils. However, Hamas emerged the winner in large towns such as Rafah, Qalqilya, and Bethlehem, and seems to have won as many as 32 local councils in the West Bank. Hamas leaders have argued, justifiably, that while Fatah won significantly more council seats than Hamas, the Islamist movement actually surpassed Fatah in terms of the number of votes it received. Read more about Palestinian poll shows Hamas strength 

It’s been a long time coming but two weeks ago several ads created by Imagine Life began airing in Boston. Many Boston area groups coordinated raising the money and arranging the airing. As in other markets — 80 cities around the country — it was very exciting to see honest portrayals on American television of the grotesque and oppressive circumstances under which Palestinian people live. These ads ran on CNN and MSNBC. Bostonians were jubilant. There was hope. Read more about Success for Imagine Life ads in Boston 

In the heart of Jabalia Refugee Camp, there was no more room in the two-room 50 square meters house of Mahmoud Al-Dhabous 42. He is an unemployed father of 7 children, lost his work because he refused to “betray his people.” The washbasin in the kitchen is broken. The door of the bathroom is full of holes while the two rooms packed with sleeping children, clothes and books. Al-Dhabous is a sample of thousands of Palestinian workers the Israeli intelligence have been trying to recruit them as traitors for a permission of work inside Israel. For nine consecutive years, Al-Dhabous has worked for a factor of greenhouses in the industrial zone of “Eretz”. He has been jobless for more than a year. The Israeli intelligence prevented him from working as he refused to “collaborate”. Read more about Palestinian workers under "moral terror" 

The mountains of Palestine form a sharp edge that plunges into the Jordan Valley as if cut by a knife. Almost to the rim of this drastic landscape lies the village of Al Aqaba, located in the farthest Palestinian lands of the Jenin region. It is almost a no-man’s land, nestled in the soft rolling foothills of the towering mountains, stirred by the strong breeze cooling the hot spring day. We went to Al Aqaba to speak with Haj Sammy, the mayor. The military uses the land around Al Aqaba for their training practices, having killed 8 and wounded 50 since 1971. Haj Sammy’s wound is one such example. He has been paralyzed since. Read more about Al Aqaba: Another village under threat 

Today, the Great Saturday celebration for Christian Orthodox people ahead of Easter Sunday tomorrow, was ruined in Jerusalem by the Israeli police and the Greek Patriarch. The Christian Quarter of the Old City was blocked off in four places by heavily armed Israeli police, which meant that Christian Orthodox Palestinians as well as members of the church who had flown in from Greece, could not enter their church for the service. Read more about On Orthodox Great Saturday, Israel closes Jerusalem's Christian Quarter 

The West Bank city of Nablus has historically boasted itself as the commercial and business center of Palestine. The West Bank’s largest city, it dates back some 4,500 years. However, Nablus’ economy, cultural heritage, and population have come under attack during the past four years of Israeli violence. Its Old City walls have acquired a new layer of history in the political graffiti and martyr posters honoring the scores of mostly young men from Nablus who have committed suicide bombings or, far more frequently, were killed by Israeli violence. Read more about Photostory: Nablus' Old City 

21 April 2005 — Last week, I witnessed my first settler attack. “It was nothing,” my friend Arafat told me afterwards, and I know that he was speaking in comparison to other attacks when people have been injured and even killed. Here, the Palestinian farmers were simply forced off their land. Too simply. Too easily. But what can they do? They don’t have any weapons, unless you count their farming tools, as one woman joked to me. Only the Israeli settlers and soldiers have real weapons. Read more about My First Settler Attack 

At the beginning of April 2002, the Israeli army reoccupied a number of cities in the West Bank as part of a wide-scale military operation dubbed “Defensive Shield”. The goal of the operation, as stated by the Israeli government, was to “eliminate the infrastructure of Palestinian terrorism and to prevent suicide bombers from executing their operations in the heart of Israeli cities inside the Green Line.” At the time, no attention was given to an artillery force that snuck up the hills to a quarry - the largest in the West Bank, which is located in the cradle of a huge hill west of Nablus. “We were shocked when we saw that the quarry was being taken over,” says the director of the quarry, Ihab Abu Shusheh. Read more about West Bank wasteland 

Lately Mary said that “we are slaves now,” – slaves even without the possibility of shouting at your masters. “How sad is it that we are happy to get a permit,” she said after hearing of people who received a permit to travel to Jerusalem during Easter week. She herself applied but did not receive one. We heard of many couples who received only one permit. According to some, there were seven hundred permits to give away for a thousand applicants. Most people did not bother to apply. With its army roads and barbed wire the Wall will soon dominate the western border of the Bethlehem area, as well as a large stretch of the south. The checkpoint to the north of Bethlehem is going to be moved southwards, approaching downtown Bethlehem. It will be in or immediately behind the Wall. Read more about The Crow Cries