On Wednesday afternoon, 23-year-old Sama was stepping out of a taxi in Ramallah’s bustling Manara Circle, when machine gun fire erupted. An undercover Israeli Defense Force (IDF) kidnapping mission, aimed at a senior Islamic Jihad figure, had run amok. Sama took cover in a side-street as the events unfolded. It started with youths hurling stones at the IDF agents — they were disguised as locals — and setting their car ablaze. Within minutes, about 11 armored IDF jeeps arrived, surrounding the Lo’Lo’A building on Manara, where the agents supposedly were. Two IDF helicopters came on the scene to provide further backup as the IDF made its violent withdrawal. Read more about Summer Time and the Living's Uneasy 

At the present, the Western world seems still under the spell of the legend of Ariel Sharon, who, so the story goes, has brought a gigantic change in Israeli policy - from expansion and occupation to moderation and concessions - a vision to be further implemented by his successor, Ehud Olmert. Since the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements, the dominant Western narrative has been that Israel has done its part towards ending the occupation and declared its readiness to take further steps, and that now it is the Palestinians’ turn to show that they are able to live in peace with their well-intending neighbor. Read more about Sharon's Legacy in Action 

The Palestinian people have been longing for freedom and sovereignty since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. In 1917, the British colonial power at the time dominated historical Palestine, where the Jewish state was merely a dream in Jews’ minds around the globe and the Ottoman Empire was drawing to an end, the factors that made the Palestinians hope they would eventually have their own sovereignty on their own soil. Yet, amid such great expectations by the Palestinians, the British colonial government had promised the Jews, for free, ‘a national Jewish homeland’ in another people’s land, making the Jewish immigrants also hope of practicing some kind of sovereignty. Read more about A Tale of Palestinian Sovereignty 

There is no money to pay the 150,000 public servants within the “West Bank” and Gaza Strip, including doctors, nurses and other health workers. Most have not been paid for two months. There is very little money in circulation. High quality fruit that has been grown for export has been allowed in only small amounts through Karnai, the commercial checkpoint. No other exports are passing through, and little is coming in. That includes drugs, spare parts for dialysis machines and other necessary medical equipment and supplies. There are no drugs and anaesthetic agents left in the hospitals. Shafa hospital, the main public hospital, was threatened with closure last week. Read more about Siege of 1.4 Million Souls in Gaza vs. International Law 

The Israelis call it a war, but it is really a contemptible and cruel cat and mouse game, with the mouse firmly held under the cat’s paw or locked up in a cage to which the cat has free and easy access. A case in point is Israel’s death squad murder of six Palestinians in Jenin and Qabatiya last week. Yet despite the odds stacked against them, writes EI contributor Rima Merriman, Palestinians know they have no option but to hold fast and continue to demand their rights under international law, and to figure out a way to make Israel pay a moral and material price for the destruction and suffering it is wreaking on them. Read more about A cruel cat and mouse game