My friend Khaled Batrawi is a civil engineer working in Ramallah. I went to see Khaled on Tuesday night and found him frustrated with the weak internal response to the current situation. Among other things, Khaled is angry because he feels local officials of the Palestinian Authority are not doing enough to prepare Palestinians for the current onslaught of heavy mortar and missile attacks.  Continue Reading »

My brother in-law Labib runs the Palestinian Bible Society. With its main office in east Jerusalem, the Society works in Bethlehem, Ramallah and Nablus, and has an office and a bookstore in the center of Gaza City.

Due to the current situation, the manager of the bookstore has been back home in the West Bank ever since the closure. Not that he has been any safer, as shells have fallen not far from his home in Beit Sahour.

Travel from the West Bank to Gaza is impossible. The idea of getting the manager to cross into Jordan and fly into Gaza was nixed once Gaza International Airport was closed. Last week, Labib thought he would go to Gaza just to check that the store had not been damaged by recent Israeli shelling. Continue Reading »

It is 8:50 a.m. on Tuesday, November 14, and the phone is ringing off the hook. My cell phone reads 6 missed calls. I must have overslept. I was up late the night before working on the script for a documentary about how Palestinian children and adults are trying to cope emotionally with the violence all around them. The last call on my cell phone is from a colleague, Hania. She is waiting for me in my office. I dress quickly and hurry to the office. I had asked Hania to help with an academic collaboration with a professor from Northern Texas University. The professor had heard me speak on the American National Public Radio about our special television programs aimed at helping traumatized Palestinian children. He had sent me an email saying that he had never heard of research done on people giving emotional support, especially children, while traumas were actually taking place. Usually the trauma in the US is short lived, and the emotional support takes place afterwards.  Continue Reading »

Hearing on the news this week the Palestinian Authority is demanding an international protection force for the Palestinian territories reminded me of a day in 1988 when I wished there was such a force. I was returning home from a day covering the intifada in Gaza. Soldiers on patrol near the Kalandiya refugee camp, located in north Jerusalem, would not let me into our house. They said that the area was under curfew.  Continue Reading »

It is almost 9 p.m. on Tuesday, October 31, and TV host Hamdi Farraj is interviewing Yacoub

Qesieh, one of the Palestinian residents from the town of Beit Jala whose house had been shelled the previous day by Israeli tanks.

Qesieh explained that they had had absolutely no warning about the shelling, but had been spared injury because they, like their neighbors, had been hiding at the nearby Orthodox Club. He also assured viewers that Christian-Moslem relations have never been better, despite the Israeli propaganda war.  Continue Reading »