On Thursday, February 11, the DAAM Party held a public debate focused on Jerusalem. The discussion presented a difficult and alarming picture of a divided city in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents live in extremely difficult conditions. Conversely,…
Tag: barrier
Bil’in: (Partial) Triumph in a Political Vacuum
While the Israeli Occupation hardens and the Fatah/Hamas split deepens, a remote little village near Ramallah has celebrated a victory. This is Bil’in. It went to the Israeli High Court and won a change in the route of the Separation…
Medical Closure
IN EARLY MAY, aid organizations warned that the Gaza Strip was on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. They claimed that the health and welfare system of the Palestinian Authority was collapsing. International aid funds had been frozen since the…
Confrontations and Conversations in Bil’in
LEGEND has it that the name Bil’in comes from the Arabic bila-ein, “no spring.” For indeed, this West Bank village lacks a water source of its own. On the other hand, the village is flooded with currents of another kind: the…
Catch 67 in Jerusalem
Since early 2004, there has been a sharp reduction in suicide attacks against Israelis. Some are inclined to link this fact to the separation barrier that Israel has built in the northwestern part of the West Bank. Yet the barrier…
Wrong Side of the Wall
NIGHT unfurls its starry veil over the olive groves of Um al-Fahm, an Israeli Arab city. Beneath the trees sleep 2000 laborers from the West Bank who do not have permits to work in Israel. Most hail from villages near…