Firing home-made primitive rockets at Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip, the mass sweeping through the Palestinian – Egyptian border crossing of Rafah in January and the series of ongoing peaceful demonstrations at Gaza’s crossing points with Israel are not an aggressive demonstration of self-confidence.

Since the occupation began in 1967, Israel has exercised almost total control over the Palestinian population registry and has sole power to determine who is a Palestinian resident.

For the past several months I have been receiving TIME magazine. The subscription originally started as a gift from someone unknown, with my last name spelled wrong, lasted for a year. When it came up for renewal, I stalled until the price came down to fifty cents a copy, a much more reasonable price for the quality of the magazine.

The logic of established patterns of behavior creates a set of expectations. For example, when countries involved in a sustained conflict decide to commence peace talks, such an act suggests that they believe that there is some chance for success.

Nasser Jaber’s chicken farm was bulldozed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) ten days ago, in the early morning hours of May 16, while he was sleeping at home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. He still looks stunned.

PCHR expresses great condemnation over the developments of in the Khan Yunis Youth Club, and subsequent armed takeover of the Club by Hamas members last Wednesday.

JERUSALEM, 22 May 2008 (IRIN) - Ahmed al-Baghdadi's doctors said he must leave the Gaza Strip and travel to Israel to receive urgent life-saving medical care if he hopes to fight the tumours in his body.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) is extremely concerned about the detention of Khan Yunis Governor Dr. Osama Abd El-Sattar El-Farra, and three Fatah activists, who were all detained by armed members of the Hamas Internal Security Apparatus on Monday 19 May, 2008.

Free speech is not without consequence. In the United States, for example, criticism of Israel is tantamount to heresy. Former US President Jimmy Carter felt a societal backlash last year after the release of his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which condemned Israel’s apartheid-style policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The health situation in the Gaza Strip has been steadily deteriorating since Israel tightened its siege on the area in June 2007, following Hamas’ forceful takeover.

The establishment of the State of Israel 60 years ago and the Disaster ("Nakba"), which turned a fundamental part of the Palestinian People into refugees – those are the two inseparable sides of the history that could have been different.

What do Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel have in common? One thing is for certain: they are both true reflections of the neoconservative rise in US foreign policy, which itself was a result of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

On February 12, 2008, Arab League information ministers issued a communique outlining 'tough' guidelines for Arab satellite channels. The new guidelines specifically prohibited the broadcasting of negative reporting of heads of state, religious or national figures.

The pictures arrive at first in the sad multi-tones of greys, the ever-present grey concrete walls of the narrow alleys of the refugee camp, the shadows and lines on faces, the abstract shadows of wire and fence on concrete, and the loom of the Wall that separates the camp from its outlying fields.

It was difficult for 87-year-old Jamil Khader to discover that nearly all of the 1,400 olive trees his extended family planted in February had suddenly gone missing, having been uprooted and stolen.

It appears that the United States is still relatively successful in blocking any real progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track. If the Palestinian question seems deadlocked for the moment, the Middle East is like a seething cauldron for the United States.

Unsurprisingly, author Michael Scheuer, a senior CIA veteran responsible for drafting the notorious US rendition program, frequently quotes Machiavelli in his devastating predictions of the chaotic road to US suicide.

This tale from the West Bank operates at several levels. Nominally it is about one man – Dr. Sami Khader – and his attempts to sustain the dream of having an internationally approved zoo in the town of Qalqilya in the West Bank.

I still vividly remember my father’s face - wrinkled, apprehensive, warm - as he last wished me farewell fourteen years ago. He stood outside the rusty door of my family’s home in a Gaza refugee camp wearing old yellow pyjamas and a seemingly ancient robe.

In a place just a few miles from sandy beaches and soaring sky-scrapers, white stone villas and sky-blue swimming pools, it seems the epitome of irony and injustice that over 1.5 million people would be subjected to drinking sewage-contaminated water.