June 3, 2008 — Despite the pain and suffering evident across the West Bank and Gaza, there is a way forward for Palestinians, Israelis, and those who support them. The way forward begins with hope, and hope begins with ordinary human beings who, as my experience here has shown me again and again, have the courage and compassion to overcome their differences and embrace their common future.  

May 30, 2008 — The first Palestinian Intifada garnered world attention and widespread sympathy for its "children of the stones," young resisters facing off against Israeli tanks, tear gas, and steel-coated rubber bullets--all with little more than a homemade slingshot. To the outside world, there are as yet no equally enduring symbols of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. In Nablus, I found that symbol. 

May 29, 2008 — The occupation is alive and well in the northern West Bank. This is the first of several entries I intend to log on the atrocious state of affairs in Nablus and points north, where the open wounds of Israel's war on innocent civilians make all talk of peace seem a distant and dangerous fantasy. 

May 27, 2008 — Although tourism is said to be picking up again in Jerusalem, it seems to have come—as tourism so often does—at the expense of this city's ancient charms. Here the Old City's most traveled path, the Via Dolorosa, is caught between the Coca-Cola sign and the Israeli flag. 

May 27, 2008 — Time was when the Qalandia checkpoint on the outskirts of Ramallah meant mostly this: a handful of menacing Israeli soldiers picking off random groups of Palestinians on their way to work or prayers in Jerusalem... 

May 24, 2008 — Each Ramallah street is an organic outgrowth of another, its gems (Rukab's Ice Cream, your favorite shawarma carver) bearing no plaques or polish. They just are. Yet something is clawing at Ramallah's sense of itself.  

May 23, 2008 — Background to this scene, pictured from the campus of Bethlehem University, is the Israeli "settlement" of Har Homa. A sprawling colony whose Jewish-only residents number in the tens of thousands, Har Homa is marked by exit signs on an ultra-modern highway into Jerusalem. Its homes are just as modern, fixed to Israeli water systems and electricity grids.  

May 22, 2008 — Why is this classroom empty? It's not that school's out at Bethlehem University. Most of Bethlehem's 2,800 Palestinian students are slogging through exams. Some are preparing to graduate. But for BU students trapped in Gaza since last June, the Spring-fed excitement of another year's achievements is as far off as their now-empty classroom.