Today was Independence Day in Israel, a holiday, needless to say, not much celebrated on the West Bank. But it wasn’t an ordinary day at my University, either: there was some question about whether ...
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One of the four larger-than-life stone lions in the center of Al-Manara, Ramallah’s main square, sports a stone wristwatch.  (–Why does a monumental lion need to know what time it is, you ask? –Well, ...
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A Palestinian student passed along the following tale:  he has an after-school job as a customer service representative manning the phones, here in Ramallah, for a Midwestern firm that provides inexpensive cellphone service to ...
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And, indeed, here is the first of three helicopters in the Obama party coming in for a landing in Ramallah, flying low over a parking lot where several film crews, unable to get into ...
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Earlier this morning I heard the sound of a small plane overhead and realized how unusual that was.  One never hears airplanes here; I can’t even recall the sound of a helicopter, although they ...
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No one I’ve spoken with here, Israeli or Palestinian, imagines that anything  interesting will come of President Obama’s visit to Israel and the West Bank.  It would be nice to be wrong about this.  ...
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On the main square of Ramallah there’s an enamel plaque reminding one that Jerusalem is only 14.6 km away, no matter how distant it may seem if you’re living on the West Bank.  Yesterday, ...
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Two years ago, I reported on a vendetta between a family from Abu Dis, the site of my University, and one from the neighboring village of Sawahira, a feud that seemed to have broken ...
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I had intended to meet someone in East Jerusalem this afternoon, but called our date off:  it’s Friday and, after noontime prayers, I knew there would be demonstrations at various points in the West ...
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In Pastoral in Palestine I wrote of a walk I took, two years ago, up a hill near a village north of Ramallah where a friend had grown up.  I had taken some photos ...
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