Emad Moussa recalls his first trip out of Gaza, with his grandfather, as the pair rode by their original village of Al-Sawafir Al-Gharbiyya, now ruins sheltered by cactuses and trees. “He was, like every other Palestinian, a nomad traveling across a landscape of memory,” Moussa writes. “Like all others, his memory was premised on three main motifs: the praise of a long-gone paradise lost; the lamentation of a present defined by military occupation; and, the hopeful visualization of a return to Palestine, where justice will finally be served.”

Mourid Barghouti, beloved Palestinian poet and the author of the stirring memoir “I saw Ramallah,” died earlier this month in Amman at the age of 76.

Palestinians today find themselves in an analogous position to the condition of stateless Jews Hannah Arendt originally wrote about in the 1950s in the aftermath of World War II.

There are certain profound events in a nation’s history that leave an indelible mark on all its people. The massacre in two Palestinian refugee camps outside of Beirut, Sabra and Shatila, on September 16, 1982 stands as one of those events.

A wave of suicides in the Gaza Strip over the summer including the death of Hamza Abu Al-Tarabeesh’s cherished friend Suleiman al-Ajoury at 23 has led to endless questions among his peers about disappointment, loneliness and unbearable living conditions.

Tamam Abusalama remembers leaving the Gaza Strip for the first time ten years ago. The driver made a point to take her and her mother through Beit Jirja, their original village, on the way to Jerusalem. Nothing was left of the village. Just agricultural fields.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) recently launched an appeal for $14 million in anticipation of a coronavirus outbreak in Palestinian refugee camps. It’s an indication of the dire financial straits the agency is in, particularly since the US – once its major donor – cut its annual $360 million donation in August 2018.

Gaza reported it’s first two cases of COVID-19 on Saturday. While the spread of the respiratory disease is relatively contained in Gaza, there is widespread fear the health infrastructure is woefully underprepared to handle an outbreak

Roger Waters on the importance of international solidarity with Palestinians: “The aim … is to focus world attention on the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza in the hope that the scales will fall from the eyes of all, ordinary, decent people round the world, that they may see the enormity of the crimes that have been committed, and demand that their governments bring all possible pressure to bear on Israel to lift the siege.”

Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem in the first four months of 2019 have already exceeded the number in 2018, the UN reports, and 193 Palestinians have been displaced. On April 29th alone, 31 structures were demolished. The next day another four. On Friday, UN officials called on Israel to ‘immediately halt’ the policy.