I am home now, sitting comfortably in the quiet of my office, but the deafening machine gun fire, explosions, and anxious faces of the inhabitants of Block O in the southern Gazan city of Rafah are still with me. Now I feel compelled to keep my promises to people and tell the world what I saw. Darren Ell reports. Read more about The background music in Rafah
United States, Palestine, Jordan, Canada3 September 2002
Launch announcement press release for The Electronic Intifada’s new website, switched from Intranet to Internet mode on 4 September 2002. Read more about EI V2.0 LAUNCHED
What has happened is so horrible I cannot find the words to express my reactions. I don’t have a television, so it was not until this morning when the Toronto Globe and Mail landed on our front porch that I saw the images—the huge buildings now gone, the body parts in the streets, the people with faces of absolute fear and shock. Read more about Letter from Canada
Lately, we watch the news with one eye shut, the other wincing in anticipation of anguish. Though we mumble to ourselves: “It can’t possibly get worse” as the newscaster reports another dozen Israelis or Palestinians are dead, we dare not say it out loud for fear of tempting fate with such presumption. Read more about 'The best lack all conviction...'
Well, I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused. It’s hard to say which has done more damage to my stomach lining this week: the reports and images of yet another Sharon-instigated massacre - adding to what a BBC interviewer today referred to as ‘General Sharon’s rather impressive tally of blood-letting’ - or my repeated run-ins with the thought police, who come in all shapes and sizes and no know borders. Read more about An Intifada against intellectual terrorism
Not even the great Italian cinematic genius Fellini could have choreographed a more surreal and circus-like situation in the West Bank—the absurd siege of Arafat’s compound and the doubly absurd calls from Ariel Sharon and George Bush, Jr., that Arafat—confined to an office lacking electricity, running water, or a spare cell phone battery— ‘do more to stop the violence.’ Read more about The surreal and circus-like situation in the West Bank