When his alarm clock goes off every day at 6am, Saif, my 11-year-old son, barely moves his body out of his bed. His mother and I must go to extraordinary lengths to get him up and ready to go to school. This was never the case before. Saif studies in the Lutheran Church School in Beit Sahour, which is also known as the “Shepherds Field” according to the Bible. Located east of Bethlehem, Beit Sahour is the last Christian majority town in Palestine and used to enjoy the reputation of having the smallest percentage of immigration. This is also not the case any more. Read more about Children in Bethlehem under siege 

Our house is located close to the mosque of ‘Azza refugee camp and so we hear the muezzin or call to prayer five times a day. Even though the sound is loud, you get used to it and we usually sleep through it in the early morning. During the day Tamer enthusiastically shouts “Akka, Akka,” after hearing the sound of “Allahu Akbar!” He then listens to his own echo. Here in Bethlehem, the prayer calls somewhat differ in time from mosque to mosque. This has the effect that the songs “wave” across the land. Toine van Teeffelen writes about the song of the land. Read more about Song of the Land 

The Palestinian home also lacks something else typical of a normal home: basic safety. Lately Mary had a terrible dream. She dreamt about herself running in the oldest street of Bethlehem with Tamer on her arm away from an aircraft threatening to bomb her and the town. Like in a cover drawing of a war novel. Read more about Shadow of home 

It’s ten o’clock in the morning. The 10 members of the UNRWA distribution team watch Ahmed as he slowly walks the 100 metres that separate him from the armed soldier. A few moments later all can they see is the back of a blue UN vest confronting a green uniform. The men do not speak. They have been waiting at the Beit Iba checkpoint, five kilometres north-west of Nablus, for more than two hours, and still have a long way to go before they reach their destination. Read more about Checkpoints and dust: A day with the Nablus distribution team 

We were sitting outside a small shack at the edge of a Bedouin community in the Northern Gaza Strip region of Al-Sayafa. Abu Housa, one of the Bedouin elders, sat with us speaking in quick, expressive Arabic phrases, spreading his arms and flinging his hands about, the gestures adding emotional context to words that, for the most part, I could not understand. When we first arrived at the community we were quickly invited to sit in the shade of the shack and offered tea, as is customary here. Jacob Pace writes from Gaza City. Read more about Al-Sayafa: A Case Study in Dispossession 

Waiting happens everywhere in the world. Waiting in Palestine, however, is not just a routine and bothersome phenomenon that can better be neglected because there is nothing to do about it. It happens so frequently, and it is so testing and influential, that it often dominates people’s lives. Toine van Teeffelen writes from Bethlehem. Read more about The Waiting Game 

Life here on the ground in occupied Palestine is rarely reported in the United States. The brutal impact of Israel’s military occupation is hidden behind the rhetoric of pundits and politicians, many of whom have never met a Palestinian. They have never, as I have, held a sick Palestinian child in their arms as her parents beg soldiers to let them pass a checkpoint. They have never babysat Palestinian children while their mother goes out to find out what happened to her husband during an armed invasion of their refugee camp. Daniel Jacob Quinn writes from occupied Jenin. Read more about Up against the Apartheid Wall