Young men and women out of high school have one of two options: pursue their degree, or get married. For men there is a third option — be lucky enough to connect your way to someone who is high up enough in one of the Palestinian factions to be bribed to find you one of the few jobs that exist, and magically you will be transported into the 15% of people who have found work here. This is the zahag. “Zahag”, an Arabic word for this long, heavy boredom that feels like a slow death. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about When boredom feels like slow death, what is left to lose? 

There are no prayer mats to be found in this empty border apartment, only years of sand accumulated on the empty floors. A chandelier’s broken crystals spread in wide sunrays in the salon from the underground explosion some few meters away a few weeks ago — the army blowing up the imagined tunnels of its dream, those phantoms. Everyone knows they don’t exist on this street, which has meticulously rid itself of armed resistance and smugglers. Still, the army blow up dirt meters below the ground many times a week just next to the border homes, shattering their windows and shaking their foundations. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about Broken Crystal 

I’ve become enthralled with births and weddings — the creation of family — redemption from the ache of a war that systematically removes the most beloved burdens of a person’s full hands. A house, a brother, a mother. I count the marriages and the births like a high school student crosses off the squares of a calendar, measuring the distance between the dredgery of institutionalized education and the open arms of vacation. Every marriage is a triumph of construction in the face of this violent waste. Every birth is red ‘X’ on the calandar of the Occupation. Read more about Redemption in Gaza 

The plot of Abu Jameel’s life unfolds like a tragic drama. His street, Abu Jameel Street, named after his grandfather, once the richest man in the area whose grandson used to scorn farmers, walk through the street as one known by face only, the untouchable man in the suit. Abu Jameel inherited the riches of his family and built a row of forty stores and several apartments with his two cousins and married a beautiful Egyptian woman who bore him a son and a daughter. These days fade to memories in black and white. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about Tension and depression 

Most of the time life in Rafah seems normal. A bustling city — taxis honking and speeding through the crowded streets, schoolchildren in their uniforms on their way to and from school, merchants of all types with their colourful wares lining the streets — fruits, clothes, household items — the perfume of life filling the air. Everywhere things seem normal, then all of a sudden something will happen and the facade of normalcy will disappear, and the ugliness of the reality will show through. Melissa writes from Rafah. Read more about Normal life in Rafah 

Even the incursions began to feel monotonous. The same stories. The same devastated families with nowhere to go. The same phrases to express anger and helplessness. Each story felt like a shadow of fatigue on the waves of an ocean. In the first months, my heart had broken daily and with every story, fresh catharsis bleeding onto paper, revelations in bright red. Now, eight months after my first step in Rafah, the pain is a gray weight on my stomach, always there. Laura Gordan writes from occupied Rafah. Read more about The Monotony of Chaos 

Then the streets started screaming and we were running almost without thinking, down the edges of the street around the people who had lost their fear, around donkey carts loaded full, ran until we fround a corner to turn into and then we ran past families and children, through narrow streets far enough from the main street not to know the worst, far enough that we were the ones spreading the news that the army had come back. When it left, it left not through the streets as it had come, but by creating a path through the homes still standing in Yibneh, demolishing anything in its way and driving over the remains. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah about the invasion. Read more about Eyewitness account of the invasion of Rafah 

Already, things have changed here. I hear that in Israel security is stepped up. It’s big news on the web and the TV — “Israel readies itself for another attack.” Maybe people in Israel feel the same way we do here. Last night in Rafah, an Apache flew over the border area all night, keeping me awake long after the five bombs shook our house. i could hear it clearly and was too scared to sleep, thinking that it could strike at any minute. Friyal couldn’t sleep either, and this is a family that sleeps no problem with all night shooting. In the few minutes I managed to sleep, I dreamt about Apache helicopters, that whole ‘sound-getting-integrated-into-your-dream’ thing. Read more about Fear of the sky 

The shooting from the tower dominiates the night, louder than angry men, louder than demonstrators. Earlier tonight, an ambulance’s urgent wail, me holding my breath praying. Death is so close now you can smell it. Already it has come like a rain storm beginning in Hebron, like the time I watched rain come towards me from across a lake and ran toward the forest and my feet were not faster than the rain. Laura Gordon writes from Rafah. Read more about Fragments of Rafah