By Miri – For a Middle Eastern country Israel is as Western as it gets and Tel Aviv is probably the queen of Westernness. And yet, for a person who sets her/his foot for the first time into this place, it can get quite confusing. Shimrit Elisar took it on herself to ease this experience […]
By Miri – As a matter of fact historic Palestine always also was the home of a Jewish community. Hebron is considered to be the site of the oldest Jewish community in the world and thus looks back at a long turbulent history, a history that extends into the present and raises crucial questions about the […]
By Miri Today, May 15th marks Nakba Day. Nakba means “catastrophe“ in Arabic and refers to 1) the events that took place during the war of 1947/1948, usually referred to by the Jewish-Israel discourse as the War of Independence, during which an estimated number of 750,000 Palestinians were expelled and/or fled from their homes and […]
By Miri – Every building has a story. It’s just a matter of listening carefully for it to reveal itself. If you go on a Jenin tour, the façades of the city’s buildings will probably tell you the stories of their bullet holes, of their collapsed ceilings and of the rubble, hence, stories of violence and […]
By Miri – The Dead Sea is obviously one of the focal points of tourism in the Holy Land and also Green Olive Tours offers a number of tours which guide you through this area. On a trip organised by Green Olive Tours, however, you will be enabled to look beyond the natural beauty of this […]
By Miri – It is generally acknowledged that the Israeli settlers in the West Bank live in relative affluence when compared to their Palestinian neighbours. Yet nowhere becomes this contrast more apparent than in the case of the Southern Hebron Hills, an area considered to be one of the poorest of the whole West Bank […]
By Miri – Last week I wrote about crossing the border and entering the Holy Land. That’s however only half of the story; eventually you will have to leave again and I feel it’s worthwhile to also give some advice as to how to depart without unnecessarily calling the attention of Israeli security to you […]
By Miri At least since 09/11 boarding an airplane became a pretty lengthy procedure. Boarding an airplane in order to enter or leave Israel, especially (but not only) as a foreigner and even worse as an Arab or Muslim, has always been a “special” experience. Israeli airline security is notorious for being one of the […]
By Miri When trying to undermine the Palestinians’ right to self determination, right wingers usually come up with two arguments, first “the Palestinian people as such don’t exist”, and/or second, “the Palestinians already have a country, it’s called Jordan”. The second argument is usually based on the notion that Jordan’s eastern part constitutes part of […]
By Miri Beit Ummar is a town situated between the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem in the beautiful and fertile central highlands of the West Bank.In Palestine, like everywhere, each and every place has its very own and particular story, at the same time, however, Beit Ummar’s condition in a way constitutes the Occupation in a […]
By Miri Joint Palestinian-Israeli initiatives are not that rare anymore. In fact, in recent years they have become some sort of business, and funding agencies all over the world are keen on financing efforts at establishing dialogue and co-existance. At the same time, those initiatives are frequently criticised, both by more conservative or right wing […]
