Israel’s expanding network of checkpoints is UNLAWFUL and must be dismantled immediately. Part of the carceral geography of apartheid, it makes Palestiniams' daily life fully dependent on arbitrariness. Thank you @WIRED for exposing this viciousnes: "Lost time. Lost jobs. Lost friends. Lost family. Lost lives. How Israeli checkpoints suffocate Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank. CHOKE POINTS "

https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/2107786279320482146 

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt

@FranceskAlbs

 

Israel’s expanding network of checkpoints is UNLAWFUL and must be dismantled immediately. 

Part of the carceral geography of apartheid, it makes Palestiniams' daily life fully dependent on arbitrariness.  

Thank you @WIRED for exposing this viciousness:  https://www.wired.com/story/how-israeli-checkpoints-choke-palestinian-life-occupied-west-bank/

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Lost time. Lost jobs. Lost friends. Lost family.

Lost lives.

How Israeli checkpoints suffocate Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank.

CHOKE POINTS  

The Big Story

Sep 30, 2026 6:00 AM

Aref Jaber is on a neighbor's roof, trying to get home.

At 51, he is clambering over a wall into the next backyard, up onto the next roof, along the line of stone houses that stand between him and his own front door. He has no choice. Alleys and side streets in his neighborhood have been sealed with cement blocks and barbed wire, and a single point of access, called Checkpoint 160, is the only way in or out for the 140 families who live there.

But Checkpoint 160 is closed again; Jaber is not sure why. The whim of a soldier, a crash in the scanning system, breaking news in the region—it could be anything.

For the last three years, he says, this has happened at least two days a week. So the community has devised a system of alternative routes. Jaber calls his neighbors to ask if he can come through. They check their windows for soldiers, and then Jaber scales ladders and traverses roofs. “When I finally get home,” he says, “it feels like I’ve achieved something monumental.”

The enclosure of Jaber’s neighborhood is a dense microcosm of what life is becoming across the occupied West Bank—for Palestinians, that is. At the same time that deadly Israeli settler violence robs communities in the West Bank of their land, and amid the genocide in Gaza, Israel has expanded its infrastructures of military control and domination... READ MORE  https://www.wired.com/story/how-israeli-checkpoints-choke-palestinian-life-occupied-west-bank/

"For so long I wondered why I survived while family and friends were killed. Now I know the only difference between life and death may have been an AI algorithm..."

Palestinians search for missing people under the rubble of a destroyed house following Israeli air strikes on Deir Al Balah, 22 February 2024. Photograph: Mohammed Saber/EPA

 NAZA   in The Guardian 

Watching NAZA was like peering through a window – and seeing the machinery of killing in Gaza

Mahmoud Mushtaha

The lights go down, and for a moment I forget I’m watching a screen. It fills with a rooftop in Tel Aviv at night, black and grey. The camera pans down. Through windows, we see people watching screens of their own – couples holding each other close, following the news, eating food. They appear absorbed in their own worlds, and why wouldn’t they be?

That’s the thing I can’t get past as a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, watching this apparent tranquillity: this must be it – this must be what safety actually looks like. Just an evening uninterrupted, with no military aircraft flying overhead or drones buzzing incessantly. Meanwhile, men and women on the rooftop above them calmly talk about how they decided how many Palestinian civilians would die on any given night.

These are the soldiers, mostly intelligence officers, who helped Israel carry out its destruction of Gaza. Their testimonies form the basis of NAZA, a documentary whose title comes from an Israeli military acronym used to indicate how many civilians are likely to die in an airstrike on the territory.

What surprised me in the film wasn’t the massive scale of the killing, or even the coldness of it, but the proficiency of the soldiers who coolly described destroying people’s lives as if they were discussing a routine errand. One described the work simply as a “mission”, while another compared it to a “video game”.

One soldier described knowing exactly what some of the people were doing in the moments before he killed them. He recalled hearing a man talking to his wife in bed. A baby crying. The sound of the TV. Despite taking all that humanity in, he quickly gave permission to drop the bomb...  READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/17/naza-film-documentary-killing-gaza

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"Today the UN flag is lowered globally in solidarity with over 1,000 aid workers killed in past three years. We lower our flags. We remember our friends and colleagues. We demand accountability for those who killed them." Tom Fletcher

Tom Fletcher

@UNReliefChief

·

Aug 19

 

Today the UN flag is lowered globally in solidarity with over 1,000 aid workers killed in past three years. We lower our flags. We remember our friends and colleagues. We demand accountability for those who killed them.

My Sister Najah (AY) By Mike Odetalla of Beit Hanina, Palestine

Mike Hanini Odetalla

Stsorepndoh99tc21fa50igu9a60uha6408h672t0ac1915m1tfchgc0cg72  ·

My Sister Najah (AY)

By Mike Odetalla

 

As a small boy growing up in our village of Beit Hanina, Palestine, I was a mischievous child with an insatiable curiosity and an irrepressible desire to roam. The hills that encircled our village were my kingdom, and escaping the watchful eyes of my family became an art form that might well have made Harry Houdini proud.

 

I was the youngest of five children—two brothers and two sisters, all much older than I was. The sibling closest to me in age was my sister Najah, who was six years older. Because of that, and perhaps because she was the most patient, my mother often entrusted her with the daunting task of watching over me whenever she left the house.

 

My mother’s instructions were simple and direct: “Keep an eye on your brother and make sure he does not leave.”

 

Najah did her best, but I was determined.

 

I would wait patiently for the slightest distraction. Then, with my homemade slingshot clutched in one hand, I would slip outside, climb over the patio, leap onto the wall that separated our home from the neighbors’, and within moments I would be scaling the steep hill that rose behind our house.

 

Those hills were my paradise.

 

There, I flew homemade kites that danced against the blue Palestinian sky. I explored ancient caves that seemed filled with mystery and adventure. I stalked birds with my slingshot, imagining myself a great hunter. To a little boy, those hills were not merely part of the landscape—they were a vast and wondrous playground where I experienced some of the happiest moments of my childhood.

 

Eventually, my mother would return home and ask Najah the inevitable question.

“Did your brother give you any trouble?”

 

Unaware that I had vanished, Najah would answer confidently, “No, he is inside playing.”

 

But when my mother stepped into the house and found it empty, she knew immediately where I had gone.

 

Turning to my sister, she would scold her and issue a command she had repeated many times before:

 

“Go find your brother. And don’t hit him.”

 

Both Najah and I understood that the first part of the order would be obeyed. The second part was open to interpretation.

 

As Najah climbed the steep hill, her anger grew with every step. Not because she hated me, but because she knew she was the one who had gotten into trouble for my latest escape. Along the way, she would inevitably break off a thin switch from a nearby tree, preparing to administer justice.

 

At the top of the hill, she always knew exactly where to find me.

 

She would seize me by the ear, scold me fiercely, and swat me on the backside with the switch, paying little heed to our mother’s instructions.

 

The truth is, her punishment never hurt very much.

 

But I had learned a strategy of my own.

 

The moment she struck me, I would let out dramatic wails and sobs as though I were suffering unbearable agony. My exaggerated cries had the desired effect. Panic would spread across Najah’s face as she imagined what our mother would do if she believed that real harm had come to me.

 

In desperation, she would quickly begin negotiations.

 

“Please stop crying,” she would plead. “I will buy you a piece of Silvana chocolate if you promise not to tell Mother.”

 

Silvana chocolate was among the finest bribes a child could receive.

 

The tears would dry almost instantly.

 

We would then descend the hill together, our secret safely preserved between us, both of us knowing that the same adventure would likely be repeated again before long.

 

As the years passed, childhood gave way to adulthood. Life carried us to different places and eventually to different states. Yet distance did nothing to diminish the bond between us. In many ways, it strengthened it.

 

Whenever we were together, our conversations inevitably drifted back to those magical days in Palestine—to the hills of Beit Hanina, my daring escapes, and the cherished Silvana chocolates that sealed our conspiracies.

 

We laughed until tears filled our eyes.

 

What I did not fully appreciate as a child was that behind Najah’s scolding, her switch, and even her exasperation, there was a love as steadfast as the hills themselves. She protected me, worried about me, and carried the burden of responsibility placed upon her by our mother.

 

She was not merely my older sister.

 

She was my guardian, my accomplice, my confidante, and eventually my closest friend.

 

Ten years ago, my beloved sister Najah returned to her Creator.

 

With her passing, I lost far more than a sister.

 

I lost a treasured part of my childhood, the keeper of our shared memories, and one of the people who loved me most deeply in this world.

 

Yet whenever I close my eyes, I can still see her climbing that hill, a switch in one hand and determination in her stride, pretending to be angry while her heart overflowed with love.

 

And somewhere in that memory, I am once again a little boy in Beit Hanina—running free beneath the Palestinian sky, with my sister always finding her way to me.

 https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10165969600031977&set=pcb.10165969600286977

Mike Hanini Odetalla with his beloved sister

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"But we haven’t been able to share lunch together for a while now. Starvation has worsened, food is scarce, and constant bombardment and the collapse of transportation have made even the simplest gatherings nearly impossible. Still, his wife often sends me pages from her diary, writing about life under genocide, with glimpses of hope never fading from her words." Maha Hussaini

 Maha Hussaini

@MahaGaza

A 70-year-old friend of mine, the father of a dear friend, calls me from time to time to check on me or invite me over, where his wife would prepare delicious dishes. Before the genocide, I used to visit them regularly. But our bond deepened even more when we were displaced together in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

With their daughter, my friend, still trapped in northern Gaza and unable to reach them, and with them forcibly displaced alongside me and unable to return home, I felt an immense yet endearing responsibility to visit more often. I knew that every time their daughter’s friend came over to share a meal, it helped fill a small part of the void in their hearts left by her absence. 

After we returned to Gaza, the four of us, me, them, and their daughter, tried to meet whenever the bombing subsided. We would gather around one of his wife’s comforting dishes and sip tea after lunch, each time reminding ourselves how blessed we were to be reunited in Gaza, despite all attempts to tear us apart.

But we haven’t been able to share lunch together for a while now. Starvation has worsened, food is scarce, and constant bombardment and the collapse of transportation have made even the simplest gatherings nearly impossible. 

Still, his wife often sends me pages from her diary, writing about life under genocide, with glimpses of hope never fading from her words. 

Yesterday, for the first time, he sent me two photos of a notebook, his diary. It was so personal and sincere that I couldn’t help but ask him for permission to translate and share it, to offer the world a glimpse of how Gazans continue to hold onto kindness, even as everything else is stripped away. 

Here is the translation of his diary, entitled: What are you proud of, Motaz? (Moataz is an Arabic name that means Proud)

“We had just finished whatever "food" we could manage for breakfast when someone knocked on our door. My wife hurried to open it, and as usual, it was a boy around ten years old, asking for charity or a piece of bread to ease his hunger.

From his words and tone, I sensed truth and the pain of hardship, his divorced mother is sheltering at the Baptist Hospital next to her injured son, Mohammed.  

I let him in and apologised, telling him we had only a bit of mouldy flour bread with some Duqqa (Gazan spices usually eaten with bread) and thyme. He chose a sprinkle of thyme with his bread and devoured it as if afraid it would slip through his fingers.

I went to get a little leftover halva, my diabetes requires just a bit of sugar. I told myself I’d split today’s share with him. When I offered him his portion, he stared at it with teary eyes, hesitated to eat, and then said with heartbreak: "Uncle, can you give me a piece of paper so I can save this for my brother Mohammed, he craves it." It felt like a sharp stab to the chest. I told him not to worry, eat it, and I’ll give something for Mohammed too.  

Yes, Moataz! Tell me, little one, what are you proud of? 

Of a past torn between a divorced, displaced mother and a father battling mental illness? 

Of being deprived of your right to sit in a classroom where you belong? 

Of a present in which, like all of Gaza’s people, you can’t find a bite to fill your stomach? 

Or of a future that holds nothing for us, where even the last candles of hope are about to go out?”

https://x.com/MahaGaza/status/1949770641931985361

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Palestinian refugees in Gaza- AFSC Defending a displaced people

                                            American Friends Service Committee

When the 1948 Arab-Israeli War left nearly 250,000 Palestinian refugees stranded in Gaza, the United Nations turned to AFSC to help organize relief services. Early in 1949, 20 AFSC staffers faced a sea of people and began distributing food, clothing, tents, and blankets. Ultimately, a renowned African-American physician, Dr. Jerome Peterson, came to manage medical care.

While staff from other relief agencies lived apart in guarded houses, the Quakers “lived as close as we could … open and present and among the people all the time.” By 1950, when the United Nations took over, more than 100 AFSC staffers had worked in Gaza—most of them in their 20s and early 30s. They had managed to help Palestinians create schools, maternity centers, metal shops, and recreation clubs.

Learn More

• Read more about AFSC's continuing peace-building work in the Middle East
• Learn more from the AFSC archives

Camps were roughly grouped around three cities: Gaza (the largest), Khan Younis, and Rafah.

 

 

 

The cold, rainy winters in Gaza made adequate shelter essential.

Even with donated blankets, nights were so chilly that people often huddled together to stay warm.

 

Lentils and beans supplemented flour and oil in the refugees’ meager diets.

Initially, children had no writing tools. They learned by reciting aloud and sat on the mats, sacks or the ground.

Even in these surroundings, “they had the boundless eagerness of school children everywhere,” wrote one volunteer.

 

 

https://peaceworks.afsc.org/palestinian-refugees-gaza

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