Students Crossing Boundaries

I apologize for posting so much, there are just lots of things I've experienced in the last couple weeks that I haven't had the chance to report on!  Oh, and the picture below was NOT taken by me...I wouldn't get that close to the tear gas canisters!

I visited a resistance tent in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where residents have banded together to postpone demolition orders for the home of nearly 1000 people, in order to create a tourist's site for archaelogical digs over the supposed City of David. 

This is a very important struggle in East Jerusalem right now, and similar to the issue in Wadi Yasul, another Jerusalem neighborhood which will be my area of case study. 

Here's the full article about the protest:

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_12574451

So I trekked the mountain twice in two days. In reality, it was only once and half, but the "half" was uphill. The Augusta Victoria Hospital is located at the very top of the Mount of Olives, or as the Arabs call it, Jabal al-Zetoon. The ANERA office is located at the bottom of the Mount of Olives. Therefore, the logic goes as follows; I walk down in the morning, I hike up in the afternoon.

Last Sunday, I attended a house warming party for a family in Jabalel Mukaber, East Jerusalem.  Their house has been demolished twice, and they are in debt thousands of dollars for the demolition fees.  ICAHd rebuilt the house in only 3 days.  Here are photos from the pary...I gave my camera to the kids, so this is a highly pared down group of pictures.

While I described the all-Israeli demonstration near the Knesset as surprisingly tame, demonstrations I’ve attended in the West Bank elicited disproportionately strong reactions from the IDF.  I felt that the measures taken to silence protest were more intended to break morale than to prevent violence.  I’m amazed by the perseverance of Palestinians activists, but also critical of the methods used by some outlying demonstrators.

This post was originally posted on June 13, 2009

The drive between Israel's two most prominent cities takes less than an hour. It is impossible to conceptualize an Israeli suburb, simply because once you've effectively left the urban place, you've almost immediately entered another.