They had bombed and burned,killed and maimed,plundered and looted.Now they had come to claim the land.

The roots of our grief coil so deeply into loss that death has cometo live with us like a family member who makes you happy by avoidingyou, but who is still one of the family. Our anger is a rage that Westerners cannot understand. Our sadness can make the stonesweep. And the way we love is no exception

I watch life trickle from the bullet wound of a sixteen-year-old "example" and marvel how things weak, even words, will turn vicious and merciless to gain power,despite reason or history

I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.

A persistent breeze lifted the thin curtains, fluttering a few moments of tranquility into the turbulent day.

Love cannot reconcile with deception

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation.