Interview: Wendy Pearlman, author of 'Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada'

Suzanne (right) with her twin Jehan: "Nobody likes killing,
nobody likes blood. But we can't just stand back and
watch the soldiers and the settlers march in forever."

"It's almost a shame that this book has to be written, to [have to] try to say, 'Palestinians are decent human beings and are not all terrorists and hate mongers,'" Wendy Pearlman tells me over tea and hot cocoa during a cold, snowy winter day in Chicago. I know where Pearlman's coming from, the endemic frustration experienced by the Palestinian sympathizer who has to expend so much energy explaining to other Americans that Palestinians are indeed regular people who have cares and concerns just like anyone else -- except they have the extraordinary burdens of dispossession and living under foreign military rule. Pearlman, author of the book Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada, interviewed over two dozen Palestinian civilians residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to give readers a better sense of what life is really like for those living under Israeli military occupation, and the humanity that, as she explains it, "gets filtered out when the headlines are just about how many people have died." Photographic portraits by Finnish photographer Laura Junka accompany the individual stories of each interviewee.

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Int'l observer: IDF, settlers are 'cleansing' Hebron's H-2 area

"The activity of the settlers and the army in the H-2 area of Hebron is creating an irreversible situation. In a sense, cleansing is being carried out. In other words, if the situation continues for another few years, the result will be that no Palestinians will remain there. It is a miracle they have managed to remain there until now."

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The writing on the fence

The only solution with the power to put the parties on the long road to reconciliation was and remains an agreement that enjoys international legitimacy - meaning one based on UN Resolution 242 and the 1967 lines. The "little plan" of disengagement from Gaza, accompanied by the screams of the settlers, is meant to win America's heart so that it will stop complaining about the fence and allow Sharon to complete "the grand plan" of annexing territory in the West Bank. If, along with enabling this annexation, disengagement also frees the Israel Defense Forces of the burden of controlling 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip, that is merely a bonus for the government. After three years of a hope-destroying stalemate, the disengagement plan is so tempting that it has blinded the eyes of members of the Israeli "peace camp." Many have become too bleary-eyed to see the enormous political slogan inscribed on both sides of the fence. It says that there is no partner for an agreement, and that we have been sentenced to live with fences and swords for all eternity.

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