Palestine
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Volunteering Because You Can
As a child, I could tell you a lot about fjords and olive trees, even though I had never seen either one. This is because I grew up around a lot of Norwegians and Palestinians. The Norwegians were my neighbors and classmates in Minnesota, the Palestinians our family friends, part of the handful of Arabs Continue reading
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Tor’s Palestinian Photographs: 1967 and 1977
Today my friend and photographer Tor Eigland sent me two of his photographs as his way of remembering 63 years of the Palestinian Naqba (Catastrophe). Tor is Norwegian and he’s covered events around the world since the 1960s, but his most amazing stuff is of the Middle East (aside from his photo of Castro on Continue reading
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What Arabs Talk About At Dinner
On a recent work trip to Kuwait, my American colleague started chuckling while he listened to my Syrian cousin and me arguing about the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Is this what sitting down to dinner with family sounds like in the Middle East?” he asked. Yep. Pretty much always unless there is a divorce Continue reading
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Outlandish Landless LandMine by Sami Zarour
Most of what I post on this blog are about the upside of life in the Middle East because most people living outside the borders of the Middle East, whether physically or mentally, are unaware that there is an upside. Plus I don’t really know how to write about the tragedies of the region without Continue reading
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A Palestinian Filmmaker in Israel
For years, my friend Hala Gabriel has been working on documentary about the destruction in 1948 of Tantura, her family’s picturesque village in what was then Palestine. For a Palestinian to even attempt such a project as hers is to face unfathomable odds, which she has. Finally, she was able to get to Tantura in Continue reading
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Busted on Possession of Zaatar
I just watched a news story from Australia in which a Lebanese Australian called the confiscation of his mother-in-law’s zaatar by Sydney airport customs officials “a tragedy” and “a disaster” and when he still couldn’t convince the officials to release the vacuum packed zaatar, he told them he wanted to speak to a member of Continue reading
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NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
I’m opposed to making lofty new year’s resolutions–aside from the token and easily forgettable “I’ll try to eat less chocolate”—as they sometime trivializes a dream. But I’m happy to make resolutions for others, kind of like the UN. Here are my new year’s resolutions for the Middle East, and I know they’re laced with loftiness Continue reading
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Alternative Tourism in Jordan
A couple of my friends from Abu Dhabi, all Americans, went to Jordan this week, and because I am in Jordan so often, they wanted my opinion of what to do—especially with their first two days in Amman. My best advice for tourists stuck in Amman is to leave, as it is the only part Continue reading
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Christmas Gifts from the Holyland
For those of us have seen Palestine, there is an irony to Christmas, this celebration of the Prince of Peace born in a land that defies that very word ‘peace” with words combinations like land confiscation, separation wall, medical deprivation, malnutrition, phosphorous bombs, home demolitions. (I could also mention the poverty, crime and drug abuse Continue reading
Alia Yunis 