With the electricity crisis far from being over, Gaza resident Ghada Al-Haddad recalls that the dire situation in the Strip is not a temporary exigency, but rather a culmination of a persistent reality that has developed over a decade of closure. By Ghada Al-Haddad To children born after 2006 in the Gaza Strip, stories about the days when electricity was available all day long sound like fairytales, fantasies that can scarcely be believed. Born into a reality structured by an unreliable power distribution schedule, the inconsistent supply of electricity for domestic use has often been insufficient for children to watch…

The rail line, which is almost unimaginable today considering the blockade and permit regime, ran for just under a year — until the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It’s been nearly 45 years since you could hop on a train in Gaza City and ride all the way to Tel Aviv, a situation that is almost unimaginable considering the blockade and severe restrictions on movement enforced by Israel today. The rail line, which ran for just under a year, was operated mostly for Palestinian laborers coming to work in the central Israeli city. The following photos, from the…

A seventh Palestinian succumbs to his wounds following Friday's deadly clashes on the Gaza border. Further shootings and attacks into Saturday morning show few signs that the surge in violence is abating. A total of seven Palestinians have now been killed as a result of IDF fire at protests along the Gaza Strip's border fence, which took place Friday afternoon. The confrontations killed six and wounded over 130 at the scene, several of whom were in serious condition. One of those, 22-year-old Jihad Salim al-Ubeid, succumbed to his wounds overnight. [tmwinpost] Widespread demonstrations had been expected following Hamas’ call for a “day of…

Wafaa takes me back to the pile of rubble, but this time, not to show me the destruction. She points to a small shrub at the rubble’s edge, battered, but clearly alive. ‘Ibrahim’s tree,’ she says of the living reminder of her son. By Jen Marlowe Wafaa Awajah’s family had scarcely taken their seats in a circle of plastic chairs when her brother hitched up his pants to show me the scars on his leg from where he had been injured by an Israeli soldier. Another brother had also sustained injuries from the army; he, too, showed me his wounds. As…

Israeli army prosecutor decides not to open a criminal probe into a widely reported-on air strike against four children playing on a Gaza City beach during last year's war. The MAG says it will, however, investigate the shelling of a medical clinic 'in honor' a fallen soldier. The Israeli military will not seek any indictments over the killing of four Palestinian children on the beach in Gaza last summer, the Military Advocate General announced on Thursday. The four children were killed in a July 16 airstrike that targeted them while they played on a Gaza beach adjacent to where a sizable…

The human rights film festival sends a message that Gaza is not just a strip of flattened homes, poverty and militants, as the media tends to portray it, says one of the organizers. ‘The people of Gaza are human beings, who love life, who seek peace, and who want to go to the movies, to live normal lives.’ By Avi Blecherman While Israeli entertainment reporters have been busy covering the DocAviv documentary film festival in Tel Aviv in recent days, but nearby, another rather exceptional film festival came to a close Thursday evening in the Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City…

36,000 artillery shells, tank shells, mortars, anti-tank missiles and munitions, alongside an ubiquitous use of armored bulldozers, razed streets and districts to the ground during last summer's Gaza war. According to a newly published Breaking the Silence report, this is exactly what the Israeli army wanted. In On Photography, the essayist Susan Sontag reflects on how our reliance on the photographic image has inverted our concept of reality. So accustomed have we become to recorded images showing us things we otherwise would not witness, that what cameras show us defines the boundaries of our reality. Therefore, Sontag argues, if and…

Photos by Yotam Ronen, Anne Paq, Basel Yazouri, Oren Ziv, Faiz Abu Rmeleh, Ahmad al-Bazz, Keren Manor / Activestills.org From asylum seeker struggles to the assault on Gaza, women were on the front lines of some of the major struggles in Israel/Palestine. In honor of International Women’s Day, Activestills brings you the best photos of the women who pushed for justice between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. 

Editors' picks of the top photos from Palestine, Israel and beyond for the month of February. This month, Palestinians establish a new protest tent, ultra-Orthodox Jews protest military recruitment, Israeli factory workers protest job cuts, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl is released from prison after 44 days, Negev Bedouin mourn their lost ones, Bil'in marks 10 years of popular struggle, LGBTQ activists speak up against homophobia, and a second wave of snow blankets the holy city. Photos: Oren Ziv, Ahmad al-Bazz, Keren Manor, Yotam Ronen, Basel Yazouri, Keren Manor, Shiraz Grinbaum, Faiz al-Bazz, Ryan Rodrick Beiler / Activestills.org

Snow blankets Jerusalem and the hilly West Bank late Thursday and Friday, shutting down roads and highways, covering holy sites and the separation wall alike. In Gaza, heavy rain causes flooding in the war-torn Strip.   Related: The storm that only affects Jews PHOTOS: Denied services, Palestinian residents form emergency response team

Hard hit during the summer's war, civilian infrastructure is having a hard time coping with heavy rains. Photos and reporting: Basel Yazouri/Activestills.org The latest storm to hit the eastern Mediterranean region flooded large areas of Gaza City this week. The Al-Nafeq neighborhood, one of the lowest areas of Gaza City, suffered from severe flooding, exacerbated by the damage Gaza’s civilian infrastructure sustained during the war with Israel this past summer. Entire streets were flooded with as much as 1.5 meters of water. A number of people, primarily the elderly and children, were rescued from the hardest-hit areas by emergency responders.…

The answer has nothing to do with alleged militants. The third of three Gaza towers felled by Israeli F-16s housed, among other offices, a media consultancy representing several international news organizations. But when Al Basha Tower was hit early Tuesday morning, that consultancy had already been driven out by Israeli shelling, which had destroyed its eighth-floor office on July 30. "The first time we were hit, it was a random Israeli shell," said Saud Abu Ramadan, who has owned the office since 2007 and works as a stringer for American, Spanish, and Japanese news outlets. "But this time," the 50-year-old…

At least 34 Palestinians were killed Thursday when the Israeli air force bombed Gaza for a second day after a temporary ceasefire broke down and negotiators failed to reach a ceasefire agreement. While the fate of Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif remains unknown after Israel attempted to assassinate him, and consequently killed his wife and two young children, the Israeli military confirmed that it had killed three top Hamas commanders, Raed Attar, Mohammed Abu Shamaleh and Mohammed Barhoum, in Rafah. Attar and Abu Shamaleh are thought to both have been involved in the 2006 Gilad Shalit kidnapping. Israel's Shin Bet also believes that…