Gaza | Gaza
Jun.03.2010
Oil spill, human conflicts and tragedies abound, it is hard not to be affected bywhat's going on around us. I hope the world in its turning will find a better tomorrow.
About three weeks ago, I spoke to Karen, one of the owners of Mission Pie. She remindedme how we first met--at Clarion Music...
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May.23.2010
NABLUS, West Bank — During the Palestinian intifada, I sat on a dusty hilltop overlooking this most violent of West Bank towns with a dozen of the top Israeli officers in the area. The brigade commanders told their regional chiefs that all the police work and house-to-house fighting of the intifada...
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May.09.2010
Hamas is steadily rebuilding its power in the West Bank, stockpiling weapons and materiel underground, biding its time for a renewal of the conflict with its Fatah rivals.
Palestinian security officials have been telling me this for some time, and they are frankly filled with fear and foreboding....
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May.06.2010
A friend of mine was lunching with a Scandinavian author a while back. At one point, the writer joked: “But that’s enough of me talking about myself. What do YOU think of me?”
Unlike that charming Scandinavian, I don’t care what you think of me. Don’t be offended – I'm not interested in what I...
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May.05.2010
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — The good news is that the West Bank is normal — kind of — and that people are content — sort of. The bad news, the Palestine Liberation Organization thinks it’s responsible for the good news.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who’s also the Palestine Liberation...
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Apr.25.2010
A New York Times correspondent teams up with a Belfast professor to write the story of Islamism among the Palestinians.JERUSALEM — Stephen Farrell was sipping coffee with his money changer on Salah ud-Din, East Jerusalem’s main commercial street, four years ago, when Beverley Milton-Edwards entered...
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Apr.16.2010
If there’s one thing that authoring a series of novels will teach you, it’s that you can’t wait for inspiration. But you can prompt it, give it little electric shocks that’ll keep it bubbling within you. Here are a few methods I use to do that.
I go to the places I’m writing about. I talk to people...
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Apr.06.2010
JERUSALEM — There’s an old Arab aphorism: “A man with a plan takes action; a man with two plans gets confused.” Apply that to the Israelis and to the Palestinians, and the nonsensical sequence of recent events in the Middle East starts to fall into a comprehensible pattern.
It’s not a pleasant...
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Mar.11.2010
As I trundle around the Levant researching my Palestinian crime novels, I love to come upon a stinking squatting-toilet, its evacuation hole bubbling with dark, sinister turds and the air strong with the scent of barely digested, unhygienically prepared lamb kebab. I adore such a khazi on sight,...
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Feb.02.2010
Crime writer J. Sydney Jones has set up an interesting new blog called Scene of the Crime. He aims to interview authors about the impact on their writing of the location and also about the sense of place in their novels -- usually from far-flung countries. This week he features me on my Palestinian...
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