Photos of life in Ramallah lately

Sheep graze outside my bedroom window in the middle of Ramallah

The late afternoon view from my house in Ramallah

The wood-burning oven at Angelo's in Ramallah, which opened in 1988 and has the best lasagna and pizza in town

My new little family of desert plants for my home, which I and my aunt and uncle made from cuttings of their plants

The sunset over the West Bank hills from my grandparents' house in Ramallah

A lemon tree hangs over the stone wall inside the Old City of Jerusalem

Biggest Muslim holiday, Eid al Adha, comes to Ramallah

For a look at Eid in Ramallah in photos and video, see my Flickr feed here.

With as much or more fanfare as Christmas in the US, Eid al Adha has been in the air in Ramallah for the past week. Islam’s biggest holiday, Eid al Adha, or feast of the sacrifice, commemorates the Biblical and Quranic story of Abraham taking his son to the mountain to sacrifice him as a test from God, before God replaces his son with a sheep at the last moment.

The week before the Eid is the time Muslim pilgrims make the Hajj to Mecca in Saudi Arabia as the Prophet Mohammad did at the dawn of the religion — one of the five pillars of Islam. Today is Eid, marking the end of the Hajj pilgrimage and a holy day off for the whole Muslim world. The other Muslim holy day, (Eid al Fitr, or breaking fast) comes at the end of the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset.

It’s a festive time of wonderful traditions. All week, Ramallah has been bustling, packed with shoppers from the surrounding villages. The streets around the Manara circle (the town square, basically) have been blocked off to cars and instead filled with street vendors peddling everything from fruit to socks to incense (and lots and lots of colorful helium balloons for the kiddies) and families toting bags from the hundreds of boutiques that make up the West Bank’s commercial center.

At times like these, there is no doubt that Ramallah is indeed the financial and cultural capital of Palestine. It also presents a beautiful image of Palestinians, who are too often maligned in photos and videos only depicting them as masked gunmen or Muslim extremists. Here, in Ramallah on Eid, is a far truer picture of Palestinians: a spirited, social and hospitable nation who cherish the threads of shared traditions and cultures of their land.

Muslim, Christian, Palestinian or visitor — everyone feels and shares in the traditions of Eid here to some extent. Keep reading for a description of Eid day.

Israeli troops drag away 200 illegal settlers in Hebron; Settlers attack Palestinians

New York Times
December 5, 2008
Israeli Troops Drag Jewish Settlers From Hebron Building
By ETHAN BRONNER

HEBRON, West Bank — Israeli troops forcibly evicted about 200 hard-line Jewish settlers from a contested building in this volatile biblical city on Thursday, the first serious clash in what seems to be a spiraling confrontation between the government and defiant settlers.

The operation, carried out by 600 soldiers and policemen with stealth and efficiency, took half an hour with just two dozen relatively light injuries. But events did not end there. Young settlers then rampaged through Palestinian fields and neighborhoods, setting olive trees ablaze and trashing houses.

(article continues with link below video)

Obama’s Day in Palestine

Palestinians in the West Bank woke up Wednesday morning to a glorious sunny 75 degree day and the news of a new American leadership — as President Elect Barack Obama put it, a new dawn — not just for the US but for the world. THe earliest news reports and my own conversations with people in Ramallah indicate an obvious satisfaction at the very least with America’s choice for preseident, if not the same celebratory and hopeful mood we saw on TV in Washington, New York, Kenya and around the world.

Digging deeper, there exists for the Arab world reasons to be skeptical toward the idea of radical change in the Middle East. But optimism is the prevailing sentiment with the election of America’s first African-American president. During my day in Petra, Jordan last Sunday, I spoke with the young men who sell colorful Petra sand designs in bottles to tourists from all over the world. Cultured and knowledgeable, they had much to say about the US elections and it echoed messages from other non-Western countries.