INTRODUCTION:
Less than two months after the December 1995 Israeli redeployment from Ramallah, a previously rare manifestation of the Israeli occupation (first observed in Jericho and Jenin in 1994) took permanent root - the closure of routes between the Palestinian towns of the West Bank. Certainly, closure itself was not a new measure - Jerusalem has been inaccessible to Palestinians since March 1993 and the Gaza Strip sealed off even before that - and one can see the roots of closure policy in the Israeli practice of curfew, but never before had the Palestinian residents of the West Bank been subjected to such a severe restriction on their internal freedom of movement. To understand a bigger picture, it is always helpful to look at one part of it. Closure Diary* focuses on the experience of the Palestinian residents of Ramallah and the university community of Birzeit, offering reports of day-to-day life under closure, one of the biggest cited frustrations of post-Oslo life.

HOW OSLO PROVIDED A FRAMEWORK FOR CLOSURE POLICY:

• Why have the maps changed? from 5 January 1996.

KEY CLOSURES IN THE RAMALLAH AREA, 12 FEBRUARY 1996 - 9 AUGUST 1997:

• First Israeli closure of Ramallah [3 parts] from 12 February 1996.
• Locked in Ramallah for two weeks [3 parts] from 5-18 March 1996.
• 'On the ground in Ramallah' Diary [index to 18 entries] from 25 September-early October 1996.
  
  
• Ramallah closed again after an attack on settlers [4 entries]
  • Settlers killed in bypass road attack from 11 December 1996.
  • Closure hits again from 12 December 1996.
  • Learning nothing makes sense [2 parts] from 13 December 1996.
  • Making it to the university [2 parts] from 14 December 1996.
  
  
• Fear and loathing on the leaflet trail [2 parts] from 30 July - 6 August 1997.
• The immediate situation beckons from 7-9 August 1997.
• "Checkpoint in the Church Aisle" - a closure story from Birzeit University from 10 August 1997.
• Israeli closure of Ramallah for 'security reasons' clearly untrue from 8 September 1997.

* This section does not represent the total number of closures since the implementation of Oslo 2 in December 1995 for two reasons: (i) Maintained by an individual who was working full time, the diary could not be a complete record of all events, even in the local area, and (ii) sometimes the closure itself was not the main focus of the story, as in the 28 March 1996 entry, "One-tenth of our university is missing", which involved a half-day closure of the northern side of Ramallah in order that Israeli troops could conduct an arrest campaign in Birzeit.