After hiding away in Minnesota for three months, I resurfaced on newsies.com, an excellent website run by Tom Mangan, whose premise is that journalists have interesting websites and has made it his business to offer...links to journalists with interesting websites. The "Seven questions" project which appears as part of his site, is an interview forum with the creators of these websites. All in all, this is a highly recommended website with some excellent writing and commentary on the state of the profession.

Intro: Nigel Parry is a freelance journalist and photographer who spent a goodly chunk of his life observing life in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Things took a strange turn this summer so now he's living in the U.S., but his West Bank Diary is still posted.
1	Tell us about a disturbing and/or curious example of the intrusion of U.S. culture into the West Bank.
	Although it's not completely unknown to see TV footage of Palestinians burning American flags, Palestinians in general are far more tolerant of the U.S. than you would expect from the Arab/Islamic world. This is partly because so many of them have relatives, refugees from 1948 and 1967, who are living in the U.S. Despite the fact that successive U.S. governments have fallen over themselves to support the Israeli government with massive, uncritical, economic and military aid, Palestinians constantly surprise me with their hungering after Americana. In the main Arabic daily newspaper published in Palestine, Al-Quds, you see adverts for American cigarettes which say nothing more than "The American cigarette" which is strangely enough to sell the things. The most curious example of U.S. culture intruding into the West Bank was perhaps the arrival of the first burger chain restaurant in the center of Ramallah. It was a Checkers Drive-in, the name a necessary part of the franchise package. What took this extremely popular addition to Ramallan cuisine to new heights of surrealism was the fact that the drive-in is on the second floor of a mall.
2	One hears stories of Palestinian freedom fighters tiring of the struggle and going off to America or other foreign shores because it's the only way they can find any work. Is there much truth to that?
	Many Palestinians dream of going to live and work in America and Europe for all the reasons above. What is frightening to see at the moment is the loss of hope among young people. After living and dying through the Intifada for lofty ideals such as freedom and democracy, they have been rewarded with a corrupt, undemocratic regime that has nothing better than rhetoric to offer in the face of continuing Israeli repression. When you consider that 629 Palestinian homes were demolished between the signing of the Oslo accords in September 1993 and March 1998, it's hard to think of things as having gotten better. What has happened as a result of this lack of change -- or in many cases negative change -- on the ground is that the word "peace" has been tainted for a whole generation of young Palestinians. "Where there is no vision", as the Jewish Bible says, "the people perish." This is the situation today and one that gives me no comfort that things will improve.
3	What was the most unforgettable sight you saw during the Intifada?
	Real horror. Turning a corner onto a deserted street in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza during a curfew, and seeing an Israeli soldier lift up his gun to shoot an 8-year-old child 20-yards along the road, who had just thrown a stone that trickled pitifully along the ground. I was in a U.N. bus, and as the soldier caught sight of us, he quickly and guiltily took his rifle off his shoulder. That moment has never left me. In that situation, it was like being taken out of your body to some context-less plane where Israelis and Palestinians didn't exist, and all that was left was a 35-year-old man about to shoot an 8-year-old child. No reason on earth could ever justify the severity of that situation. And when you leave that world where things like that happen, and travel over here to somewhere like Minneapolis where I'm staying now, and it's as if that world doesn't exist at all, based on what you see (or don't see) in the media. Forget "Nightmare on Elm Street," that is real horror.
4	What do people do for fun in Ramallah?
	Burn tires, throw stones at settlers' cars, that kind of thing. Actually, this is being gradually faded out since the Palestinian Authority took over the town in December 1995, and for the first time real restaurants, cinemas, cafes and bars began to flourish. These days you can get a good Chinese, Mexican or Italian meal, together with an excellent locally brewed Palestinian beer. There's a growing arts scene and, since I left in June 1998, four new Internet cafes in the Ramallah area have taken the total to five. Shouting at the Israeli/Jordanian/Palestinian news readers on the TV is also great fun, as is dreaming of what you would buy if you could miraculously transported to a mall somewhere in Europe or North America for a half-hour.
5	Describe something you've seen recently -- on a road, in a marketplace, etc. -- that seems to sum up the realities of life on the West Bank.
	Palestinians, including members of the security forces, bulldozed my home on May 25. No one was punished. It was privately contracted by a landlady who stood to become a millionaire as a result. There were no legal proceedings. The post-Oslo West Bank is a jungle, where the gun is the law and money is the religion. hence, I'm on an extended vacation in the U.S.
6	Name one easy thing the Israelis could do, and one thing the Palestinians could do, to reduce tensions in the conflict.
	Drugs. Actually the biggest creator of daily tension is the lack of freedom of movement for Palestinians. I can't go for a beer in a Jerusalem bar -- just 20 minutes down the road -- and take along Palestinian friends from Ramallah, unless they apply for a permit they won't get. If we risk it and get caught, it's a potential 6-months in prison and a 10,000 shekel fine ($3,000). Oh sorry, isn't this restriction to protect Israel's security, you ask? Not really, the right question to answer is how many of the suicide bombers applied for permits? Um. Um. Zero.
7	Share an example of Arab humor one would hear in Palestinian circles but probably wouldn't hear anywhere else.
	The lawyer at Birzeit University who deals with the staff and students detained by Israel for political activity is my favourite example of classic Palestinian humour. "How is so-and-so," you'll ask him, of someone currently going through interrogation. "Fine," he'll reply with a smile. Which means that the Israelis are torturing the crap out of him but its a pretty safe assumption in his particular case that they probably won't kill him. This is what Canadian writer Margaret Atwood calls "survival laughter." In Palestine, it rings out from the church towers and minarets.