You are on the "What's New" page of "A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict". This site is maintained by Nigel Parry. The diary is arranged by chronological entries, sections or feel free to search the entries from the homepage. Newest What's New? entries are found towards the top of this page.

Although the on the ground part of the diary is frozen in time, I still write about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict elsewhere. To receive e-mailings with notice of these commentaries and articles, join the news list.

• 2001-2002 - Writing I am doing on the conflict can be found on the homepage of nigelparry.com and on electronicIntifada.net.
  
  
  
• 6 February 2001 - My debut CD, This Side Of Paradise - Through a glass darkly: Bootleg tracks from the coffee bars of St. Paul, MN, 1999, was released on MP3.com. The album contains four songs from the Palestinian West Bank -- Forget, Elapse, Land Of The Shadow, and This Side Of Paradise, and is priced at $9.99. For more info, or to listen to or buy the album visit www.thissideofparadise.org.
  
  
  
• 30 January 2001 - On 21 January 2001, a final verdict from an 1996 incident in which a settler, Nahum Korman, murdered a Palestinian child, Hilmi Shoushi, was announced. Read the orginal story, some of my commentary from the time and the conclusion.
  
  
• 21 November 2000 - "A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," formerly found on both nigelparry.com and birzeit.edu is now available *only* on the nigelparry.com server at http://nigelparry.com/diary/ The 180,000-word document records key events during the four years I lived in the Palestinian West Bank in images and text. All broken links within the Diary have been fixed. Some of the links to external sites have broken since they were included in articles, and the next spring-cleaning will deal with that, updating the links where new sites exist, or removing them if not. A new, more advanced search facility on the homepage now allows you to do full text searches of the entire Diary, and also allows you to limit your searches within various sections of the Diary, eg. Palestinian Authority Diary.
  
  In other news, the Al-Dura flash intro at the front of nigelparry.com, at http://nigelparry.com/aldura.html (permanent archive location), has been updated with more recent statistics.
  
  
  
• 31 October 2000 - "CNN: Richard Blystone's report, 'Poisoned Playground'" added to the media diary.
  
  
• 28 October 2000 - CNN: An excellent Hebron report | Investigating the clashes added to the media diary.
  
  
• 22 October 2000 - CNN as a byword added to the media diary. See also the new Flash intro to nigelparry.com. You will need the Macromedia Flash plug-in and sound.
  
  
• 4 October 2000 - CNN, "rubber bullets" and the current clashes added to the media diary. See also the website by Palestinian human rights organisation Addameer, the September 2000 Clashes Information Center, that is tracking the current clashes.
  
  
  
  
  
• July 2000 - London, UK. Working as a commercial Web designer and Internet consultant. Additional work on several personal music-related projects. Currently approaching literary agents with proposal for a book based on this diary.
  
  
• July 1999 - Still based in the USA, working for Middle East International magazine, designing its new website and writing a "Middle East and the Internet" column, and other articles.
  
  
• 8 May 1999 - A commentary on the Birzeit University Student Council elections that were held on 24 March 1999 was added today, the fifth year I've covered them in "Birzeit Diary". This year's report was written from the US, an easy task thanks to the most comprehensive Birzeit elections website ever. Read "Birzeit Elections 1999: A growing sense of alienation".
  
  
• 12 March 1999 - Some good news about the CNN Interactive website in the new "Media Diary" section of this website.
  
  
• 24 February 1999 - At a recent conference on Palestine held last week at the University of Chicago, I announced a new project to expand "A Personal Diary" to all the towns of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Later note: By the end of 1999, I decided against pursuing this project.
  
  
• 6 December 1998 - Some blasts from the past added to fill in the gaps:
  • In June 1997, I wrote to collect my thoughts on our experience of "Creating the /war/ website" during the 1996 September clashes and on the realities of "the globalisation of the Internet".
  • I also added two related articles that originally appeared in Middle East International magazine a year apart: "Letter from Ramallah #1" from 21 July 1995 and "Letter from Ramallah #2" from 10 May 1996. The first letter is interesting as a piece of history as the current protests in the West Bank also focus on the continued Israeli detention of Palestinian prisoners. Both letters are twins in that they capture the sense of two periods of my time in Ramallah, Israeli occupation and Palestinian autonomy.
  • "Israel's beaurocratic message of hatred" from 9 June 1995, a Middle East International magazine feature article, deals with administrative detention and the pervasive Israeli permit system in the context of a 'peace' process.
  • Please feel free to use the Personal Diary discussion board to comment on these and other entries.
  
  
  
• 30 November 1998 - A transcript and real audio clip was added of a 16 October 1998 interview on Dan Bustany's "Middle East in Focus" programme on KPFK Pacifica in California. An earlier interview, from 31 August 1998, on Tom Mangan's "Newsies" website is also available. I am still trying to track down the transcript and/or audio tape from yesterday's interview on Blue Danube Radio in Austria. More news when there is.
  
  
• 17 November 1998 - Today's Personal Diary e-mail list announcement was archived here. If you want to know what plans I have for the diary in the future, you'll find the answer in this mailing. To be added to or removed from the list, write to Nigel Parry via the contact page.
  
  
• 16 November 1998 - LONG AWAITED REDESIGN & REDIT OF DIARY COMPLETE!
  
  NEW CONTENT FEATURES INCLUDE:
  
  • The most radical addition is perhaps a new Discussion board. Please read the FAQ first if you're new to the Diary, then feel free to post your comments about any diary entry, the Diary project as a whole, or your questions about issues that perhaps don't appear in the Diary. Please make the subject box of your post as clear as possible. Please do not use anonymity as a cover for verbal abuse, and please do not post entire news reports or advertisements to this section. Posts in violation of the last sentence will be deleted.
  • All entries have been edited for clarity and grammar. If you have unanswered questions after reading an entry let me know. If the information exists in another part of the diary, I can add a link from that entry. If it doesn't the entry may be updated.
  • Around one-third of the text in Abu Ghnaim Diary is new, mostly to make the story flow better.
  • Ramallah, Closure and Palestinian Authority Diaries also had significant updates.
  • 'On the ground in Ramallah' Diary was added. This is a re-edited version of my original photodiary from the original "On the ground in Ramallah: reports from a town become battlefield" section of the Birzeit website. Includes 400 percent more text.
  • New section introductions have been written to make the point of the themed sections clearer to those not familliar with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
  • New introductions to each entry have been added in the diary entries index. Cross-referencing between the sections has also been implimented.
  • Several entries have been added, together with photographs, that previously only appeared outside the diary. This was done as they formed key parts of the development of events, and because I have had problems with some of these external entries disappearing as websites shut down.
  • A new section, Birzeit Diary, was added, covering Birzeit University student issues from 1995 to present.
  • The Links page has been updated with more photojournalism links.
  
  
  NEW DESIGN FEATURES INCLUDE:
  
  • New US Mirror website! - for faster access to the 60+ percent of readers from Europe and North America. Instead of http://www.birzeit.edu/diary/ please use http://www.nigelparry.com/diary/ to take advantage of the T3 connection. This was also implemented in case there is a war in Palestine and the Israeli-controlled Internet connection is cut off.
  • Frames - to ease navigation to key pages and speed loading of the background.
  • Consistancy of visual style and navigation throughout the diary.
  • All images now have functioning ALT tabs (for those who are visually impaired and those with slow connections who prefer browsing with images switched off), and specified dimensions (to make them load faster).
  • All pages now have navigation Before, many of the older entries didn't.
  • Links to sites outside the diary now open in a new window, so you can keep reading without losing your place, while they load in the background.
  
  
  COMING:
  
  • Several completely new entries that were only published in newspapers and magazines outside the diary, together with photographs.
  • Links to external sites still need to be fully checked.
  • The introductions to entries on the entries index page will also become available in the section indexes.
  • Diary to be uploaded to its Birzeit website location soon. A few days after that the search engine will reindex it to allow entries to be searchable, and a search will be implemented on the diary's U.S. mirror website.
  
  
  
• 20 July 1998 - Still in the USA. Considering some diary entries about all that, and planning a long overdue redesign/re-edit of the diary.
  
  
• 7 June 1998 or so - Left Palestine for an extended break in the USA.
  
  
• 1 June 1998 - "How it ended" was added to the home demolition section of the diary. "For the record" has also been extensively updated with further relevant material.
  
  
• 29 May 1998 - "For the Record" added to the new home demolition section, offering clarifications to some of the things that have been published about the situation and have circulated around the Internet.
  
  
• 28 May 1998 - My house was demolished. A new section of the diary will tell you the story. So far, the event has left me too busy to write about it.
  
  
• 23 May 1998 - Birzeit elections: no small change in the status quo has been put belatedly online. Although the elections took place on 1 April, it is listed as a 3 May entry because that's when it was written, and will therefore appear lower down on the Diary Entries page. Some good 'related links' are offered. If you're wondering where the photo captions are, hold your mouse over the photographs. In newer versions of the Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, a little bubble of explanation should arise. If not, it's time to upgrade. If you want to know of diary entries as they are posted - sometimes as the stuff in them is happening - add yourself to the as-necessary e-mail list here. Naturally, your e-mail address is safe with me.
  
  
• 20 May 1998 - Al-Nakba Commemorated in Ramallah, a four-part report from the 14th of May in the Ramallah Diary, with a little bit of insight about my thoughts during this last month added in, after being asked in a few e-mails. The text of the speeches by Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Darweesh will be added when I get a complete, clean copy. Got some good feedback on this one, which will be appearing in an edited format in "Palestinia" a Norweigen publication.
  
  
• 11 May 1998 - short but silent video clip and photos added to Newsflash: Ramallah security branches turn soccer scuffle into mini Lebanon mentioned below. A longer RealAudio sound/video clip to give you the flavour of the night, and the bizarre second part from the cafe observation point is now available here for downloading. Shift-Click in Netscape (354K, length 1 min. 24 sec.).
  
  
• 9 May 1998 - On the night of 7 April, one of the most severe developments happened in Ramallah between the Palestinian Authority and the people of the town, resulting in a limited 'civil war' round the corner from my house in the center of Ramallah. I posted stuff almost immediately and sent a completed entry notice out to the "New on the Personal Diary" list within a couple of hours of it happening. I was so tired it was not otherwise linked at the time. Join the e-mail list here to avoid disappointment. CNN were not there, and what's more, it wasn't reported the next day. I am certain that I am the only person who got video footage of it happening, to be posted later today. If you read the entry you'll understand why all of this is important. The revelation continues...
  
  
• 6 May 1998 - Just in, "Goodbye Nizar Qabbani". Updated with links and a photo 3:50pm local time. Forwarded around the Internet at an unusual rate, with an greater than usual level of feedback. I talk about this later, in the 20 May 1998 What's New? entry above.
  
  
• 25 April 1998 - Other photos, more text from the interviews with the Addassi family, and links to the articles mentioned in the entry have been added to Who killed Muhyideen Al-Shareef?
  
  
• 21 April 1998 - Who killed Muhyideen Al-Shareef? This four-part entry may not provide the answer, but I do feel it reaches a clear conclusion about who didn't do it.
  
  
• 20 April 1998 - New review from the Netsurfer Digest (see the homepage) or click here. Index page for Palestinian Authority Diary now online. Entries there are pretty imbalanced towards the negative, and should be taken in context with the more upbeat Hebron and Ramallah redeployment sections of the diary. To some extent the section divisions are artificial, as some entries should be in more than one and no one section is a complete record of life here. On the other hand, it is useful for those who aren't regular readers and just want a flavour of what's here. Some entries are coming soon. I am just in the middle of some technical problems and an unexpected period of busy-ness. Check back in a few days or even better, join the "New on the Personal Diary" mailing list here to save yourself the time. This list lets you know what is new immediately after it is put on.
  
  
• 14 March 1998 - The concluding parts IV and V of Clashes after three shot dead near Hebron have now been added. Go straight to part IV here.
  
  
• 12 March 1998 - Almost lost my head in some clashes in Ramallah yesterday. Read about it in Clashes after three shot dead near Hebron. More from this (so far) 3-part entry coming soon.
  
  
• 12 February 1998 - The Iraq entry (see 9 February below) had a few facts added to it and some music. I am trying to look for ways to make the diary more multimedia oriented and figured that music was one obvious lack. It is intended that this will expand into something called Diary Radio, one of those late night ideas that actually seemed good in the morning, but more about that later.
  
  
• 9 February 1998 - Iraq, Palestine, and chemical and biological war just on. Various thoughts about the build up and atmosphere here. The section it appears in "Palestinian Authority Diary", is not yet active if you're looking for the index page. Sooooon...
  
  The Links page is being updated these days by the way. Thanks for the 2-3 e-mails a day, people. They are by far the most thoughtful and considerate writings received from any part of the Birzeit website.
  
  
• 23 January 1998 - CPT: Dealing with threats on your life looks at the recent trials and tribulations of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron. Also made the background fit flusher to the left margin to avoid crowding of the text that was looking a little ugly.
  
  
• 2 January 1998 - Noam Friedman, a Joshua for the 90's. Reflections of what happened to the Jewish settler who shot and injured 8 Palestinians one year ago.
  
  
• 9 December 1997 - 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Intifada today, and Intifada Diary has been launched. Please see the Intifada Diary introduction for more information on this work to be in progress over the next year. Contact me if you want to be on the e-mail list to be informed of Diary updates and plans.
  
  
• 20 September 1997 - No diary entries at the moment due to a project I am helping with at Birzeit, to remember the martyrs of the September 1996 clashes. Hear the Real Audio interview with the project coordinator here or download the Real Audio file here (1.76MB). If you like the diary, you'll like this project, which aims to remind us that it was people, not statistics that passed away. Photos, life stories and how they died.
  
  
• 18 September 1997 - Default search option is now "AND" meaning that it works better. The diary format has been improved recently and I have begun adding material written outside the context of the diary in the chronological index, to fill up the seeming gaps. The Birzeit News item on closure is one such example. Enjoy.
  
  
• 19 August 1997 - The diary is now searchable, see the homepage. This is great news. If you want to find that particular entry and you forgot its location...it is within reach! If you want to find all mentions of Jerusalem, type it in. It's not perfect but it is better than a poke in the eye with a short stick, as mama used to say. I recently had an article published in the Israeli business magazine Link, about the Palestinian Securities Exchange in Nablus, which may be of interest to the business types amongst you. Photographs of the PSE are also available if needed.
  
  
• 10 August 1997 - Finally added two new entries to the Closure Diary about the current closure - Fear and loathing on the leaflet trail [2 parts] from 30 July - 6 August and The immediate situation beckons, from 7-9 August 1997. Meanwhile, today, the closure continues.
  
  
• 9 August 1997 - The long awaited structural adjustments to the diary have reached new stages. See the new index of themed diary sections to get a still-incomplete-but-at-least-on-the-way overview and see improvements to the former chronological index of individual diary entries. The former is obvious in what it adds. The second adds a complete list of all diary entries, including those formerly available only in the more recent Hebron Redeployment and Abu Ghnaim diary sections. Next to each dated entry is a link to the relevant diary section, a grouped list of entries - if they happened on the same day, and the number of parts a single entry consists of. In the coming days the various other themed sections will appear. I have written something about the current closure, but have chosen to spend available time on these indexes as navigation was really getting me down. The final stage - after the themed sections are complete, will be to add links on each page to all of the different indexes, and do a little tidying up here and there, involving the earlier scanning attempts and a few layout issues. All technical and a little tedious perhaps, but as you begin to use the new diary, I think you will appreciate the new format.
  
  Be sure to check out the reviews at the bottom of the homepage, by clicking on the logos of WW Norton & Company and the Jewish Communications Network.
  
  
• 21 July 1997 - After another Hebron visit after three weeks of clashes, on last Friday, offers a new 6-part entry in the Hebron Redeployment Diary. A little fixing will take place - a couple of link and photo additions - but basically it's all there. Observations include land confiscation, house demolitions, settler child violence (I was stoned by a 13-year-old) and the general mood.
  
  
• 2 July 1997 - God has spoken (see previous entry). The songs below are now available as Real Audio 3.0 files. The happy end to the wages story (see below) is that we got paid the second installment a few days later. Thanks for the kind e-mail from vestark, which unfortunately was lost in our recent week-long server crash before I had a chance to respond to it.
  
  
• 1 June 1997 - Since the last entry in "What's New?", I got into the idea of making a real personal homepage and completed the initial parts today. The main componant that is new and improved is a songs & music section with - so far - three songs, lyrics and downloadable *.wav files. God knows how to make them available in other formats, but until he tells me or sends one of you to, this is it. This Side of Paradise is a song about Palestine, so it's very relevant to the diary. [Editor's note from June 1999: There are now several songs about Palestine. Check the index at http://www.nigelparry.com/music/songs/] The good news is we also got about half of our wages since the last news! : )
  
  
• 29 May 1997 - The university couldn't pay its staff this month due to the current financial crisis, so I launched my own website design and consultancy homepage in an attempt to earn some bucks. The university will shortly be launching a major endowment appeal but, before then, I need to find a way to avoid borrowing money. Expect some new websites to appear in the list on the consultancy site. Life in Palestine definitely requires a sense of humour. : (
  
  
• 2 April 1997 - Finally updated the Abu Ghnaim Diary with reports of the clashes that took place between Birzeit students and Israeli troops. 5 pages of entries and over 65 photographs. There actually should be more entries from the period in-between my first visit to the mountain and the Birzeit clashes last Wednesday and Saturday, but time spent observing these things takes away from the time to scan and write. The text is actually finished, and these entries will hopefully go up soon. They will include a second visit to the mountain, and visits to Bethlehem and Hebron, all concerned with the clashes that swept across the West Bank in these last few weeks. Also, the new graphic on the bottom of the homepage, from the World of Culture website, is for sites that promote a better understanding of other cultures. Thanks. Check out their other links sometime.
  
  
• 15 March 1997 - The Abu Ghnaim Diary goes online. Check this out as well, a surprise and welcome review, especially if you were wondering what the Star of David graphic was doing on the homepage.
  
  
• 17 February 1997 - Added some statistics about PA detention of students from 1996. Mmm mmm mmm. I also added a links page. Finally. Sorry. I tried to offer an alternative format for this one. Links added at discretion of me.
  
  
• 17-18 January 1997 - New section: Hebron Redeployment Diary. After a couple of days in Hebron, this was the result. Photos, maps, commentary and links to all my favourite Hebron websites. Thanks to Albert Aghazarian, PR Director here, for giving me the chance to take a day off to see this last big redeployment before Jerusalem.
  
  When I finish the editing process of the existing text and images already on the diary (there are a few problems with the earlier images in particular), the overall redesigning process will proceed. Navigation will improve, as in the Hebron section above, fear not.
  
  I got some great mail over the holidays, thanks for that. I spent some of the holiday period working on a website for the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, if you want to see the stunning pictures of the new dome. As one e-mail said, "you know how to pick the fun projects". It was fun, although hard work. Good New Year news was the release of the last Birzeit students detained in the Muqata, in honour of the Hebron Redeployment, as if human rights should be linked to political developments.
  
  Net Magazine's December issue reviewed A Personal Diary saying something like, "entries such as those about licence plates are boring, while sections recounting torture of students by the Palestinian Authority are facscinating." I would like to take the opportunity to say that having apartheid licence plates is far from boring if you have a car with the wrong colour ones. Shame the Net Magazine people seem a little too "TV generation" to appreciate the significance of the licence plate issue. As we say in Palestine, "Laish fee teaazkum dood?", which I won't translate.
  
  
• 17 December 1996 - Updated the entry for December 14th with two more pages. The issue of redesigning the diary to allow for easy navigation is becoming necessary. Perhaps over the Christmas break. Quite a bit of e-mail is coming in at the moment. Thanks for your comments. It's only worth doing this if it is read! There were around 1,300 HTML document requests during November to the Personal Diary website. All links to it appreciated and I will be introducing a links section to reciprocate as soon as possible.
  
  
• 11-14 December 1996 - Ramallah closed after an attack on settlers. Four entries added pretty much as it happened. Includes story, analysis of media reporting and the first digital camera images on the Birzeit webserver.
  
  
• 28 September 1996 - I really haven't been able to believe what has taken place here in the last three days. It is a war. Check out the SPECIAL REPORT.
  
  
• 28 August 1996 - Three entries have been added to the diary, two retrospectively, although the information was either written then or etched by trauma onto my brain! They all deal with the security forces of the Palestinian Authority. The most recent was "Universities meet McCarthy, Palestinian-style", a rather disturbing development from last week. Others include some background to the Preventative Security Service and other organs of the PA, found in "There's a man with a gun over there..." from 1 March 1993 and the third is a short look at the Preventative Security Service Graduation Ceremony of 19 May 1996. As you can see the diary is shaping up slowly, with more recent and regular entries. The news about what is happening to our imprisoned students (remember the Palestinian students in Palestinian detention series?) can be both rejoiced and wept over when you see this Birzeit press release.
  
  

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• 17 July 1996 - WHAT'S NEW? Everything!
  • The layout - has been changed to offer a more "diary-like" feel, with the addition of a ring binding on the left of all pages. This background *.gif was downloaded from the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem's website and manipulated on Adobe Photoshop.
    
    
  • Link colours - have been changed to an easy to remember and easy to distinguish theme. Unvisited links are green (think "go" or "live"). Visited links are red/brown (think "stop" or "dead"). Active links (ones you are clicking on) are background coloured, so you get a visual clicking effect.
    
    
  • The structure - has been altered to show most recent entries at the top of the Diary Entries page rather than the bottom.
    
    
  • New diary entries - Two new threads with ten new entries allow you to read about Birzeit students in Palestinian detention and Birzeit students confront Arafat. Today's entry is Stamping out terrorism?
    
    
  • What's New? - this section has been added to keep you informed of recent diary entries, upcoming entries and changes to the website. Suggestions welcome.

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