Ramallah

"His Own Worst Enemy" (editorial, Oct. 2) overlooks several important facts regarding the Israeli incursion into Ramallah. The purpose behind this mission was to arrest many known terrorist leaders that Yasser Arafat is harboring and who are behind the suicide bombings. That Ariel Sharon executed the mission clumsily by bulldozing buildings and not stating clearly what the goal was does not obfuscate the correctness of the mission. The suicide bombing hiatus that the Israelis enjoyed for six weeks only came about through many Israeli security intercepts of attempted suicide bombings and not due to any cessation on the part of the Palestinians.

Camped under a tent in what he hoped would become the Tahrir Square of the West Bank, hunger striker Iyas Sarhan reclined on a foam mattress in a pair of increasingly baggy slim-fit jeans and waited for the Palestinian revolution to begin. Sarhan, 25, and a few his friends had vowed since late March to stay put in a downtown Ramallah intersection until the end of the Israeli occupation and reunification of the top two Palestinian factions. But for most of their five-week protest, the youths were largely ignored by the bustling horde of pedestrians and shoppers, who treated them more like beggars.

The recent groundbreaking for a new Palestinian Authority presidential headquarters here in Ramallah underscored an unprecedented building and investment boom in the West Bank city. Land prices have tripled. International hotel chains are arriving. And master-planned housing projects are underway around town to accommodate a fast-rising population. But not everyone is thrilled with Ramallah's growth. Some worry the city is becoming the Palestinians' de facto capital, overshadowing East Jerusalem, which most Palestinians hope to one day make the center of a new Palestinian state.

No one seems to know what to make of him. Israelis puzzle over the cleanshaven technocrat who denounces violence. Palestinians see an outsider who never cut his teeth on the tear-gas-choked streets of intifadas. Now, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad hopes to confound expectations even further, pursuing what some see as a quixotic goal of laying the groundwork for an independent country by August. No matter that peace talks are stalled. If Palestinians build the trappings of a state, he believes, a real state will follow.

Lubna Ramadeen felt the labor pains coming on, and she knew she couldn't reach the hospital. Israeli tanks ruled the roads, and venturing out in the middle of the night could prove fatal. But military siege and necessity breed ingenuity. She telephoned her obstetrician, and by long-distance he guided the birth of Rania, a wrinkly red-faced baby girl who on Friday came into a world seized by war.

Israel dismantled a military checkpoint that had impeded Palestinian travel in the West Bank in an apparent goodwill gesture a day before President Obama's address to the Muslim and Arab world. But Palestinians said the removal of a major obstacle on the road from Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority government, to the northern West Bank didn't address the broader need to ease the movement of people and goods in the Palestinian territories. Israel maintains hundreds of roadblocks throughout the West Bank, saying they are needed to prevent the movement of militants.

Violence flared again in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as Palestinians protested the killing of a mother of five by Israeli police. But authorities said that there were fewer protests compared to previous days and that the only casualty was an Israeli motorist injured by stones while driving through the West Bank town of Ramallah.

I grew up in Woodland Hills, Calif., and am spending two years in a high school teaching position in Ramallah on the West Bank. Recently, I watched from a rooftop in Ramallah as a Palestinian demonstrator was arrested. He was walking peacefully with his captor when a second soldier approached and beat him with a baton. The young man cried, "I am not trying to run away! I am walking with you!" but still, the soldier beat him. I visited a man in the hospital who was shot while walking to work and subsequently beaten for three hours.

Palestinian officials said Sunday that a man who had sold land to Israelis was found shot dead, but they denied their forces were responsible. Harbi abu Sarah was the second land dealer found dead in the West Bank since Palestinian Justice Minister Freih abu Medeen was quoted in a published report as saying that Palestinians who sold land to Jews faced execution.

Sometimes a wedding is more like a funeral for a young woman's hopes and dreams. Director Sherine Salama's documentary, "A Wedding in Ramallah," airing tonight at 10 on KCET as part of the station's "Independent Lens" series, offers viewers an intimate look at Palestinian married life, a grim vision that will be difficult for the average American woman to stomach.

The recent groundbreaking for a new Palestinian Authority presidential headquarters here in Ramallah underscored an unprecedented building and investment boom in the West Bank city. Land prices have tripled. International hotel chains are arriving. And master-planned housing projects are underway around town to accommodate a fast-rising population. But not everyone is thrilled with Ramallah's growth. Some worry the city is becoming the Palestinians' de facto capital, overshadowing East Jerusalem, which most Palestinians hope to one day make the center of a new Palestinian state.

Rabbi Kenneth Chasen is the latest to offer a glowing report of the Palestinian-state-in-the-making supposedly being built by Salam Fayyad, a political unknown until he was boosted from obscurity by the George W. Bush administration and installed as the unelected "prime minister" of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. But the booming businesses and sleek glass towers Chasen raves about in Ramallah are part of a mirage, a narrative in which a docile Palestinian leadership "reforms" Palestine from within, making little or no noise about the ongoing depredations of Israeli occupation.

The short drive from Jerusalem to Ramallah begins as you'd expect. The pristine setting of the old-new holy city slowly morphs into a more disordered vista on the outskirts of town — small Arab villages, humbly built of stone, displaying signs of economic decay. The streets are nearly empty. Startlingly soon, the Israeli military checkpoint appears at a break in the expanse of the cement separation barrier. Immediately upon crossing, the most frequently photographed stretch of the barrier comes into sight, a lengthy and colorful mural that includes massive painted images of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a young man and of Marwan Barghouti, who's in an Israeli prison for his role in the second intifada.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for presidential and parliamentary elections on Jan. 24, in a bid to regain dominance of the divided Palestinian movement. The move could sideline his Islamist rivals in the Hamas movement, who control the Gaza Strip, or build pressure on them to sign a pact with Abbas' Fatah movement. A senior Palestinian official in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said Abbas, 74, called for the ballot after the rival factions failed to reach a unity deal in Egyptian-mediated talks.

Declaring that an independent Palestinian state was "long overdue," Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that the success of the U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations depends on the Palestinian ability to rein in militant groups that favor armed resistance over negotiations. "Terror and rockets do not merely kill civilians, they also kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people," Cheney said after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israeli troops staged a rare incursion into this city Thursday, bulldozing cars and vegetable stands near the central square as they engaged gunmen and stone-throwing residents in a chaotic two-hour battle that left four Palestinians dead.

Rabbi Kenneth Chasen is the latest to offer a glowing report of the Palestinian-state-in-the-making supposedly being built by Salam Fayyad, a political unknown until he was boosted from obscurity by the George W. Bush administration and installed as the unelected "prime minister" of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. But the booming businesses and sleek glass towers Chasen raves about in Ramallah are part of a mirage, a narrative in which a docile Palestinian leadership "reforms" Palestine from within, making little or no noise about the ongoing depredations of Israeli occupation.

Clashes between rival Palestinian factions spread to the West Bank on Monday as armed followers of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement ransacked and set fire to the offices of the Hamas-led government and briefly abducted a Hamas lawmaker. Amid fears the violence might escalate, Abbas commanded security forces to restore order after the series of clashes, which began in the Gaza Strip earlier in the day and then moved to the West Bank.