News stories by Jillian Kestler-D’Amours

Moses Gadia speaks quietly, a detailed and colourful map of South Sudan on the wall next to him. In the courtyard outside, a group of six men, all South Sudanese refugees, chat in the shade of plastic tarps.

A group of Palestinian Jerusalemites steps down from a crowded bus to let two Israeli soldiers climb aboard to check identity cards, below the aluminum roof of this newly operational checkpoint terminal.

With more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners weeks into an open-ended hunger strike in protest against worsening conditions in Israeli jails, including two that have gone without food for 72 days, human rights groups say many lives are in danger and are calling for urgent intervention.

'It’s tiring,' says 15-year-old Ibrahim*, deep lines running across his forehead. 'But there is no alternative.' Only a teenager, Ibrahim has been working full-time for three years already.

The Palestinian Authority’s arrest of journalists and activists critical of its policies are threatening freedom of expression and journalistic freedoms in the West Bank, according to local human rights groups.

As 60 percent of the international activists set to land at Ben Gurion airport Sunday had their plane tickets cancelled, organisers of the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ fly-in campaign condemned what they say is European complicity in Israel’s illegal restrictions on their right to travel freely.

Actors, musicians, activists and friends gathered in various locations throughout Israel and the West Bank this week to commemorate the life of actor and theatre director Juliano Mer-Khamis.

A handful of makeshift homes built from small boulders and plastic tarps and secured with thick ropes sit in the isolated community of She’b El- Buttum in the South Hebron Hills. A few metres away, several rows of solar panels and two wind turbines are affixed to the rocky hilltop, providing electricity to the village’s 150 residents.

As 29-year-old Palestinian prisoner Hana Shalabi enters day 43 of her open- ended hunger strike Thursday from a hospital bed in northern Israel, over two dozen other Palestinian prisoners have now followed suit, refusing food as a way to protest their arrest, detention and treatment in Israeli prisons.

Hamza has memories no 17-year-old should. 'I was desperate. I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't want to go outside the house. I was very nervous. I'd be irritated with the simplest matters.'