The following is not by way of apology, I just want to set the record straight. Diaries offer a view from somewhere - a perspective that is usually skewed, partial and incomplete. They are subjective reflections on a particularly situated experience. So let me begin from the beginning:

I moved to Palestine early in September 2000. Two weeks later, the Intifada broke out. I had come to Palestine after finishing my PhD in the U.S. and working as a corporate lawyer in London. I had gone there with some vague urge “to be useful” - and if I thought being useful in Palestine meant saying farewell to middle-class life, I was soon proven wrong. For over a year I was teaching at Birzeit University and working as a legal adviser with the PLO Negotiations Support Unit. My interactions were mostly with middle-class Palestinians, sometimes the post-Oslo elite, often foreigners, seldom with the poor living in refugee camps. I lived in Al-Tireh, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Ramallah. I had access to a car with yellow license-plates. Yellow was a very important color there. It meant I could drive my car anywhere I wanted, to Jerusalem and beyond - unlike most Palestinians, who had green license plates and, hence, could not drive outside the cantons created by the Oslo Accords. I had a foreign passport, which meant I could leave the Occupied Territories whenever I wanted to through Tel Aviv airport – again, unlike most Palestinians, who could not use the airport without first applying for a security permit.