There's nothing that says "Welcome to Gaza" like the Erez border crossing.

On one side is Israel's high-tech border terminal, complete with its maze of gates, metal detectors, body scanners, and bomb rooms -- all navigated without ever coming close to Israeli guards who watch the whole process from a second-story bank of offices overlooking the screening section

On the other side of the terminal is a vast Palestinian wasteland.

This is the No Man's Land between Israel and Hamas-controlled Gaza.

And it is an all-too-perfect metaphor for the state of affairs in this isolated Mediterranean strip.

At one time, this vast field was a thriving, Turkish-run industrial zone with large factories producing goods for Israel and jobs for Palestinians.

The site became a target of Palestinian militant attacks and was shuttered by Israel in 2004.

Over the years, the Israeli military gradually razed all the abandoned buildings in this no man's land, leaving behind vast stretches of rubble.

All that remained was a rudimentary covered concrete tunnel that connected the Israeli border terminal to the Palestinian side of Gaza.

This is what it looked like in 2005 as you entered Gaza:

 
After Hamas militants seized control of Gaza in June, 2007, hundreds of Palestinians sought to escape into Israel as scavengers methodically dismantled the tunnel.

This is the same tunnel as it was being dismantled by the Palestinian scavengers.

Within weeks, most of the tunnel was gone.

For more than two years, this has been the state of the border crossing.

But now there is surprising new construction at Erez.

Palestinian workers are building a 700-yard covered concrete walkway leading from the remains of the old tunnel to the Palestinian border control caravan.

The project is being done with the blessing of Israeli officials who approved a rare supply of cement to build the walkway.

Work on the Palestinian side is being coordinated by Palestinian border officials who answer not to Hamas, but to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

Is this a sign of rebirth at Gaza?

Not really.

The construction comes as Israel is preparing to close its main fuel terminal with Gaza, which supplies the 1.4 million Palestinians with everything from cooking gas to fuel for Gaza's only power plant.

Israel plans to use another terminal at Kerem Shalom to transfer fuel. But humanitarian groups say the new terminal can't handle the necessary fuel for Gaza.

According to UN reports, Israel is still only allowing a trickle of goods. The UN reported that the number of truckloads allowed into Gaza by Israel hit a new low in September.

Last month, Israel allowed about 2,100 truckloads of goods into Gaza. Before Hamas took control of Gaza, Israel allowed more than 12,000 truckloads of goods to enter Gaza each month.

Recently, an Israeli government official was boasting that military surveillance showed that Gaza markets were full and teeming with goods. He pointed it out to suggest that Israeli restrictions were not harming Gaza.

Of course, he deftly neglected to mention that most of the goods found in Gaza markets these days don't come from Israel. They come through the dangerous network of illegal smuggling tunnels to Egypt...

Amira Hass is one of Israel's boldest journalists. A proud leftist reporter, Hass spent several years in the 1990s living in Gaza, an experience that led to her book "Drinking the Sea of Gaza". 

Last year, she was arrested by Israeli authorities after defying a government ban on entering Gaza by successfully challenging the Israeli blockade when she rode into Gaza City on an activist boat from Cyprus.

(Hass was reluctantly forced to return to Israel after being kicked out of Gaza by Hamas.) 

Earlier this year, Hass was arrested a second time by Israeli authorities after becoming the only Israeli reporter to freely enter Gaza after the winter offensive to report for weeks on the controversial military campaign.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour describes Hass as "one of the greatest truth-seekers of them all."

Earlier this month, Hass received a lifetime achievement award from the International Women's Media Foundation.

When she accepted the award, Hass called her work a "failure."

"It is the failure to make the Israeli and international public use and accept correct terms and words - which reflect the reality," Hass said in the speech. "Not the Orwellian New Speech that has flourished since 1993 and has been cleverly dictated and disseminated by those with invested interests."

"The Peace Process terminology, which took reign, blurs the perception of real processes that are going on: a special blend of military occupation, colonialism, apartheid, Palestinian limited self-rule in enclaves and a democracy for Jews," she said. "It is not my role as a journalist to make my fellow Israelis and Jews agree that these processes are immoral and dangerously unwise. It is my role, though, to exercise the right for freedom of the press, in order to supply information and to make people know."

"But, as I have painfully discovered, the right to know does not mean a duty to know," Hass told the crowd. "Thousands of my articles and zillion of words have evaporated. They could not compete with the official language that has been happily adopted by the mass media, and is used in order to dis-portray the reality. Official language that encourages people not to know. Indeed, a remarkable failure for a journalist."

Hass recently appeared on Al Jazeera English to discuss her career. Here's the video:

Part Two:

The questions they asked were suspiciously provocative.

"What would you do if you discovered that one of your family members was going out with an Arab?" the interviewers asked a lawmaker with Israel's ruling, conservative Likud Party.

Suspicious, the leader of Israel's National Religious Party brought in the police to question the three men who said they were students working on a documentary film.

It apparently wasn't long before the three confessed to being activists working for the left-leaning Peace Now.

Israeli lawmakers were not amused.

The three were arrested and the Israeli parliament speaker has banned Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer from entering the building.

In its defense, Peace Now said that it hired the team to create a "Borat-esque" documentary "where the viewer is shocked -- yet also amused -- at the interviewees comments, but also creates a feeling of discomfort by the viewer when really seeing the true side of the interviewee."

(Note: See Borat's "Throw the Jew Down the Well" for example...)

Despite being unmasked, Peace Now said it is pressing on with the project and hopes to unveil the film some time next month.

Of course, Jerusalem has already been properly Boratized.

It was just this summer that Israeli and Palestinian leaders appeared in "Bruno," the blockbuster film featuring comedian Sascha Baron Cohen's gay fashionista character.

Like the Peace Now directorial debacle, "Bruno" got into trouble of its own by falsely depicting a Bethlehem Christian store owner as a dangerous terrorist.

Some might argue that you don't need to go under cover to uncover someone's real feelings on this conflict.

Earlier this year, filmmakers Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana sparked a global argument by producing "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem," a four-minute video that featured a startling cross-section of Israelis and Americans making bigoted comments on camera.

The footage created such a furor that YouTube eventually banned the video.

Are are one of those people to sometimes wonder: "Whatever happened to Ariel Sharon?"

Here's your answer: Ariel Sharon is not dead.

Former ABC News correspondent Lynn Sherr reports at The Daily Beast that Sharon's eyes are sometimes open, that he is sometimes propped up in front of a TV featuring nature shows, and that he only has four regular visitors.

Sherr uses her piece as a launching pad to wonder: What might have happened in the Middle East if Sharon had not been felled by a stroke in 2006.

"I think we would have a Palestinian state," former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says in the article.

The Middle East is filled with such "lost opportunity" declarations.

(Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, now under indictment for a series of political corruption charges, likes to argue that he was within reach of an historic deal with the Palestinians when he was forced into early retirement.)

Remarkably, Sherr's piece doesn't even mention that, three weeks after Sharon's stroke, Hamas stunned the world (including Rice, who was famously blindsided) by winning control of the Palestinian Authority.

The Hamas political victory led Israel and the Bush administration to create a policy of isolation that helped fracture the Palestinian political scene, which is even more divided today than it was when Sharon had his stroke.

Would Sharon have cut a deal with Hamas to create a Palestinian state?

That central question is left unaddressed in the piece. But the answer is not hard to imagine.

Earlier this year, one of the UN's most prominent spokesmen in Jerusalem sparked theatrical controversy by writing and performing an unconventional one-man show.

In "Building Understanding: Epitaph for a Warehouse," UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness becomes the embodiment of the UN's central warehouse in Gaza and relives its final hours as it was set ablaze by Israeli shells during last winter's military offensive against Hamas.

The theatrical piece touched a nerve. At the Tel Aviv debut, one man tried to disrupt the performance by standing up in the middle of the show to challenge Gunness about the story.

After performing in Tel Aviv and at a college class in Sderot (the southern Israeli town hardest-hit by Gaza rockets), Gunness ran into unusual interference.

In August, Organizers in Acre abruptly pulled the plug on the show hours before Gunness was to go on stage.

Undaunted, Gunness set up another show at a theater in Jaffa. Then, days before he was to perform earlier this month, the Jaffa theater canceled the performance.

Some supporters of the show suspect that political pressure is behind the cancellations.

Whatever the case, Gunness is now set to perform "Building Understanding: Epitaph for a Warehouse" in its Jerusalem debut this Wednesday, Oct. 28th, at the French Cultural Center.

The venerable Don Macintyre at The Independent gives us the latest on the controversy.

Gunness said he plans to videotape the show and post it on YouTube so that anyone can see the unusual show.

Over the weekend, PA President Mahmoud Abbas ratcheted up pressure on Hamas to agree to a new unity government by announcing plans to hold elections on Jan. 24, 2010.

Hamas leaders in Gaza immediately rejected the decree. And it will be politically perilous for Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to hold elections that don't include the 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza.

As the Palestinian political stalemate continues, the dispute is generating a new brand of satire.

First there was the Palestinian "Saturday Night Live," which poked fun at Palestinian political leaders in Gaza and the West Bank.

Now, as Omar Karmi reports in The National, Palestinians are cheering and jeering a pointed parody of the first Palestinian national anthem.

The revered song, "My Homeland," has been transformed into a much more cutting YouTube video that has been viewed more than 100,000 times.

It has been dubbed "Not My Homeland."

The simple video displays photographs of dozens of top Palestinian leaders from across the political spectrum, including Abbas, PA PM Salam Fayyad, top Fatah leaders (like Mohammed Dahlan and Saeb Erekat), and Hamas leaders including Khaled Meshaal, Mahmoud Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh.

In writing about the dispute, Maan News offered this translation of the lyrics.

My homeland, My homeland

Curse and perversity

Plague and hypocrisy

Are in your hills, Are in your hills

Tyrants and oppressors, Cunning not fidelity

Are in your sanctuary, Are in your sanctuary

Will I see you? Nothing else...

But the  original reads like this:

My homeland, My homeland

Glory and beauty, Sublimity and splendor

Are in your hills, Are in your hills

Life and deliverance, Pleasure and hope

Are in your air, Are in your Air

Will I see you? Will I see you?

When Al Jazeera played the parody during a debate between Hamas and Fatah leaders on a popular debate show, Fatah's Nasser al-Qudwa called it the "worst degree of degradation in the Palestinian arena" he had seen that day.

(Maan News provided the full translation of the parody at the end of its story on the dispute.)

The video ends with shots of Abbas and Hamas leaders meeting in Mecca in February, 2007 where they signed a largely meaningless unity deal that lasted four months -- until Hamas seized military control of Gaza and routed Fatah fighters.

Since then, the two sides have been unable to reconcile. There is renewed pressure on the two sides to cut a deal. So far, Fatah and Hamas are unwilling to make enough compromises to support a breakthrough.

As Matt Benyon Rees noted in his GlobalPost piece on the dispute, Fatah and Hamas are likely to "continue singing the same song" when they resume unity talks in Cairo...  

Photo of the day: Palestinian men compete during a bodybuilding contest in Gaza City. The Arabic poster reads: "Under the supervision of the Palestine University - The Gaza Strip Bodybuilding Hero Contest." (AP Photo/Ashraf Amra)

In Baghdad, bodybuilding is a booming industry.

There has long been a special gym in honor of bodybuilding legend/California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Last year, a young Iraqi bodybuilder became a world champion.

Now, this unusual trend seems to be taking hold in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

This weekend, about 20 Palestinian bodybuilders took part in Gaza's "Bodybuilding Hero Contest."

While Hamas campaigns against women wearing jeans as "devilish dress," Gaza guys in skimpy Speedo's with spray-on tans and shiny lube took to the stage in Gaza City to strut their stuff.

Gaza has seen a rare influx of visitors in the last year as everyone from Mia Farrow to Alice Walker has come to see the damage caused by Israel's winter offensive.

Will it be too long before Arnold comes to give these guys some tips?

Earlier this month, Checkpoint Jerusalem wrote about "Beware the Cost of War," a photo exhibition that opens this weekend in London.

Today, The New York Times great Lens blog has a showcase of photos from the exhibition, along with an interview with Yoav Galai, the Israeli photog who organized the show...

Is it possible that reporters in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Lebanon have more freedom than their colleagues in Israel?

If you ask Reporters Without Borders, the answer is: Yes.

For the first time since the Paris-based group started issuing its Press Freedom Index, Israel has lost its place as the best country in the Middle East for freedom of the press.

Reporters Without Borders said Israel's ranking is in "free fall" because of the country's decisions to arrest and detain both Israeli reporters and foreign journalists.

Because of such moves, Israel's ranking in the survey of 175 countries plummeted from 46th last year to 93rd place in the latest index.

And, because of Israel's widely criticized decision to bar journalists from freely entering Gaza last winter to cover its controversial military offensive, Israel's secondary ranking for press freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip plunged to 150th place, right below Sudan and Afghanistan.

For comparison, the US ranking jumped in one year from 36th to 20th for press freedom inside its borders. And the US ranking rose from 118th and 108th (below the UAE, Oman and Qatar) for press freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Israel was buffeted by a lot of criticism for clamping down on press freedom during the last military offensive in Gaza. (Cartoonists had a field day. In one example, Al Jazeera produced this cartoon, at right...)

But, to this day, Israeli government officials are unapologetic about the move, which some Israeli leaders saw as a critical element in the government's war plans.

Danny Seaman, head of the Israeli Government Press Office, defended the media ban during the fighting by saying that reporters who went into Gaza became Hamas apologists.

“Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that,” Danny said at the time.

After the fighting subsided, Danny famously denied there was a media ban and called international reporters covering the aftermath in Gaza "spoiled crybabies" and a "disgrace to their profession."

Earlier this week, another veteran Israeli government spokesman defended the media ban by making the argument that any reporter who went into Gaza, especially those who had never been there before, were likely to do little more than parrot Hamas propaganda.

That defense, coming from an Israeli official who had previously professed some sympathy with reporters barred from getting into Gaza, suggests that Israeli leaders are unlikely to see their latest press freedom rankings as much to worry about...

A new, grammatically challenged, sign hangs in the rudimentary Hamas passport control caravan at the Erez border crossing with Israel:

On the instruction of the Ministry of Interior to prevent all forms of liquor are confiscated immediately be seized and destroyed and poured in front of their owners."

Until recently, Hamas was allowing foreigners to bring in two bottles of booze when they came into Gaza.

When I heard that Hamas was imposing a total ban, I decided to pack a small bottle of whiskey in my bag to see what they would do when I went into Gaza this week.

The new sign hangs inside the small, sparse caravan Hamas uses to register visitors coming into Gaza from Israel. (Many of the caravans appear to have been donated by a Turkish charity, though I don't know if the Turkish charity donated them to be used for the Hamas border control offices...)

The Hamas passport control officer writes things in an archaic register and then sends visitors to another caravan where a guy (presumably a health official of some sort) asks you to sick a thermometer under your armpit to check for "Swine Flu."

After that it's off to meet the customs guard who searches the luggage. I waited for the guy to open my bag, discover the whiskey, give me a stern look and pour it on the ground.

But he never even looked inside. Since I was only coming in for a short visit, I had only a small backpack. And apparently the guard wasn't worried about what might be inside...

The new regulations are part of an evolving imposition of conservative values in Gaza that includes the "devilish dress" posters hanging in shops and offices around Gaza.

AFP recently tracked down covert wine makers in Gaza who circumvent the alcohol ban by making booze in their homes.

Hamas leaders told AFP that they will not crack down on people who drink booze, only those who sell it...