Foreigners were very occasionally kidnapped briefly by numbskull militants who had no idea what they were doing. No foreign kidnappees have been killed by Palestinians, although a few Israeli kidnappees have been.

The times when I felt scared in general was when I was on a rooftop in range of Israeli snipers, especially in Gaza (which has been described by Israeli soldiers as a "playground for sharpshooters"), or sleeping in my apartment in Ramallah listening to Israeli war planes fly over. Israeli planes bomb Palestinian civilian areas with relative impunity, usually claiming to be aiming at a wanted man. Extrajudicial assassinations are illegal according to the Geneva Conventions, and Israel's assassinations often result in the deaths of innocent bystanders.

A friend of mine had her entire apartment block bulldozed as collective punishment for a militant taking refuge in one of the apartments, which she had nothing to do with. The militant had already been captured and killed. In another incident, an Israeli pilot dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza in AUgust 2002, to assassinate one militant. The bomb killed the man plus 14 innocents, half of them children. Assassinations in Gaza overall killed more bystanders than targets.

I sincerely hoped that no one in my flat had any questionable acquaintances.

Broad daylight Israeli raids were also terrifying. If they came in the middle of a workday, shop owners and office workers would quickly shutter their shops and hide inside. Looking out of a window was a good way to get shot. Sometimes a lone figure would dart out of a door and throw a rock at the armored Jeeps or Hummers and then quickly run away again. This was another good way to get shot.

The raids were extremely offensive and humiliating. You can imagine how you would feel if armed foreign teenagers imposed terrible danger on you and the town and people you loved completely at will. Some Palestinians got tired of cowering properly.

Settlers were also threatening and scary at times, and even less restrained than Israeli soldiers. Once a settler who occupied the upper floors of the Hebron Old City poured slop water down on the Palestinian area below, and it nearly hit me and a Jewish friend on the head. (Judging from the trash nestled in the chicken wire above our heads, the settlers made a habit of this.) Settlers have also beaten several members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams and others who have tried to protect Palestinian school children from settler violence. Several times settlers have shot and killed Palestinians in cold blood.

While spending time in Israel, particularly in cafes and on buses, I couldn't help but look around to see if I could spot anyone with a suspiciously bulky midsection. The prospect of someone blowing himself up in the middle of a peaceful civilian scene was truly horrifying.

But to put it in perspective, Israelis have a better chance of being killed in a car accident than in a Palestinian attack, especially since Hamas has unilaterally held to a ceasefire since February 2005.

On the other hand, every single Palestinian is targeted by debilitating movement restrictions (checkpoints, Walls, road blocks, etc.) and land and water theft, thousands are targeted by home demolitions and mass arrest raids, and thousands have been killed and wounded in Israeli bombing raids, shootings, and settler terrorist attacks. In the suffering contest, Palestinians "win" by several orders of magnitude. The intense suffering and humiliation caused by the occupation are severely counter-productive to Israel's security.

But in general, 90% of the time I felt very safe. As long as Israeli soldiers could see that I was not a Palestinian, they had an excellent PR reason not to hurt me. Palestinians treated me as a welcomed guest in their country. In Arab culture, guests are treated excellently. My parents and several Jewish, Israeli, and American friends visited me in the West Bank and had a great time.

4. Is Palestine actually a country?

Palestine is a nation, but not yet a country. It is one of the unfortunate legacies of European colonialism that many nations have been left over without a country of their own and without the basic right of self-determination.

Historically, Palestine was a territory that encompassed all of the area of modern Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza Strip. After WWII, this territory, which at the time was a British colonial mandate, was turned over to the UN, which voted to partition the land between Arabs and Jews, giving Jews 55% of the land despite the fact that they owned only 7% of it. Arabs throughout the region rejected the partition, considering it a European colonial giveaway of historically Arab land.

In the war that followed in 1948, most of the Arab armies failed to live up to their anti-colonial rhetoric. Iraqis, for example -- themselves having been under a British colonial mandate for decades -- had outdated equipment and ineffectual leadership. Some Iraqi soldiers were sent to war without shoes, much less weapons. The Arabs were humiliatingly defeated, and 78% of historic Palestine -- which is today known as Israel -- was conquered decisively by the mostly European Jews. In the process 700,000 Palestinians, mostly farmers and shopkeepers, but also poets, artists, professionals, and intellectuals, fled or were expelled.

To this day the vast majority have not been allowed to return home. They and their descendents now number in the millions, and many live in squalid refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, dreaming of the day when they can once again inhabit or at least visit the homeland of their grandfathers, the cradle of their culture and identity. Some of them still have the keys to the front doors they hastily locked as they fled the violence, expecting to return home in a matter of weeks. Israelis blocked their return by force of arms in contravention of international law. Nearly 60 years later, Palestinian refugees make up the oldest and largest unresolved refugee population in modern history.

The West Bank was administered by Jordan and the Gaza Strip by Egypt from 1948 until 1967, when Israel conquered and occupied both territories.

Today, most Palestinians are struggling for a homeland on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the last 22% of their historic homeland. Unfortunately, Israel has been building settlements and transferring Israeli citizens to Palestinian territory for decades in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, in the hope of permanently annexing large and vital areas of the West Bank. Illegal settlers in the West Bank now number around 400,000, including those in Arab East Jerusalem.

Hopes for a peaceful two-state solution hinge on a negotiated solution based on international law. UN Resolution 242 is the legal framework for a solution to the conflict, recognizing Israel within secure borders on 78% of historic Palestine and Palestine within secure borders on the remainder: the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Arab League has in principle accepted these conditions, and in 2002 proposed the Saudi Initiative, which agrees to recognize Israel within secure borders in exchange for a negotiated Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights, and a fair and agreed-upon solution to the 1948 refugee problem.

Israel has refused even to consider the generous offer, claiming that a withdrawal from the West Bank would be detrimental to Israeli security. In reality, nothing would be better for Israeli security, and the only people who would be hurt by the move would be the ideological settlers and Israeli politicians who would be forced to abandon 60 years of mendacious rhetoric. It is the only reasonable way for Israel to integrate sustainably into the region. And without regional integration, and with Europe increasingly frustrated by Israel's violent intransigence, and with America on the fringes of the beginning of a debate about whether Israel is a strategic asset after all, Israel's future prospects look dim and dangerous.

Innocent civilians on both sides continue to suffer horribly. In the Palestinian territories, crippling movement restrictions, land theft for and by illegal settlements and Israeli army bases, discriminatory laws, and frequent Israeli raids, home demolitions, broad-daylight assassinations in busy civilian areas, and bombing campaigns against civilian areas and infrastructure make life extremely difficult and often dangerous. In addition, the Israeli army operates under a culture of impunity that rarely punishes soldiers who kill Palestinians in questionable circumstances (including a captain who was cleared of all charges after he deliberately pumped 20 bullets into a ten-year-old school girl). Additionally, under Israeli law, Palestinians are not allowed to sue the Israeli government for wrongful death or damage inflicted by Israeli soldiers and police.

In Israel, horrific suicide bombing attacks by Palestinian militants have become very rare since Hamas unilaterally ceased its attacks two years ago in 2004. A rogue faction called Islamic Jihad has struck about six times in the past two years, killing about 40 innocent Israelis.

In the past six years, about 3,700 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis have been killed. About 70% of each were civilians, including 720 Palestinian children and 100 Israeli children. Many thousands more have been injured and left disfigured or disabled. Thousands of Palestinians are living in deplorable conditions in Israeli jails, hundreds of them, like the Guantanamo detainees, without charge or trial, and hundreds of them women or children.

For a counterpoint, a brief overview of the conflicts that is only slightly biased toward the Israeli perspective (IMHO), see this narrative from Mid East Web, an Israeli site with several Arab contributors. It is occasionally incorrect on its figures, including leaving out the 200,000 East Jerusalem settlers from its settler count and implying that Israel offered Palestinians 97% of the West Bank at Camp David and Taba, a figure I and Tanya Reinhart of Tel Aviv University do not believe is accurate.

5. What do you think about Israel's Wall?

I, along with the International Court of Justice and the Israeli High Court, consider it a land grab, a device used to entrench illegal annexation of Palestinian land. The way it follows the contours of planned settlement expansion leaves little doubt. The Wall was originally claimed by Israel to be built as a "temporary security measure with no political significance." Yet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made it clear in the past few months that he wishes to retain the Palestinian land sliced away by the Wall inside the future borders of the state of Israel.

The Wall is also a hideous post-modern nightmare of a scar on an ancient and beautiful landscape that truly has to be seen to be believed. The way it severs Bethlehem from Jerusalem severely infringes on the rights of Palestinian Christians and Muslims to worship and travel freely. It indiscriminately separates Palestinians from their lands, schools, hospitals, and families.

Over 700 km long, the massive, expensive structure dwarfs the Berlin Wall. It steals 10% of the West Bank's land, its most important water resources, its capital East Jerusalem, the farmland and livelihood of dozens of towns and villages, and the West Bank's border with Jordan. (See the maps to the left.) It also divides the West Bank into three cantons or "Bantustans" that cannot be traveled between without Israeli permission and only with great difficulty. Under Olmert's "unilateral convergence" plan, Israel will permanently annex the lands stolen by the Wall, and Palestinians will be left caged inside with no control over airspace, water, borders, imports, exports, water, or electricity. The Wall's path renders any possible Palestinian state non-viable and non-sovereign.

Sometimes the Wall is a concrete structure 30 feet high, particularly in urban areas. Other times it is a chain-length fence with electric sensors, a 100-meter security buffer around it, and an army access road built on either side of it. Approaching the fence without authorization carries a serious risk of summary execution. Farmers are supposed to be given ready access to their lands that are isolated by the Wall, but this almost never happens. Even if farmers can get permits from Israel to visit their own lands, their day-to-day access is entirely up to the whims of the soldiers on duty. This creates intolerable working conditions for Palestinian farmers.

While suicide bombings have decreased since Wall construction commenced, evidence indicates that this is not primarily due to the Wall. Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in February of 2005, and since then it has not attacked Israeli soil, chosing instead to try to achieve legitimacy and accomplish goals through democratic political channels.

Illegal Palestinian workers easily slip through the Wall daily; suicide bombers can do the same if they so choose. Additionally, the Wall cannot prevent Palestinian rocket attacks, home-made or otherwise, or tunnel digging, as the Gaza Strip has shown.

As long as there is no negotiated solution based on international law, Israelis and Palestinians will never know peace and security. A Wall only makes this more difficult and does not solve any problems.