by Aaron Lakoff
Jerusalem - January 9th, 2005
Miraculously, I awoke at 6:30am this morning. Izzy, the British girl I asked to wake me up, didn’t even need to. I groggily rolled out of my bunk and headed to a quick ISM meeting in the tea room of the hostel.
We decided that we were going to split up into groups of three and head out to the different polling stations located at post offices in East Jerusalem.
The first station we got to was a few blocks away from our hostel, a large post office called Al-Saladin. Palestinians of all shapes and stripes were beginning to arrive at 7:00am, and there were just as many (if not more) internationals, journalists, and foreign observers. This was going to be quite the show.

To view my pictures from election day in Jerusalem, visit:
http://gallery.cmaq.net/album21

Election day is looming in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and like it or not, Palestinians are abuzz.
Rumors are floating about everywhere as to just how these elections for the next leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the first since 1996, will be run. The atmosphere in East Jerusalem, where I have been staying for the last twenty-four hours, is much different than the rest of the country. In East Jerusalem, life seems to carry on as usual, but aside from the random conversations here and there (even to a non-Arabic speaker, you hear the names Abu Mazen and Barghouti floating about), there are no signs of the election.

I have finally uploaded some pictures I took during the first 10 days of my trip.
To view them;
http://gallery.cmaq.net/album19