Stories written by Mel Frykberg
Mel Frykberg began her journalism career reporting on unrest in black townships, including Soweto, in South Africa during the apartheid era. She later worked as a journalist in Sydney, Australia. Mel has worked as a journalist in the Middle East for over a decade. She has reported for a number of major international publications from Gaza, Jerusalem, Beirut, Cairo, and Amman where she has lived. Mel also edited local magazines and newspapers in the region and is a frequent commentator on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on National Public Radio in the United States. Frykberg studied journalism in the U.K.

MIDEAST: Israel Demolishing Talks

By Mel Frykberg
More and more Palestinians are paying the price for deadlocked talks over Israel’s continued settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

MIDEAST: Prisoner Speaks Out From Israeli Jail

By Mel Frykberg
Samer Hamdan*, a 26-year-old Palestinian prisoner, recalls being beaten until he bled. Seeing other prisoners covered in blood and screaming is the norm in the Israeli prison, he says.

World Forum Boosts Education for Palestinians

By Mel Frykberg
Education in Palestinian areas and the longing for a homeland were given a major boost over the weekend through the World Education Forum (WEF). The four-day education conference Oct. 28-31 was held in cities across the West Bank and in Gaza, as well as Lebanon.
Yonatan Shapira Credit: Mel Frykberg

MIDEAST: This Peaceful Position Takes Courage

By Mel Frykberg
A former captain in the Israeli Air Force, previously an ardent Zionist who lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, has been labelled a psychopath and denounced by many Israelis for the moral stand he has taken against the Israeli occupation.

MIDEAST: Earning a Living in No Man’s Land

By Mel Frykberg
Crossing through the metal-caged tunnel that leads from the Israeli side of the border into northern Gaza towards the Palestinian checkpoint, several groups of young Palestinian men and boys can be seen scavenging through piles of rubble.

MIDEAST: Israeli Police Given Protection for Killing

By Mel Frykberg
A peaceful morning is interrupted by the sounds of an Israeli helicopter circling overhead -- often a sign of trouble on the ground. Later Sunday the news broke -- a Palestinian man was shot dead in the village of Issawiya by Israeli paramilitary border police as he tried to enter Israel in search of work.

MIDEAST: Israel Deports Peace Laureate

By Mel Frykberg
Irish Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire was deported from Israel Tuesday after spending more than a week in detention at Tel Aviv Airport as she attempted to fight the deportation order.

MIDEAST: Riots Grip East Jerusalem

By Mel Frykberg
Tension, the twisted carcasses of gutted vehicles, buses with smashed windows, smouldering dumpsters, streets riddled with rubber-coated steel bullets and empty cartridge cases, teargas, and air thickened with black soot from burning tyres marked the beginning of the fifth day Monday of continuous rioting in East Jerusalem.

MIDEAST: Some Killing More ‘Moral’ Than Other

By Mel Frykberg
Controversy is building up over a 91-year-old man, his 17-year-old grandson and a 20-year-old neighbour, all farmers, who were killed by Israeli shelling and gunfire as they tried to tend their land 700 metres from northern Gaza's border with Israel.
No school for too many Palestinian children. Credit: Mel Frykberg

MIDEAST: Divided We Educate

By Mel Frykberg
A thin Palestinian boy, no older than ten, darts between the piles of garbage and the congested lines of traffic which converge at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

MIDEAST: PA has its Back to the Wall

By Mel Frykberg
The village of Bani Naim, near Hebron in the southern West Bank, was under curfew and sealed off by Israeli soldiers stationed in troop carriers and jeeps, as peace talks continued in Washington.

MIDEAST: Media New Battleground for Palestinians and Israelis

By Mel Frykberg
Palestinians and Israelis are using the media as a new battleground in their war to win hearts and minds across the globe, even as the protracted conflict in the Mideast drags on with no apparent end in sight.

MIDEAST: Bureaucracy Limits Rights of Palestinian Women

By Mel Frykberg
As Hamas cracks down on the rights of Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip, their sisters in the occupied West Bank are slowly gaining ground. But a bureaucracy, that is sometimes supported by foreign aid, is crippling these advances.

MIDEAST: Palestinian Patients Suffer From Political Rivalry

By Mel Frykberg
Cancer patient Ahmed Abu Fuad needs chemotherapy to survive. Muhammad Subeh needs an eye-transplant while paramedic Alaa Sarhan desperately needs surgery to remove shrapnel from his body. But these Gazans are unable to leave the area to seek the required medical treatment elsewhere, and it is not because of the Israeli siege.
A bombed out biscuit factory in Gaza. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Stitching Together a Living, Somehow

By Mel Frykberg
Just off Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, Gaza City's main thoroughfare, in a narrow, sandy alley way is a little second-hand clothing shop. In the dimly lit store, with only intermittent electricity for some hours a day at best, sits a single battered and aging sewing machine.

MIDEAST: Barriers Rise Between Ramadan Gatherings

By Mel Frykberg
For seven years Majda Abdul Qader Sheikh, 38, has not been allowed to visit the home of her parents, just a few hundred metres from her house.
A West Bank village facing destruction. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Homeless Take On Israeli Forces

By Mel Frykberg
A bruising battle of will is taking place between Israeli security forces and Palestinians recently made homeless after two Palestinian villages were razed and hundreds left homeless.

MIDEAST: Hamas Slowly Islamising Gaza

By Mel Frykberg
Gazans are caught between a rock and a hard place. While Israel continues to apply a crippling siege on the coastal territory, Gaza's Hamas government is cracking down on civil and political liberties in what appears to be a campaign to slowly Islamise Gaza.

Anger Rises Over U.S. Tax Dollars for Settlements

By Mel Frykberg
Anger has arisen in Palestinian areas over reports that millions of tax-exempt dollars from the U.S. are being funneled towards Israel's illegal settlement building in the Palestinian West Bank -- in flagrant violation of international law.
Israeli soldiers confronting the media at a protest in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

Israel Gets Brutal With Media

By Mel Frykberg
Palestinian activists are being jailed, Israeli activists are under surveillance, and the Israeli military is increasingly targeting journalists who cover West Bank protests.

MIDEAST: Israel Chokes Gaza Despite Announced Easing

By Mel Frykberg
Israel has received international praise for its decision to ease its crippling blockade on Gaza following the country's deadly assault on a humanitarian flotilla trying to bring desperately needed humanitarian aid to the coastal territory. But according to the UN and human rights organisations, the easing of the blockade is insufficient in meeting Gaza's needs.
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