We were shown The Calling Wall, or el silik, "the wires,"as residents say, at the edge of Canada Camp. Here, on either side of the international border, stood people. Families have met here to yell across razor wire and no-man's-land since 1982. I never forgot the faces, nor the hands, reaching.

In 1992 I returned to Canada Camp with plans to document Gazan life as experienced by the camp's few repatriated families. Arrangements came painfully slowly and often not at all.

It is impossible to overstate the extent to which life under Israeli occupation was exhausting and traumatic. Much of what I saw and heard and felt could not be photographed, sometimes for reasons of safety, sometimes for reasons of Gazan culture ... After weeks of frustrations, I began to sense the seeds of a different story, one more telling of daily Gazan life: a personal account of what happens along the way to doing -- or trying to do -- a photojournalist's job. My writing and photographs are thus from experiences among both Canada Camp residents and others from January to April 1993, with an epilogue that discusses the impact of the Oslo Accords. 1993 was the last year of the intifada proper, and the time when the present policy of border closures -- which today largely defines economic life in the occupied territories -- was inaugurated. Gazans (like West Bankers) now live with a legacy of military occupation, a legacy that has not entirely ended, nor have its future prospects disappeared from the horizon. To begin understanding the present, it is crucial to understand how Palestinians themselves understand their own experience, how they understand this legacy and its weight upon their collective future. That is why, at the core of this book, we interviewed residents themselves about my photographs (see Photo Interviews).

-exerpt from the introduction to the book