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IntroductionJust two years after arriving in September 1994 to work in the Palestinian West Bank, I was running the largest website in the Palestinian territories -- Birzeit University's site at www.birzeit.edu -- and maintaining Palestine's answer to 'Yahoo.com', The Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites [site retired*]. In September 1996, a group of us published the first Web news reports by local residents of a war zone in media history, On the ground in Ramallah: Reports from a town become battlefield [site retired*]. By August 1997, I was standing before an NGO symposium at the United Nations in Geneva to present a paper on the development of the Palestinian Internet and, on 15 June 1998, Israeli daily Ha'aretz profiled me as a "guru" of the Palestinian Web community, demonstrating irrefutable evidence of the existance of an Israeli sense of humour. Other significant sites I worked on included the first official website for the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem [site retired*], and the Free Ahmad Qatamesh site [now retired], the first website for a Palestinian political prisoner. This site was temporarily reactivated in late 1999 to deal with Ahmad's latest arrest by the Palestinian Authority. My four-year-long photodiary from my time in Ramallah, A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, was positively reviewed and mentioned in publications as diverse as the US Time magazine, the British Independent, and France's Le Monde. In 2005, Nigel Parry works as an Internet consultant and web designer and is one of the founders of the award-winning Electronic Intifada and Electronic Iraq websites. For other sites I have worked on, or to contract Nigel Parry for website design services, please see nigelparry.net. Contacting people about the Palestinian InternetThis site was frozen in time at the beginning of Y2K, bar a few minor updates. Contact Nigel Parry with general questions about the Palestinian use of the Internet and specific questions relating to the 1994-1998 period of development. For information about the technical side of the Palestinian Internet, and to be put in touch with IT professionals working on the ground, please contact Marwan Tarazi at Birzeit University. * Many of these key historical websites were taken offline by Birzeit University during revisions to its web program. That these included the historic On the Ground in Ramallah website in particular has been a source of concern. I continue to lobby the university to restore several key sites which contain historical information not available to researchers anywhere else. |
Above: Outside the United Nations Palais des Nations, Geneva, August 1997, where I presented a paper on the development of the Palestinian Internet at the UN NGO Symposium. Features The Middle East & The Internet Web Design Key Links |