Amira Hass has spent much of the last decade living in Palestinian communities of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, from where she has reported on the Palestinians’ progress from intifada toward independence. Assigned by Israel’s most respected daily, "Ha’aretz," to cover the Gaza Strip in 1991, Hass soon decided to live in Gaza. Hass, the child of Holocaust survivors, was born in Jerusalem in 1956. After studying history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the University of Tel Aviv, she worked at various teaching jobs before beginning her journalistic career in 1989 as a staff editor at "Ha’aretz." In addition to her editing position, she began to write regular articles on the Occupied Territories in 1991. She now covers the West Bank from the town of Ramallah, where she moved in January 1997.