My friend, Majeda al-Batsh, was due to file to run for President of the Palestinian Authority but... it didn't work out. She would have been the only woman candidate.

I met Majeda in 1993 when we spent a year together in the Nieman journalism fellowship program at Harvard. She's an Agence-France Presse reporter who lives in Jerusalem's Old City. It's Majeda who you see in the sample reel taking Ray and I around the West Bank and introducing us to various people. It is a vast understatement to say that everyone knows Majeda.

Any way... Majeda had decided to run for President so she could represent women's issues and the point of view of people from the Old City. (Her brother - who I met on the first night of Ramadan - is already a legislator in the Palestinian Authority.) Regrettably Majeda - and this will not surprise her friends! - woke up late and had to dash to Ramallah to file her application by the deadline. Of course it was one of those days when the checkpoints were a mess (for whatever reason) and Majeda missed the cut-off time. A true comedy of errors caused by the vagaries of Majeda and the vagaries of the ongoing situation.