Abdullah Enshasi and Mohammed Al Jkhbeer are Gaza's first Parkour and Free Running team. Watching YouTube videos of parkour and acrobatic moves, the two young men decided to take up the dangerous sport and train themselves. Practicing in cemeteries, UNRWA schools, and on sand hills near the beach, Abdallah and Mohammed suffered back injuries and teeth damage but remained undeterred and got better and better. "This sport frees our spirits as we cannot leave Gaza, and the lack of equipment and training halls will not stop us", they explained. 

Palestine might not seem like a breeding ground for race car drivers. After all, the area is dotted with checkpoints and roadblocks, hundreds of obstacles that can cramp a driver's ability to explore a car's limits. But that hasn't stopped a group of Palestinian women from driving very fast, winning races and making a name for themselves along the way. 

It's official - the children of the Gaza Strip again hold the Guinness World Record for the most kites flown simultaneously - this time it was 12,350. The record was broken at an event organised by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency at Al-Waha beach, Gaza Strip, on 28 July last year. I took the first two photos just before taking up my duties as an "observer" responsible for counting the number of kites flying in my assigned sector between the two sirens signifying the start and end point of the official timing. 

Mai and Amane, Arab Israeli teenagers living in Nazareth, are happy to leave talk about boys and make-up to their peers. They have a political message and they're telling it through rap music. The girls, only 15 and 16, make up the duo "Damar" -- Arabic for "destruction" -- whose mission is to expose what they say is the routine discrimination they experience growing up as part of Israel's Arab minority. 

Balancing message and entertainment, reality and humor, has been a DAM specialty since the group formed in 1999, a precursor to the wave of hip-hop acts that have sprouted more recently not only in Israel and Palestine but across the Arab world, many coming to notice in the recent upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere. You don't need to know Arabic; watch the videos for some of DAM's songs and the images of walls, checkpoints, bulldozers, settlements, cleared olive groves, refugees, and rubble make the message plain. 

Udi Aloni, the Israeli filmmaker and director of the Waiting for Godot, ended the performance with heartfelt words. "This has been an emotional experience since the murder of Juliano and the arrests of our actors," Aloni said to the audience. "Tonight, I am overtaken with emotion. Juliano was a master teacher and you have just seen his work in this brilliant performance by his students. I am in awe." Many in audience, including foreign diplomats and American academics, clearly shared Aloni's sense of awe after seeing the artistic production of young Palestinians living under occupation. 

The Arabic word shusmo is a place holder for something whose name you can't think of, similar to the English "whatchamacallit." That makes it a good fit for the New York band Shusmo, whose combination of traditional Middle Eastern instruments and Western funk can be tough to classify. Led by the Palestininan-born Tareq Abboushi, Shusmo has a new album titled Mumtastic. Abboushi tells Weekend Edition Saturday guest host Jacki Lyden that he grew up hearing both Western and Arabic music in his hometown, the West Bank city of Ramallah. 

Palestinian hip-hop group DAM are currently seeking funding to complete the recording of their new album. Tentatively titled Street Poetry, the album will be their first since 2006’s IHDA (Dedication) and represents a period of growth for the band, who have spent the last two years recording and gigging. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Mahmoud Jreri said, "Lyrically it's much more mature than the last album. Also we've developed more musically, we’ve worked with different producers so it sounds different. But our lyrics are still social, political and economical."