I spent three months reporting this story, on separate trips to the West Bank, Syria and in Lebanon. The entire time was a continuous discovery of the extent of the hip-hop scene among the Palestinian diaspora in the Middle East. I had heard about the bigger groups like DAM from outside Tel Aviv and I-Voice in Bourj el-Barajneh in Beirut, but through traveling to camps in all these places, I discovered that lower down the musical food chain, on the grass roots level, there is an enormous creativity going on.

Members of the popular Palestinian hip-hop group DAM perform.

There are several reasons for this, I think. Some are material and structural – the arrival of the internet to the camps has been key — it enables many young Palestinians to crack audio software off the net, and once they have made their music, to distribute it, worldwide, on music sharing sites like Myspace.com. But there are other reasons, especially in the West Bank, whereas the first intifada there contained a large contingent of youth, pitting their rocks and slingshots against the might of the Israeli Defense Forces, the second intifada, which started in 2000, was a different affair.

Israel's strict lockdown on Palestinian mobility saw many of the Palestinian youth in the West Bank housebound, under long curfews. It is in this time of inactivity and boredom that many of today's Palestinian hip-hop heavies cut their teeth on music editing programs and honed their craft in song writing.

The internet is also at the core of another exciting development. It is joining and help to web together communities of Palestinians separated since 1948 when many of them were forced or coerced from what is now Israel. Sixty years of separation, often by unfriendly borders, has fractured and inflected the Palestinian identity and much is being done today online, though file-sharing, video casting and chat, to bridge some of those unfortunate divides.

This all means that you can also join the communication. Palestinian hip-hop is readily available to you to explore, if you have access to the internet, which you must have if you are reading this ...

To get started, here are the sites for some of the groups mentioned in the radio piece:

For a great overview of hip-hop in the Middle East, check out Jackson Allers' wonderful blog: "Beats and Breath," and his recent documentary on I-Voice: "Life from the BBC."

What do you think of the role the internet can play not only for Palestinians but for other refugees, or geographically displaced people in the world? Should the internet play a bigger role in post-conflict peace-building? And what other opportunities might it provide for those who may wish to resist oppression in a non-violent manner?

Listen to Don's story on Palestinian hip-hop.