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Another Mideast envoy fed up with quartet

Haider Rizvi 15 October 2007


UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15 (IPS) - The United Nations has come under strong criticism from one of its own top human rights officials for failing to take effective action to check the ongoing Israeli abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories. Expressing his anger and frustration at the fast-deteriorating human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinian territories since 2001, has suggested that the world body quit the Middle East Quartet. 

Formalizing apartheid packaged as peace initiative

Neta Golan and Mohammed Khatib 16 October 2007


Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well-guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel’s “next generous offer.” Neta Golan and Mohammed Khatib comment for EI. 

Disaster capitalism: Israel as warning

Raymond Deane 14 October 2007


In her new book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein argues that in the wake of natural and unnatural disasters, neo-liberal economic reform is foisted on stricken societies while their citizens are in a condition of collective disorientation. She writes, in a context where “instability is the new stability,” “Israel is often held up as a kind of Exhibit A.” Contributor Raymond Deane reviews Klein’s blockbuster for EI. 

Planting seeds of independence

Rami Almeghari Rafah, Gaza Strip 14 October 2007


“We have just initiated our small project with an intent to help these simple rural women sustain amidst their families’ harsh economic conditions,” says Yassmin Moor, a young Palestinian-American woman who manages a domestic gardening project in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah. The project, which has been a part of the US-based Save Gaza program, is intended to empower poor women in the rural and remote areas of the Gaza Strip. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports. 

Separation of families "priority humanitarian issue"

14 October 2007


JERUSALEM, 14 October 2007 (IRIN) - Some 580 women living in the occupied Golan region are disconnected from their families in Syria as they are not allowed to cross from the occupied zone to their homeland, a new women’s organization has said. “All the Arabs of the Golan have some family in Syria. But these women are disconnected from their mothers, fathers and brothers and sisters,” said Souha Munder, a lawyer who works with the new group, which calls itself The Women of the Occupied Arab-Syrian Golan. 

Palestinians return to desolate, dangerous camp

12 October 2007


NAHR AL-BARED, 12 October (IRIN) - The first Palestinian families displaced by 15 weeks of intense fighting between the army and Islamist militants that left much of north Lebanon’s Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in ruins have begun returning home to start rebuilding their lives. “I never imagined I would have to leave my home again,” said 80-year-old Mahmoud Nimr Abdou as he boarded the bus carrying the first refugees home from neighboring Baddawi camp, where the majority of the up to 40,000 people displaced from Nahr al-Bared have been living in cramped conditions. “I will kiss the ground when I return.” 

Video: "Homeless in Shatila"

11 October 2007


The anarchist film collective “a-films” presents a short video on refugees from the destroyed refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared who are stranded in Shatila Camp, Beirut. The conflict in Nahr al-Bared between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam militants left homeless tens of thousands of Palestinians. Under fire and assuming they could soon return to the camp after their flight, most of them didn’t taken any of their belongings with them. While Baddawi Camp near Trablous (Tripoli), northern Lebanon, is hosting the majority of those who fled, thousands of the camp’s residents are scattered all over other Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. 

Stranded Palestinians turn down Sudanese asylum offer

11 October 2007


DAMASCUS, 10 October (IRIN) - Most of the over 300 Palestinian-Iraqi refugees stranded for the past 18 months at the makeshift al-Tanf refugee camp on the Syrian side of the Iraq-Syria border have rejected an offer of asylum in Sudan. The Sudanese government made an offer 8 October to take in the 310 Palestinian refugees, who are living in pitiful conditions at the camp. “The [Sudanese] president agreed to the request of both Hamas and Fatah to accommodate them and we are going to inform the Arab League and then make our preparations,” said a Sudanese Foreign Ministry official. 

Video: Nahr al-Bared refugees' joyless Ramadan

11 October 2007


The anarchist video collective “a-films” presents a 20-minute film entitled “Tragedy Without Borders,” produced by refugees from the destroyed Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp during a video-workshop held in Baddawi Refugee Camp near Trablous (Tripoli), northern Lebanon. For two weeks, a-films has trained a group of refugees in filmmaking. Thousands of families living in Nahr al-Bared were displaced during the Lebanese army’s summer-long siege on the camp, where a militant group called Fatah al-Islam had established itself. The camp was destroyed during the conflict. 

Silencing Bishop Tutu: Critical discussion off limits?

Bill Fletcher Jr. 11 October 2007


There is a point when a political position can become rabid; a point when rational arguments no longer work because the holder of such politics believes that their way can be the only way of seeing things and that all other views must be suppressed. Thus, we have the case of the cancellation of the speaking engagement of one Bishop Desmond Tutu, world-renowned human rights activist and one of the chief architects of the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Bill Fletcher, Jr. comments on the cancellation.