When I watched the Oscar-winning film The Pianist I had three distinct, uneasy reactions. I was not particularly impressed by the film, from a purely artistic angle; I was horrified by the film’s depiction of the dehumanization of Polish Jews and the impunity of the German occupiers; and I could not help but compare the Warsaw ghetto wall with Israel’s much more ominous wall caging 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in fragmented, sprawling prisons. Many of the methods of collective and individual “punishment” meted out to Palestinian civilians at the hands of young, racist, often sadistic and ever impervious Israeli soldiers at the hundreds of checkpoints littering the occupied Palestinian territories are reminiscent of common Nazi practices against the Jews. Read more about "The Pianist" of Palestine: Reflections on Israel's ubiquitous abuse 

After days of internal haggling, Fatah has decided unanimously to nominate Mahmud Abbas as its candidate for the forthcoming Palestinian Authority presidential election scheduled for 9 January. The nomination is expected to be approved by Fatah’s revolutionary council and other relevant bodies later this week. It is unclear, though, if the nomination of Abbas, also known as Abu Mazin, was coordinated with Marwan al-Barghuthi, the less experienced but more popular Fatah’s secretary-general who is serving five consecutive life imprisonment terms in Israel for masterminding the Palestinian intifada against the Israeli occupation. Read more about Crowded field for Palestinian election 

We’re in a time of transition. Yasser Arafat died right after Kerry lost the presidential election. The opposition to the Presbyterian Church’s decision to investigate selective divestment from companies doing business with Israel’s occupation is growing. And support of them is growing. Meanwhile, Mustafa Barghouti has called for sanctions against Israel, and the Somerville, Mass. Board of Aldermen is debating divestment. It’s a time that calls for clearheadedness. New things are happening, and we need to be prepared to create new strategies. We need honor our despair and anger — they are the outward manifestation of our moral compass. Read more about The Panic 

On Sunday, November 21 at 7:15AM, bulldozers and armed security guards arrived at the home of Al-Helou family in Jerusalem to announce that their land will be confiscated for the expansion of the university dormitories. The Al-Helou family is among seven families whose houses are trapped among the university dormitory buildings. They have lived in this area, called Ard Al-Samar, since 1948 when they were forced out of the Jerusalem village of Lifta. The dormitory buildings have been closing in on the families, who are now confined in small pockets of land surrounded by the fences. Shirabe Yamada witnessed the destruction. Read more about Photostory: Hebrew University to displace Palestinian families 

The volume of children recruited in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a small fracton of the problem in other conflict zones such as in Africa. A new report stated that both Israeli and Palestinian government forces have been implicated in the misuse of Palestinian children. While the Palestinian Authority has recruited some under-18s for its security forces, the Israeli army and intelligence services have sought to recruit children as informers, often putting pressure on them to collaborate. Israel detaines at least 350 Palestinian children a year. Some of these children have reported torture and are often treated in ways which fall short of standards on juvenile justice. Read more about Limited number of child soldiers, all sides implicated 

The Palestinian Legislative Council has begun making changes in the electoral system. One should expect that those members of the Legislative Council would have learned from mistakes made during the 1996 elections. Again, party politics has driven politicians change the rules to benefit the ruling party. Reviewing the 1996 electoral system, one must expect that people learn from their mistakes. Between 1996 and 1998 EI’s Arjan El Fassed was doing research on institutional design and the choices made by Palestinian officials. Today he looks back at the 1996 elections to draw conclusions for the coming elections. Read more about On the Palestinian Road to Elections: The System 

The first priority for Palestinian leaders now must be to defend their people against Israel’s relentless colonization and violence and not to negotiate with Israeli guns to Palestinian heads. They must formulate a national strategy to regain Palestinian rights enshrined in UN Resolutions, clearly explain this strategy, and organize Palestinians and allies everywhere to struggle for it. Palestinians should seek to emulate the success of the African National Congress that freed South Africans from apartheid by confronting and defeating injustice, not seeking to accommodate it, writes EI co-founder Ali Abunimah. Read more about What Palestinians should do now 

In the past few days I have been asked about my feelings towards the death of Arafat by a number of students at university. Just as every other Palestinian, my feelings cannot be boxed one way or the other. As this event marks the passing of a unique Palestinian. One whom powerfully resisted in the struggle for my people, at the same token, was neglectful and corrupt. Peace will not be easily achieved with his passing, as there are no plans to remove the wall, the olive orchards are still gone, the illegal settlements are still polluting ‘67 Palestine, and the exiled refugees worldwide will not suddenly be allowed to return home. Read more about Reflections on Arafat from Australia 

“After the death of Yasser Arafat, it was impossible not to note the grief and sadness of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories and in the Diaspora, an emotion echoed by leaders of other liberation struggles, including Nelson Mandela. Most of the Jewish voices inside Israel were conveyed a different perspective, one that ignored the fact that Israel is also the home of many Palestinians. A free election to choose a new leader must ensure the participation of all Palestinians, including prisoners and refugees.” Adri Nieuwhof and Jeff Handmaker comment from The Netherlands. Read more about World must take firm stand on free elections in Palestine 

Tension and apprehension filled the air in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts on the night of Monday November 8, 2004.  The Somerville Board of Aldermen held a public meeting to consider a non-binding resolution to divest from Israel bonds and from companies who profit from the human rights abuses carried out by Israel against Palestinian people. If it passes, it will be the first such resolution in the world to be passed by a city. The Presbyterian Church and the National Lawyers Guild have already voted to divest and The Anglican Church is considering it. Tom Wallace reports for EI. Read more about Sell-by date of war crimes about to expire in Somerville, MA? 

We piled into four shiny, new Mercedes, and headed into a foggy night in Tunisia, speeding up and down hills until we came to an office in a suburb. Armed young guards lounged at the front door. They were smiling broadly and looked like they wanted to high-five us rather than do any security checks. Our delegation filed into the main room. A burgundy sofa-set curved around half of the room, in the middle of which was an office chair on wheels. In it sat Yasser Arafat, devoid of his trademark kaffiyeh. He was in high spirits, despite the late hour, and welcomed those he’d met before with kisses and hugs, and then shook hands with the rest of us. He looked at me and asked, out of the blue: “Are you Irish?” EI co-founder Laurie King-Irani reflects on Arafat’s legacy and failings. Read more about After Arafat: refracted reflections 

With the whole of the West Bank locked down by the Israeli army on the day of Yasser Arafat’s burial, we made our way to Beitunia, the official crossing point into Ramallah from Israel. For Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs, Israel’s Palestinian citizens and foreigners it was the sole gateway to the Muqata’a compound, the place where “Abu Ammar”, the Palestinian president, was to be buried. Greeting us at a dusty car park before Beitunia checkpoint was a short khaki-clad soldier, armed with clipboard, called Tali - we knew that because she was wearing a name tag in three languages. She and the other soldiers had also been ordered to take off their helmets and berets and wear instead customer-friendly blue baseball caps bearing the initials MP (presumably short for Military Police). Read more about Palestinians reach out to their leader for a final embrace 

The Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence is larger than the late President Yasir Arafat. The decades-long symbolism that Arafat embodied should not be underestimated. It is this symbolism that Palestinians are mourning. Despite the confusion of the hour, one fact remains clear. The Palestinian people, collectively, whether in the Occupied Territories, scattered in squalid refugee camps around the Middle East, or living in exile, will never wake up one day and accept the historic injustice that has been done to them. Read more about Palestine Greater Than Arafat  

Hamas has joined other Palestinian political factions in wishing the ailing Yasir Arafat a speedy recovery, but it is also readying for life after Arafat. The ailing Palestinian leader, though disliked by many Palestinians for a variety of reasons, still enjoys widespread respect among the wider public, including the powerful Islamist camp. Hamas realises, as, indeed, does the rest of the Palestinian political class, that the political diminution of Arafat and certainly his death would signal the end of an era and the beginning of a new one whose features and borders are difficult to determine now. Khalid Amayreh reports. Read more about Hamas prepares for post-Arafat era 

Olive harvesting, an ancient practice that holds great spiritual and economic significance to Palestinians, is threatened by Israel’s colonization of West Bank lands. In areas such as the village of Jayyous, farmers have been cut off from their olive orchards by the apartheid wall Israel is illegally building on Palestinian land with the intention of annexing precious natural resources to the Israeli side while preventing the rightful Palestinian owners access to their land. But here in Yanoun, it is the Israeli settlers themselves who harass and shoot at the Palestinian harvesters, whose only crime is their desire to work the land that their ancestors have tended for generations. Read more about Photostory: Olive harvest in Lower Yanoun 

In Britain, the recent publication of Glasgow University Media Group’s book ‘Bad News from Israel’ has again highlighted the depth of ignorance around the Israel-Palestine conflict and the media’s inadequacies in providing vital historical and legal context within its news coverage. Looking beyond the realm of TV news to media coverage of the conflict as a whole, it is no surprise that the likes of News International’s Times, or the Daily Telegraph with its explicit pro-Israel editorial policy, would be unwilling to address the ideological issues that lie at the heart of the conflict, but what some might find surprising is that this ideological void also exists within the supposedly liberal/centre-left press such as the Guardian and Independent. Benjamin Counsell makes the case, Guardian comment editor and columnist Seumas Milne responds. Read more about The Guardian of Zionism: The "Liberal" Press and its Missing Contexts 

We all cannot sleep, this Friday early morning. Mary, Jara and I sit around the TV to watch the latest news about Arafat. The best news on offer is the announcement that he is not yet dead but in coma, a “reversible coma,” it is said later on. Palestinian spokespersons in Ramallah and Paris were yesterday contradicting each other. I am reminded of the repeated complaints, at a recent conference, by young Palestinian media students about the presence of multiple spokespersons at the PNA. Jara solemnly announces that she hopes that “our leader will not die.” Toine van Teeffelen writes about the feeling in the streets of Bethlehem. Read more about The Mountain Shakes 

Had we awakened to a John Kerry victory, anyone seriously concerned about the conflicts in Palestine and Iraq would have faced the stark reality that Kerry offered nothing substantially different from President George W. Bush in either situation. Yet that provides little consolation for seeing Bush re-elected, as the desire to see him defeated had little to do with support for Kerry. What many wanted was accountability - to see the author of so many disastrous policies thrown out. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah examines what Bush’s victory means for the Middle East. Read more about Bush, America and the Middle East 

Today we arose at 6am to go watch the children come to school. After repeated stone throwing, shouting, and threats by settlers, the children are taking the long way. They ride donkeys for two hours on the mountains around the settlement and outpost. We station ourselves along their path at strategic places where we can see both the children and the settlement. We would have time to act if settlers come out of the trees, we plan to draw them away from the children, call an Israeli activist friend who can mobilize the army and police, and then attempt to get space between the settlers and the trees so that they are more likely to be caught. This isn’t the best of plans, but every problem has a solution (kul mushkilah ilhaa hal), and this seems to be the best one for now. Read more about Diaries from Tuwani 

In the early hours of October 28, as dozens of journalists, mid-rung political officials and curious onlookers milled around outside President Arafat’s Ramallah compound speculating on the health of their leader, one Palestinian reporter evoked critical minutes in the shaping of early Islam. Cynically, he recalled how the Prophet Mohammed’s followers disputed the succession only hours after he lay dead. It was an acknowledgement of the moment’s import (some believed the president had already passed away) and impending uncertainty. From this week’s Palestine Report, Charmaine Seitz reports. Read more about Arafat's departure brings uncertainty