This week the Israeli soldier who shot and killed Tom Hurndall, a 22-year-old British peace activist, in Rafah in the Gaza Strip was convicted by an Israeli court of manslaughter. The judgment was a belated and incomplete victory for Tom’s parents. Journalist Jonathan Cook investigated a much earlier killing of a British citizen by an Israeli soldier, who has gone unpunished to this day. Iain Hook, a 54-year-old United Nations worker in Jenin refugee camp, was killed in cold blood by an Israeli marksman in November 2002. Both the Israeli army and the United Nations investigated the killing but the matter was quietly dropped by both sides. Read more about The Killing of Iain Hook: Why the Time for Justice is Now 

EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah examines the Israeli plan for “disengagement” from Gaza. While American, European and Arab diplomats pretend the Gaza plan is an achievement of the “peace process” and a step in fulfilling the Road Map, Abu Nimah argues that it is nothing of the sort. Israel is being forced to withdraw only because of stiff Palestinian resistance. At the same time, Israel is trying to extract a price for leaving Gaza and impose additional costs, burdens and conditions on the Palestinians. Will Israel be allowed to turn defeat into victory? Read more about Dancing to Sharon's tune 

On Monday 27 June 2005 a military court convicted Israeli Sergeant Taysir Wahid of the “manslaughter” of British peace activist and photographer Tom Hurndall. On April 11, 2003, Hurndall was shot in the head and suffered irreversible brain damage, dying from his wound a year later. Wahid was convicted of a total of six charges, including obstructing justice and providing false testimony as well as conduct unbecoming a soldier. A sentencing hearing is to be held on July 5. The court found that Taysir shot Hurndall with a sniper rifle using a telescopic sight, adding that the soldier gave a “confused and even pathetic” version of events. Read more about Israeli soldier convicted for killing Tom Hurndall 

Kalandia checkpoint, few vendors. As has been reported, every few hours they go over to the peddlers, and either they beat them or they turn over their carts with all their merchandise, or they both beat them and turn over their carts. Its seems that the favorite sport among soldiers at Kalandia during the last three years, hunting down and shooting at children from the Kalandia refugee camp, has been replaced with the abuse of vendors. Bulldozers, with their protruding teeth, are overturning the earth in the area that is now known as “the Quarry,” and is about to become a veritable Apartheid terminal. Read more about Another Wednesday at Kalandia checkpoint 

In April 2005, Nick Dearden travelled around occupied Palestine to witness the effects of over four years of Intifada and thirty years of occupation with the indie Glasgow band Belle & Sebastian. He witnessed the impact of the Wall on Palestinian communities, the expansion of settlements, fenced off Palestinian villages, settlers in Hebron, the dire situation of Bedouin, the effects of house demolitions and he visited the Gaza Strip. “Only when one reaches Rafah - the border line between Palestine and Egypt - does one realize that the violence these people have seen has been an even heavier burden than poverty they suffer.” Read more about A wall as a faultline separating the haves and have-nots 

The realities that Palestinians experience in West Bank villages contradict hopes for peace and instead signal a deepening of Israel’s occupation. The Israeli army recently delivered a seizure order to Wadi Foquin and three neighboring villages about 12 miles southwest of Bethlehem for 189 acres of our land. The army justifies this seizure as necessary to prevent terrorist attacks and to build a security wall. The order has left our small village in crisis, its very existence threatened. Wadi Foquin lost 80 percent of its original land when Israel was established in 1948. Later, the creation of the Israeli settlement of Betar Illit consumed about 175 acres of village land. The army now wants to seize the remaining property. Read more about Israeli land seizures undercut hopes for peace 

Haifa has attracted many Palestinians from the North, in addition to the residents that remained in Haifa after 1948. But, a considerable number of Haifa’s Palestinian residents had lived in Haifa for decades without having been defined as legal residents of Haifa in the population registry. The unofficial estimation of the Palestinian population in Haifa is around 30,000, leaving around 6,000 Palestinians officially unrecognised. Around 121,000 Palestinians were dispossessed from Haifa and from 58 surrounding villages. Adri Nieuwhof and Jeff Handmaker visited Haifa and give voice to those who remained and those dispossessed. Read more about Haifa, peaceful town with a silent pain 

In Gaza and north of the West Bank, the Israelis are taking down what should never have been put up in the first place (their illegal settlements), all the while muttering, “they haven’t made us do it; we are doing it on our own”. On the West Bank, the Israelis are busy constructing what must in future be taken down and the US taxpayer is footing the bill! Day by day, what will have to be dismantled grows, concrete slab by concrete slab, what has to be “withdrawn” proliferates, and there is no one to stop it or even to protest against it. Read more about History's Greatest Reoccuring Hoax: Colonization "For Security Reasons" 

In Palestinian-Israeli politics, Israel remembers that there are certain mutual understandings used to manage the troubled relationship only when Palestinians take actions that anger the Israelis. Only in such circumstances does Israel complain of threats to the roadmap, the Sharm El Sheikh understandings, or even the entire peace process. When the Palestinians do whatever they are asked, however, such understandings and frameworks suddenly cease to exist. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah looks at current Palestinian Authority strategy and considers alternatives. Read more about A better strategy for the Palestinian Authority 

Hamas says it is being approached by European representatives seeking dialogue on the resistance movement’s role in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Under heavy Israeli and American pressure, Hamas, including its political wing, was placed on the EU list of terrorist groups two years ago. The US had classified Hamas as a “terrorist group” several years earlier, citing resistance attacks, including suicide bombings, by Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, against Israeli civilian and military targets. However, the growing popularity of Hamas, which found expression in recent elections in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has prompted European policy planners to have second thoughts. Read more about Hamas: EU, US want to talk 

Shadi sucks on two cigarettes at a time, the twin smoke curling up the side of his right arm like conjoined snakes. The Bethlehem air is crisp and wet; the main street hums with traffic. “Life has a beginning and an end, just like these cigarettes,” he says, pinching them between his calloused fingers. Shadi arches his eyebrow at me, squinting in the muted sunlight streaked across his face. He offers me his L&M pack. I take the last one, and we sit on the curb, silently smoking, watching the three bluish-gray plumes wind themselves up over our heads, dissipating across the concrete rooftops of Dheisheh camp, joining with the hazy fog cover, and settling, invisibly, into the atmosphere, to mingle with the ghosts. Read more about Portraits of Dheisheh 

On May 31, Eitan Bronstein gave a presentation at the Tel Aviv University conference on “Zionism: Ideology versus Reality”. The Zochrot organization is devoted to introducing the Palestinian Nakba into the discourse of Jews in Israel, in order to achieve accountability for the tragedy of 1948. This accountability is a necessary condition of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Through its activities, Zochrot is trying to create contact, a meeting, between Palestinian internal refugees from a particular village and the Jews who live on the land of the same village. The Palestinian refugee is a threatening figure for the Israeli Jews, since he awakens the demon of the original sin through which the Jewish state was established. Read more about They are afraid: Israeli Jews and Palestinian refugees 

Language, as George Orwell remarked, is a proxy for power. According to the celebrated author of “1984,” those in power use language to disseminate truth selectively through a process of representation and concealment. When applied to the region of Israel/Palestine, Orwell’s insights reveal how this interplay of representation and concealment permeates the exercise of power, and why, absent changes in the discourse of the powerful side, there is little reason to expect any progress in the situation. Read more about Power, propaganda and the promised land 

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has just completed a “successful” visit to Washington. He expressed great satisfaction with the results, and comparing what he had expected to what he had achieved, he must be right. Regular EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah argues that despite the fanfare and the claims, what the visit actually brought to the Palestinians amounts to much less. Abu Nimah notes that Bush was visibly cordial. He praised Abbas, described him as “a man of peace,” thus elevating his stature to that of Sharon, and addressed him right from the start as “Mr President”, when Arafat had never achieved anything beyond “Mr Chairman.” Read more about Time to admit it is only gravel