QALQILYA, 26 July 2007 (IRIN) - Three years ago, in July 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague issued an advisory opinion, which, by a vote of 14 to one, declared the barrier illegal, and expressed particular concern that parts of it were being built within the occupied Palestinian territory. In the Qalqilya district of the northern West Bank, many Palestinians were separated from their agricultural land and livelihood, because the barrier did not always follow the internationally recognized “green line” between Israel and the Palestinian area. Read more about Three years after ICJ wall ruling, access to land still denied 

Today, Palestine and the Palestinians are divided as never before. The West Bank and Gaza are geographically and politically separated, divisions which are exacerbated by the political rift between Fatah and Hamas and the specter of civil war. Meanwhile, stateless Palestinian refugees are largely disconnected from their brethren in Palestine and the Diaspora, as well as from any semblance of a representative national movement. EI contributor Osamah Khalil argues that the time is ripe for Palestinians to reclaim their national movement by demanding the dissolving of the PA and the reviving of the PLO. Read more about Reclaiming Palestine 

Any patience we might have once had has dissipated during the past weeks we’ve been stranded here in Egypt — any patience that would have held us over as we have been badly missing our loved ones in Gaza, the patience we might have once had steadily running out along with our money. To learn about these seemingly forgotten Palestinians, EI correspondent Rami Almeghari, also stuck in Egypt, heard the accounts of some of the thousands of people trying to return to their homes and lives in Gaza. Read more about Frustration mounts amongst the stranded at al-Arish 

BRUSSELS, Jul 25 (IPS) - The European Union’s foreign policy supremo Javier Solana this week declared himself “fully behind” the call for an international conference on the Middle East made recently by US President George W. Bush. But is it time for the EU to cease being guided on the Israeli-Palestinian question by the United States, which as the main supplier of weapons to the Israeli military is partisan by definition? Nathalie Tocci from the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels contends that the EU is “working on the margins of US-dictated policies” in the Middle East and that this has proven counterproductive. Read more about Dubious EU support to US challenged 

Anyone who has traveled through Ben Gurion airport in Israel knows that it is a unique experience. For most Israeli Jews, the experience is comforting, a quick and accommodating entry into a nation created and developed for their exclusive benefit. For Palestinian-Americans and many activists working in occupied Palestine it is quite a different experience. Most of these travelers are held for hours and questioned repeatedly, some of who are stripped naked and in some cases (especially in the last two years) denied entry. EI contributor Remi Kanazi reflects on his recent experience there. Read more about Is this Ben Gurion or Hell? 

I thought about the irony as I walked the grounds of the old Orthodox Church, surveying the church and the new wall being constructed around it. We were visiting with members of the al-Mujaydal Heritage Committee who were working to construct this wall in what was the village of al-Mujaydal. Al-Mujaydal was one of the over 500 Palestinian villages destroyed between 1947 and 1949, and its residents among the 750,000 to 900,000 refugees expelled from their homes in what Palestinians remember as the Nakba or “Catastrophe.” Read more about Who are we forgetting?  

JERUSALEM, 20 July (IPS) - In all 255 shackled Palestinian security prisoners boarded buses with windows darkened at the Ketziot prison in southern Israel Friday morning and began their ride northward to the West Bank town of Ramallah — and to freedom. In Ramallah, at the headquarters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, thousands of chanting Palestinians lifted the freshly released prisoners on their shoulders, before moving to a large open-sided tent to perform noon prayers. Read more about Prisoners released -- to Abbas 

My wife and myself, like thousands of other Palestinians, are currently stranded in Egypt since the Rafah crossing to Gaza was closed in mid-June. We are now staying closer to our home of Gaza. The destination this time is not Cairo. Rather, it’s the coastal town of al-Arish now that my wife has completed her medical treatment in the Egyptian capital. In the evening of 7 July, we cheerfully smiled for the first time since my wife was hospitalized in a Cairo hospital a month ago, after the doctor assured us she could leave the hospital. However, EI contributor Rami Almeghari and his wife have been unable to return home. Read more about Stranded at the border 

My mother is in the hospital at the moment. She is severely ill. She was admitted to the hospital three days ago. I cannot reach her. I finished my 45-day speaking tour in the US. All across the US and during every lecture I told the audience about our suffering, living in this big prison called Gaza. I told them about the borders closure and about the patients who passed away while waiting to cross the borders. The borders have been closed for more than five weeks and patients have died while waiting to cross the Rafah crossing, the only crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Read more about My mother is in her last moments and I cannot cross the borders 

This is the state of Lebanon today: deep sectarian anger that could boil over at any moment. In mixed Beirut neighborhoods, tensions rise between Sunnis and Shiites after each bombing. Tempers flare, small fights get out of hand, people start calling their friends and relatives to come in from other areas to help them and eventually the police have to step in. (A Shiite friend who lives in a mainly Sunni neighborhood told me that for several days after Eido’s killing, he found a broken egg each morning on his car.) And there’s no shortage of bombings to stoke tensions. Read more about Lebanon's bloody summer 

It’s difficult for me to live in Lebanon and not be conscious of space and time. The space around me when I’m in an enclosed space like a refugee camp or facing the openness of the Mediterranean Sea along the Corniche or examining the changed landscape of Beirut peppered among the high-rise skyscrapers and bullet-pocked buildings from the Civil War. Those scars on the buildings in Beirut are as ever present whether one is in the city or in a refugee camp, some places more ravaged than others. Read more about A confined space 

As Middle East envoy of “the Quartet,” Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, has been charged with helping to “build up” Palestinian institutions. It is a cruel irony that one of the handmaidens of the destruction of those very institutions is now being dispatched with the portfolio of resurrecting them. Yet, this should not come as a surprise. In spite of Blair’s passionate rhetoric to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict during his decade of rule, he joined Washington in actively subverting Palestinian institutions and their hopes for self-determination. Read more about Toward a Palestinian-led rebuilding 

Wael Zuaiter was the first victim in Europe in a series of assassinations of Palestinian artists, intellectuals and diplomats perpetrated by Israeli agents that was already underway in the Middle East. Zuaiter was gunned down by 12 bullets outside his apartment in Piazza Annibaliano, Rome on 16 October 1972. In 1979, Zuaiter’s companion of eight years, Sydney-born artist Janet Venn-Brown published For a Palestinian: A Memorial to Wael Zuaiter. Artist Emily Jacir writes how a chapter of the work which was to be made into a film became the point of departure for her project “Material for a film.” Read more about "Material for a film": Retracing Wael Zuaiter (Part 1) 

These days the Hamas acting government and Fatah “emergency government” are sapping the interest from any news story that might report on Israel’s criminal acts inside Gaza and the West Bank. Both these Palestinian enclaves are still under Israel’s military occupation — one shunned and isolated by political intrigue and the other apparently working at cooperating with the occupier, and there’s the tragedy of it all. Nothing that has happened in the last fortnight has stopped Israel in its tracks. Read more about Who will save Palestine? 

On Friday, 8 June 2007, my husband Ian flew to Israel. He is in fact on his way to an IT conference in Vienna, but we thought that it would be nice for him to make a short three-day detour to Tel-Aviv to visit my brother and his family and in particular meet my seven and five year old nieces for the first time. At Ben-Gurion airport Ian’s Australian passport was confiscated with no explanation. He was taken to a small interrogation room and had to endure an intimidating questioning about non-existent Saudi and Lebanese visas in his passport. Read more about The Israeli police state 

***Image1***JERUSALEM, 5 July (IPS) - It was the achievement Hamas had been waiting for ever since it vanquished the Fatah movement in Gaza and seized control of the coastal strip last month. Now, the Islamic movement is hoping that the release Wednesday of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, held captive in Gaza for almost four months, will convince the international community that it is a serious partner and is able to impose order on the chaos-ridden, lawless streets of the densely populated strip. Read more about Hamas has hopes from release of BBC reporter  

BEIRUT, 4 July 2007 (IRIN) - The demining agency tasked with neutralizing unexploded ordnance (UXO) from the six-week conflict between militants and the Lebanese army in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp has said the removal of immediate UXO threats will take at least a month. This raises the specter of further unrest among displaced refugees increasingly desperate to return home. “The operation should take around four weeks to eliminate the immediate threats, but there is bound to be UXO still found,” David Horrocks, Lebanon Country Programme Manager for the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), told IRIN. Read more about Deminers urge patience as Palestinians grow restless for return 

Here in Gaza, we’re all listening to the radio and watching the news every hour (our only way of knowing what’s happening in the outside world), waiting to see what Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), Israel and the US are planning for us, and where our fate will take us. This has become more than a prison for the people of Gaza. It’s hard not to feel like animals in a zoo, where we are caged and have enough food for two weeks at a time to keep us alive, but not well or free while someone decides what to do with us. Read more about Hello from Rafah