If the Oval Office guest list is an indicator, US President Barack Obama is making good on his commitment to try to revive the long-dead Arab-Israeli peace process. As this process gets under way, the United States — Israel’s main arms supplier, financier and international apologist — faces huge hurdles. It is deeply mistrusted by Palestinians and Arabs generally, and the new administration has not done much to rebuild trust. Read more about Mr. Abbas goes to Washington 

In addition to a long list of films exploring themes of social injustice and conflict, Swedish filmmaker PeÅ Holmquist has directed several on Palestine. Young Freud in Gaza (2008), his most recent documentary on the subject, enters the recesses of Palestinian society as it copes with life under Israeli occupation. Directed with Holmquist’s longtime partner, Beirut-born Armenian filmmaker and journalist Suzanne Khardalian, the 60-minute film follows Ayed, a 27-year-old psychologist working for the Palestinian Authority’s Clinic for Mental Health in northern Gaza. Maymanah Farhat reviews for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about At a breaking point: "Young Freud in Gaza" 

Contrary to the heavily-hyped image according to which the policy output of Finland is even-handed and neutral in the Israel/Palestine conflict, Finland is actually a major arms trading partner with Israel. Recent reports by the Committee of 100 in Finland, Amnesty International, as well as an article in Finland’s biggest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, all revealed Finland’s deeply troubling attitude towards the actions of the State of Israel. Bruno Jäntti comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Finnish-Israeli arms trade flouts EU regulations 

Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) is calling for the replacement of committees, which control the West Bank’s water, for having “failed both sides” with “catastrophic” consequences. “It is time to replace the failed mechanism of the Joint Water Committees established under Oslo [the peace accords of the mid-1990s], with an institution where Palestinians and Israelis are true partners in both water supply and management responsibilities,” said Nader Khateeb, the Palestinian Director of FoEME. Arwa Aburawa reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about West Bank water access mired in politics 

I cannot recall a more important meeting between an American president and an Israeli prime minister than today’s meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Will the Obama administration have the courage to challenge Netanyahu, or will all the talk of change dissolve in the face of a concerted one-two punch from Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Mustafa Barghouthi comments. Read more about Israel's choice, Obama's challenge 

KAFR BADA, Lebanon (IRIN) - For the last 30 years Ali Mohammed Hindawi, aged 84, has lived alone in a rusty tin shack in south Lebanon, without water, electricity or a toilet, sleeping among chickens, flies and litter, and separated from his family by displacement and poverty. “What do I think about at night? I think about my situation, that this is not a life for me,” said the frail old man, barely able to sit up after weathering another winter of freezing temperatures and downpours. Read more about Palestinian refugees neglected in "gatherings" 

The scene of Mahmoud Jilu, four years old, rolling his ball with friends doesn’t seem weird at all until you see where he is playing. Mahmoud runs after the ball into a backyard full of graves forming the cemetery where his family has lived since they can remember. The six-member Jilu family are all jammed together in a tiny house with one bedroom and a small space for the kitchen with a tomb next to it. Read more about Living amongst the dead in Gaza 

BEIRUT (IRIN) - Deminers in south Lebanon clearing hundreds of thousands of unexploded Israeli-dropped cluster bomb submunitions will lose two-thirds of their teams this year unless a drastic funding shortfall is addressed. The shortfall could mean that the mostly agricultural land will not be cleared of deadly ordnance for eight years or more. Read more about Funding cuts threaten cluster bomb demining 

Fair criminal trials in EU member states, especially if they result in convictions, could provide genuine deterrence and begin to provide justice for Palestinian victims of Israeli actions. The EU has a massive role in that regard. Instead of paying lip service to injustices inflicted upon the Palestinian people by issuing statements “deploring the loss of life” and promises to “follow closely investigations into alleged violations of international humanitarian law,” EU countries would achieve much more by applying the rule of law to Israel, starting with making their laws match their obligations under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Daniel Machover and Adri Nieuwhof comment for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about EU obligated to prosecute war crime suspects 

GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - Palestinians in Gaza have a colloquial term to describe the buzzing of Israeli warplanes that is an ever-present feature of their lives: zanana. The gallows humor of likening instruments of death to honey bees might suggest that the people of this crowded sliver of land on the Mediterranean have found a way of coping with the occupation that has lasted more than four decades. Yet the planes also remind Palestinians of what they fear most: that they could come under fresh attack at any time. Read more about Israel's psychological siege 

My dear Palestinian brothers and sisters, I have come to your land and I have recognized shades of my own. My land was once one where some people imagined that they could build their security on the insecurity of others. They claimed that their lighter skin and European origins gave them the right to dispossess those of a darker skin who lived in the land for thousands of years. Farid Esack writes a letter to the Palestinian people spray-painted on Israel’s wall in the West Bank. Read more about An injury to one ... 

RAFAH, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - Jihad al-Shaar is pleased with his mud-brick house in the Moraj district of Gaza. The 80-square meter home is a basic one-story, two-bedroom design, with a small kitchen, bathroom and sitting room, made mostly with mud and straw. “My wife and our four daughters and I were living with family, but it was overcrowded, impossible. We knew we had to build a home of our own,” Shaar said. Read more about Palestinians rebuild with mud 

For the UN secretary-general, Israeli bombing is good — although he would like perhaps to see a little bit less. But, in tune with his political masters, he considers Palestinians to have no right to any form of self-defense against the Israeli occupation, constant aggression and the Israeli, internationally-supported, deadly siege, with whatever means they have at their disposal. Hasan Abu Nimah comments. Read more about Ban Ki-moon's moral failure 

About six months after Israel’s attorney general publicly announced an effort to criminalize dissent, state authorities have upped the ante in their “war” — as the Israeli daily Haaretz called it last September — against Israel’s youth; against the broad, grassroots movement slandered by officials as “draft shirkers.” Rela Mazali comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Israel's war on dissent 

More than 700 Palestinian workers in Gaza who suffered on-the-job accidents inside Israel used to receive monthly disability payments from Israeli employers. But in January 2009, workers stopped receiving these payments as the Israeli courts decided that Israeli insurance companies are no longer liable towards Palestinians living in what the state has declared a “hostile entity.” Rami Almeghari reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Gaza laborers injured in Israel left to dry 

The Derail Veolia and Alstom Campaign, operating in full coordination with the leadership of the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), is in full swing. After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized Israel in Geneva, the BNC called on Iran to cut its business ties with Veolia Environment and Alstom. The French transportation giants are involved in the Israeli light rail project in occupied Jerusalem, linking the city with the illegal settlements on Palestinian land. Adri Nieuwhof and Omar Barghouti comment for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Putting words of support into boycott action