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Fueling disaster

Rami Almeghari Gaza City, Gaza Strip 5 February 2008


At the bus stop at Palestine Square, in the bustling heart of Gaza City, 25-year-old Said Ramadan cried to passersby, “Fuel, fuel, fuel! Come and buy!” Last week Ramadan took advantage of the blasting through of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and the brief respite from months of siege to travel to the nearby Egyptian town of al-Arish and stock up on gallons of fuel. Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza. 

Continuing the struggle

Mika Minio-Paluello London, United Kingdom 4 February 2008


Since being deported from Palestine in the summer of 2005, I’ve been living and working in London. Yet even here, Palestine doesn’t leave you. At dawn on the morning of Friday, 25 January, a friend of mine was shot and left to bleed to death by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank’s Balata refugee camp. When I read the email sent from a friend at 10:23am that stated “I don’t know if you heard, Ahmed Sanaqra was killed yesterday in Balata,” my fist clenched and hit the wall. Mika Minio-Paluello writes from London. 

Beatles: don't let it be!

3 February 2008


The following is an open letter sent to the Beatles on 2 February 2008: Forty-three years ago, the government of Israel banned your performance in the country for fear you would corrupt the minds of Israeli youth. Now, Israel is extending an apology and an invitation to you, hoping you will forget the past and agree to help celebrate its 60th “birthday.” The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel urges you to say no to Israel, particularly since the creation of this state 60 years ago dispossessed and uprooted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands, condemning them to a life of exile and destitution. 

The loneliness of the One-Issue Voter

Laurie King 4 February 2008


There are lots of “One Issue Voters” out here: those who decide to support a candidate based on the sole criterion of abortion, or taxation, or gun control, or crime. For those of us who fall into the “Pro-Palestinian Rights” category of One Issue Voter-hood, it’s a particularly lonely and dispiriting time. It’s as though there’s this big progressive celebration going on, but we haven’t been invited. Laurie King-Irani comments. 

Starving Gaza

Saree Makdisi 2 February 2008


Working together, Hamas and the people of Gaza have forced Egypt’s hand and made much more visible than ever before the role it had been playing all along in the Israeli occupation and strangulation of Gaza; now that its role in assisting Israel has been revealed, it will be difficult for Egypt to go back to the status quo. Gazans have thrown Israel’s plans into disarray, because Israel’s leaders could do little more than watch with pursed lips as the people of Gaza burst out of their prison. Saree Makdisi comments. 

Winograd report ignores civilian deaths

Haider Rizvi 1 February 2008


UNITED NATIONS, 31 January (IPS) - A leading international human rights group is calling into question the findings of an Israeli inquiry into the Jewish state’s war with Lebanon in 2006. The London-based Amnesty International says the Israeli government-appointed Winograd Commission is “deeply flawed” because it fails to address the issue of war crimes against the civilian population in Lebanon. 

Rebel from a bygone era

Karma Nabulsi 31 January 2008


“His very name scatters fire through ice,” wrote Byron of an 18th-century revolutionary leader, and so it has always been with the name of that extraordinary Palestinian, George Habash. Habash died an impoverished refugee in enforced exile in Amman last weekend. What, then, can this revolutionary of a bygone area provide us with now to address today’s bleak geopolitical predicament? Karma Nabulsi comments. 

Rachel's Grove vulnerable in Bethlehem

Adri Nieuwhof and Amer Madi Bethlehem, West Bank 31 January 2008


The deep blue fleecy sky tells a story of idyllic holiday destinations. We are with Abed Rabo from Deheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem, on our way to his land. With support from the Olive Tree Campaign from the Joint Advocacy Initiative, Abed Rabo has planted olive trees to send a clear message to Israel that the land it wants to confiscate for “Greater” Jerusalem is his land. Adri Nieuwhof and Amer Madi write from occupied Bethlehem. 

Israel threatens further supply cuts to Gaza

Peter Hirschberg 30 January 2008


Israeli leaders, incensed that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had not resurrected the felled border wall and stopped the Gazans from entering, began suggesting that they would relinquish control of the strip altogether, leaving Egypt responsibile for the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza. “We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side, we lose responsibility for it,” said Israel’s deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai. “So we want to disconnect from it.” 

Another world is necessary

Serene Assir 30 January 2008


The immensity of the overwhelmingly peaceful movement of Palestinians in and out of north Sinai indicated that another reality is possible and indeed necessary in the Arab world. Occupation in Palestine cannot be successfully challenged if the Arab world does not wake up to the fact that anything but more actions of a similarly massive, popular nature are not encouraged. Acceptance of a continued oppression of Arab popular movements is tantamount to acceptance of Israel’s siege of Gaza. Serene Assir comments from Egypt.