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For farmers, much of their land remains out of reach

1 December 2006


Jayyous’s farmers are used to surveying their land from their commanding hilltop village in the northern West Bank. But for many, gazing is now all they can do. Israel’s West Bank barrier has separated the village of Jayyous from 9,500 of its 13,600 dunums (a dunum is 1,000 square metres) of land, and the Israeli authorities have denied them permits to access it. “In the beginning, they gave permits to pass through gates in the barrier to 90 per cent of the people here, including children,” said Mustafa Samha, 27, a psychologist whose father has been barred from his land. “But after six months they began reducing the number of people they gave permits to.” 

New Zealand Attorney General stays prosecution of Ya'alon for war crimes

30 November 2006


Moshe Ya’alon was spared arrest or any proper prosecution process in New Zealand on 28 November, despite a decision on 27 November 2006 by His Honour Judge Avinash Deobhakta in the District Court at Auckland to issue warrants for his arrest on suspicion of committing a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949, which is a criminal offence in New Zealand under the Geneva Conventions Act 1958 and International Crimes and International Criminal Court Act 2000. Moshe Ya’alon is a 56 year old Israeli national who was Chief of Staff of the Israeli military from 9 July 2002 to 1 June 2005, answerable directly to the Prime Minister. 

Israeli high court approves apartheid wall in Bir Nabalah

26 November 2006


The High Court approved the plan to run a barrier around five Palestinian villages northwest of Jerusalem , and imprison them in an enclave that will separate them from East Jerusalem and neighboring Palestinian villages. The five villages in the enclave are Beit Hanina al-Balad (1,400 residents), Bir Nabala (6,100), al-Jib (4,600), al-Judeira (2,100), and Qalandiya (1,200), which have a total population of more than 15,000 persons (hereafter: the Bir Nabala enclave). 9 high court justices approved the route of the barrier in the area, and ruled that imprisoning the villages in an enclave does not cause disproportionate harm to their residents. 

Nobel laureate Tutu to head UN rights probe of Israeli killing of Palestinian civilians

29 November 2006


Former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu will head the United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission into Israeli military operations in Gaza established after 19 Palestinian civilians were killed in an attack on the town of Beit Hanoun earlier this month. A leading figure in the struggle against apartheid, Archbishop Tutu chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 1995. Israel has said the Beit Hanoun attack was the result of a technical error and apologized. 

Human Rights Watch denying Palestinians the right to nonviolent resistance

Jonathan Cook 30 November 2006


If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties — a grandmother — chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp. Despite the “Man bites dog” news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly — it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only on the destruction of Israel. 

Launch of the International Academy of Art Palestine

29 November 2006


The artists of Palestine will step out of a dream and into reality as the launch of the project to establish International Academy of Art Palestine takes place on Thursday, December 7, 2006. “Art is of vital importance in national identity-building. It helps to build bridges, plays a part in social development and inspires people to reflect on their situation. This is why the opening of the Academy in Ramallah is such an important occasion,” said the Norwegian Minster of International Development, Erik Solheim. Important for IAAP is maintaining the collective Palestinian memory, history and identity by offering the local population and the international community new images of Palestine and Palestinians. 

Farewell to Arms in Gaza

Rami Almeghari Gaza Strip 29 November 2006


The title of this piece is not related to Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms, but is instead a reference to a conflict in the Middle East, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, particularly the part of that conflict being played out in Gaza, an area which has remained one of the most highly volatile places on this earth for several decades. In the last decade, the conflicting parties have time and again said “farewell to arms” amidst deaths caused by their conflict, with the hope that such an announcement would save them from more bloodshed. The past five months saw the most severe round of fighting in Gaza, that has so far claimed the lives of 479 Palestinians. 

Apartheid: Israelis adopt what South Africa dropped

John Dugard 29 November 2006


Former President Jimmy Carter’s new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” is igniting controversy for its allegation that Israel practices a form of apartheid. As a South African and former anti-apartheid advocate who visits the Palestinian territories regularly to assess the human rights situation for the U.N. Human Rights Council, the comparison to South African apartheid is of special interest to me. Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial discrimination that the white minority in South Africa employed to maintain power over the black majority. 

Write to thank Atlanta Journal Constitution for honest opinion piece

29 November 2006


Today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran the following op-ed by John Dugard, a South African former anti-apartheid leader. He is currently the Special Rapporteur on Palestine to the United Nations Human Rights Council. He not only compares Israeli policies to apartheid, but says that in many ways Israeli policies are worse than South African apartheid was. Please take a minute to write a letter to the editor thanking the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for running this honest piece. 

Jihad, hummous and airport security: It's the Arab Comedy Festival, of course!

Maureen Clare Murphy 4 December 2006


“People don’t know anything about us. That’s why we’re doing comedy,” New York Arab-American Comedy Festival co-founder Dean Obeidallah explained at the Festival’s opening night at the Gotham Comedy Club on 14 November 2006. Following sold-out shows in previous years, the 4th Annual Festival extended to six nights, featuring two stand-up comedy nights, a short film night, and three sketch comedy theatre nights (to which a fourth show was added and sold out as well). The week kicked off with a press conference held by the New York Foreign Press Center of the — no joke — U.S. State Department.