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Barrier turns village into virtual enclave

11 March 2008


NU’MAN, WEST BANK, 9 March 2008 (IRIN) - “With the Wall’s route like this we can’t go anywhere,” said Yousef al-Darawi, as he drew a map of Israel’s Barrier which blocks Nu’man village off from both East Jerusalem and the West Bank and leaves it a virtual enclave. “All people who want to visit have to be on a list at the checkpoint at the village’s entrance,” he said, including basic service providers. Most of the 170 residents have to enter and exit on foot. 

Dreaming of a better future in Gaza

Fida Qishta Rafah, Gaza Strip 11 March 2008


Israeli officials said on 3 March that they finished their military operation in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli attacks continue, and we fear that Israel is still planning a major invasion. What is happening in Gaza hurts all Palestinians, not just Hamas. Before this assault, the Gaza Strip, with 1.5 million residents, was already like a prison under siege, with dwindling supplies of food, medicine, fuel, clean water and electricity, and growing poverty. Fida Qishta writes from occupied Rafah. 

Israel's ultimate plan for Gaza

Jonathan Cook 10 March 2008


Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s much publicized remark last week about Gaza facing a “shoah” — the Hebrew word for the Holocaust — was widely assumed to be unpleasant hyperbole about the army’s plans for an imminent full-scale invasion of the Strip. More significantly, however, his comment offers a disturbing indication of the Israeli army’s longer-term strategy towards the Palestinians in the occupied territories. EI contributor Jonathan Cook comments. 

No day is women's day in Gaza

Mohammed Omer Gaza Strip 8 March 2008


GAZA CITY, 7 March (IPS) - Mahasen Darduna suffers in ways the world recognizes; her suffering comes at the hands of the Israelis. But there are many Palestinian women whose suffering the world does not see, because their hell is inflicted on them by fellow Palestinians. One way or another, no day is woman’s day in Gaza. For a week, Mahasen Darduna, 30, has sat day and night by her son’s bedside in the hospital. The boy, Yahiya, nine, was among a group of children hit by an Israeli missile while playing football on a field at the Jabaliya refugee camp. 

On International Women's Day, Palestinian women continue their struggle

8 March 2008


On 8 March, the world celebrates International Women’s Day. This is one of the most distinguished events renewing support for women’s issues, their struggle for equality and commitment to women’s enjoyment of all their rights in accordance with international standards and conventions. The latest form of systematic violence by IOF was the military campaign against Jabaliya town in the northern Gaza Strip, which lasted from 28 February to 4 March 2008 

ICRC completes primary water supply to Nahr al-Bared

6 March 2008


BEIRUT, 6 March 2008 (IRIN) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has completed rebuilding the primary water supply network in currently accessible areas of the ruined Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, north Lebanon. Up to 90 percent of the water infrastructure in the areas of Nahr al-Bared outside the official boundary of the “old camp” was damaged or destroyed in a 15-week battle in the summer of 2007 between the army and Islamist militants. 

Interview with single-state activist Dr. Haider Eid

Anna Weekes 11 March 2008


“The establishment of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders is unfeasible. A Bantustan-based system does not guarantee a comprehensive peace. It never did in Apartheid South Africa. Ironically, therefore, what the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 between Israel and the PLO, have led to is a situation that was not envisaged by its signatories, that is the impossibility of establishing a sovereign independent Palestinian state on 22 percent of historic Palestine.” Dr. Haider Eid speaks with Anna Weekes. 

Italian solidarity with Palestinian filmmaker on trial in Israel

Nicola Perugini 9 March 2008


At the end of last November, filmmaker Mohammad Bakri furiously left a press conference organized at the Library of the Auditorium of Rome. He was present because of the performance of the opera Al Kamandjati based on the story of Palestinian musician Ramzi Aburedwan and his music school in Ramallah. The reason for his anger was that not a single journalist asked him any questions when he announced that he would soon be tried in Israel because of his 2002 film Jenin Jenin. 

A defeated policy, not a defeated people

Ali Abunimah 7 March 2008


The fallacy that lies behind the differential concern for the lives of innocent Israelis and Palestinians is that the massacre yesterday in Jerusalem and the massacres in Gaza can be separated. Israeli deaths are “terrorism,” while Palestinian deaths are merely an unfortunate consequence of the fight against “terrorism.” But the two are intricately linked, and what happened in Jerusalem is a direct consequence of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades. Ali Abunimah comments. 

The Nakba generation

Ziad Abbas United States 9 March 2008


This year, it will sixty years since the Nakba, the catastrophe of expulsion of Palestinians from historic Palestine. Generations have been born, have grown up, and have died in refugee camps, but the international community still continues to ignore the political rights of the Palestinian refugees. What makes it sad for me as a refugee — one who was born and grew up in a refugee camp, and struggling not to die in a refugee camp — is that the Nakba generation is dying. Ziad Abbas writes.