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Poverty-stricken Palestinians turn to drugs

26 December 2006


Palestinian refugee Samir Hassan [not his real name] never imagined he would one day replace his UN food coupons with marijuana and heroin, despite the hunger of his children. “My life was normal, everything was normal, but unemployment is difficult and poverty is more difficult. Bad conditions led me down a worse path. I have even had to beg for money,” he said. Hassan, a 35-year-old from the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, cares for nine family members including his sick mother. Before 2000, he used to work in Israel’s shipping industry, but with the outbreak of the second intifada [Palestinians’ uprising against Israeli occupation] in that year most Palestinian labourers from Gaza were banned from entering Israel. 

UN and other members of diplomatic 'Quartet' back continued aid to Palestinians

22 December 2006


Members of the diplomatic ‘Quartet’ on the Middle East - the United Nations, the United States, the Russian Federation and the European Union (EU) - today endorsed the continuation of a stop-gap measure for providing aid directly to the Palestinian people. In a statement, the Quartet backed the continuation for three months of the Temporary International Mechanism, the means devised by the EU and the World Bank to provide aid directly to the Palestinian people by bypassing the Hamas-led Government, which has been isolated internationally because it has not renounced violence and does not recognize Israel. 

Poor data limits aid work

24 December 2006


The lack of centralised, detailed development-related data in Lebanon has hampered the efficiency of emergency and rehabilitation efforts, humanitarian experts have said. “Information has been poorly coordinated, and although you can access, for instance, statistics on a given town or village via the municipality, there is no central mechanism to provide a global view of the different projects going on in Lebanon at any given time,” said Rabih Bashour, coordinator for the relief and reconstruction committee at local NGO Al-Huda Society for Social Care. 

One killed, several injured in continued factional fighting

24 December 2006


At approximately 08:00 on Saturday, 23 December 2006, two masked gunmen opened fire at Captain Hasan Imsa’il Jarbou’, 33, of the Preventive Security Service, when he was near the Star Square in al-Shaboura neighborhood in Rafah. Jarbou’ was seriously wounded by 3 live bullets to the chest and the abdomen. In addition, two bystanders, including a child, were wounded: Amal Eyad Jaber, 9, wounded by a number of live bullet to the hands; and Ahmed Ra’fat Mansour, 20, wounded by a number of live bullets and shrapnel to the abdomen and the left thigh. 

Christmas in Bethlehem 2006

24 December 2006


Bethlehem is home to the Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus is to have been born. Bethlehem is also a city currently surrounded by a concrete wall that isolates the city from the rest of the West Bank — decimating Bethlehem’s economy and preventing Palestinians elsewhere from accessing its holy sites. In a visit to the city last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury described the Israeli-built wall is “a sign of all that is wrong in the human heart.” But despite all its hardships, Bethlehem is celebrating the holiday to the best of its ability. 

Soldier shoots and kills construction worker in Kufr A-Dik village

24 December 2006


On Thursday, 14 December, at around 10:45 in the morning, an Israeli soldier shot to death Wahib a-Dik, a twenty-eight-year-old Palestinian laborer, and father of four. The IDF Spokesperson issued no statement on the incident. The press quoted anonymous military sources who said that a-Dik was shot by a Paratrooper Unit that entered a courtyard in a-Dik Village while chasing youths who had thrown stones. According to these sources, “the company commander saw a-Dik about to throw a brick at soldiers from the top of a flight of stairs. The commander fired two shots at the man, killing him.” 

Rafah Revisited

Bill Dienst Rafah, Gaza Strip 22 December 2006


Yesterday, here in Gaza, I met Scott Kennedy, a former mayor of Santa Cruz, California. He has been traveling in the Middle East and touring the West Bank and Israel. Today Mr. Kennedy is being escorted to visit Rafah, from El Deira Hotel here in Gaza City, by a Palestinian Authority convoy, and I have decided to go along with him. We will also drive through Khan Younis, and through ruins of the former Israeli coastal settlements of Gush Katif, which used take up over a third of the beachfront in the Gaza Strip. We won’t have time to get out of the convoy at these places, however. 

Israel blocks another UN fact-finding mission

Michael F. Brown 22 December 2006


Israel has shut down another internationally mandated investigation of its military actions. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and his high-level fact-finding mission, authorized by the UN’s Human Rights Council, have been refused entry by Israel for so long that they have been forced to call off the visit. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mark Regev disingenuously claimed that Israel had not denied entry, but simply not yet reached a decision. The families of the 19 Palestinian civilians slain at Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on 8 November 2006 will apparently not see even an approximation of justice at this time. 

Lebanon at a tripwire

21 December 2006


Lebanon has badly lost its balance and is at risk of new collapse, moving ever closer to explosive Sunni-Shiite polarisation with a divided, debilitated Christian community in between. The fragile political and sectarian equilibrium established since the end of its bloody civil war in 1990 was never a panacea and came at heavy cost. It depended on Western and Israeli acquiescence in Syria’s tutelage and a domestic system that hindered urgently needed internal reforms, and change was long overdue. But the upsetting of the old equilibrium, due in no small part to a tug-of-war by outsiders over its future, has been chaotic and deeply divisive, pitting one half of the country against the other. 

Supreme Court compels finance ministry to explain exclusion of Arab villages

22 December 2006


On 7 December 2006, the Supreme Court of Israel held a hearing on a petition filed by Adalah, which challenges the state’s compensation scheme for war damages incurred during the second Lebanon war. In the petition, Adalah challenged three designations and compensation formulas regulated by the Minister of Finance in July 2006 as they apply to: ‘border towns’; ‘restricted towns’; and ‘non-governmental organizations (NGOs)’. At the hearing, the Court specifically addressed the issue of the exclusion of four Arab villages (Arab al-Aramshe, Fasuta, Ma’alia and Jesh) from the list of ‘border towns’.