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Paralysis of the Palestinian 'Authority': What's to be done?

Rima Merriman 2 October 2006


For over a decade now, since the Oslo Agreement signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993, the Palestinians, along with much of the world, have been laboring under a couple of misapprehensions. One is that, with Oslo, Israel had at long last recognized their aspirations, even if only partially. The other is that their leaders, as embodied by the presidency and the government that arose, had the wherewithal to move them towards a full-fledged Palestinian state on the 1967 borders in the face of Israel’s grand plans and intentions in the region. It’s the classic syndrome of desperate people believing what they want to believe. 

Eight killed, including child, in Fateh-Hamas clashes in Gaza Strip

2 October 2006


Eight Palestinians, including a child, and at least 115 others were injured in bloody incidents that included armed clashes in Gaza City on Sunday, 1 October 2006. PCHR strongly condemns these incidents, which extended to other areas throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), and calls upon the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), represented by the Attorney-General to investigate these incidents and bring those found responsible for them to justice. These clashes came in the context of increasing tension and mutual violence between Hamas and Fatah movements, especially as efforts to reach an agreement between the two sides and form a national unity government failed. 

Palestinian Dance Education under Occupation: Need or Frill?

Omar Barghouti 1 October 2006


Despite an almost obvious and persistent need to promote creativity, imagination and freedom of expression as crucial ingredients in cultural development, dance as a form of spiritual and cultural education as well as a useful medium in education has been virtually non-existent in the formal education system in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Music, drama and plastic arts may have fared relatively better, but not by much. It is high time to challenge this deficiency head-on, both from a cultural and a political perspective, particularly since its causes are self-inflicted, to a large extent. 

U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem expresses concern about Israeli refusals to issue visas

1 October 2006


U.S. Consul General Jake Walles and chief staff members of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem and U.S. Embassy in Israel met with representatives of the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to discuss Israel’s new policy of denying entry into Israel of U.S. and other foreign nationals wishing to access the occupied Palestinian territory. The Campaign delegates presented Ambassador Walles with an overview of the Israeli practice and the detrimental effect it is having on family unification, economic and academic development, and the maintaining of a pluralistic social fabric needed to advance an environment for peace in the area. 

Israeli forces kill four, including two boys riding bicycles, in Gaza

1 October 2006


Two of the victims were children brothers, and were killed when IOF fired a surface-to-surface rocket at them without any justification. The other two were killed in Rafah in an extra-judicial execution crime, which also resulted in the injury of two others, one of them a child. PCHR’s preliminary investigation into the first crime indicates that at approximately 9:15 on Friday, 29 September 2006, IOF deployed inside the Gaza Strip near Nahal Oz checkpoint, east of Gaza City, fired a surface-to-surface rocket at two children riding their bicycles near El-Shawwa Gas Station on Salah El-Deen Road west of Beit Lahia. 

Waiting to return to where "the air is different"

Mayssoun Sukarieh Amman, Jordan 30 September 2006


The situation of Laura and Ibrahim is just one of many created by the latest Israeli policy to cleanse Palestine of Palestinians. As their lawyers told them, “The Israeli government wants the least number of Palestinians in the Palestinian territories.” In mid-August, they left Ramallah for Amman, thinking it would be for just a few days, in order to renew their three-month visas to stay legally in Israeli-occupied Ramallah. Their daughter was visiting them in Palestine from the US, and she stayed behind, waiting for them to come back so she could spend the last two weeks of her summer vacation with them. But when they arrived at Tel Aviv Airport, they were detained for a night. 

Probe into Israeli killing of UN monitors unable to determine why appeals were ignored

29 September 2006


A board of inquiry into an Israeli attack in Lebanon that killed four United Nations military observers in July had no access to the commanders involved and was therefore unable to determine why the attacks were not halted despite repeated appeals from UN personnel, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s spokesman said today. The Board, appointed by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) as standard procedure in such circumstances, noted that the Israeli authorities accepted full responsibility for the attack on the UN post at Khiyam and apologized for what they say was an “operational level” mistake, the spokesman added in a statement. 

Intervention to Member States of the United Nations on the Sixth Anniversary of the Second Intifada

29 September 2006


On 29 September 2006, the sixth anniversary of the second intifada against the Israeli occupation, the international community appears to have forgotten the continuing Israeli disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, together constituting the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The Palestinian people looks to the UN General Assembly, the body that in 2004 requested the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the construction of the Wall in the OPT, as a source of hope at a moment of extreme distress and disillusion. 

Six years of Israeli aggression and war crimes in the OPT

28 September 2006


This report coincides with the 6th anniversary of the eruption of the al-Aqsa Intifada, which broke out following the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to al-Aqsa Mosque (the Holy Sanctuary) in occupied Jerusalem. Over the last six years, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have perpetrated grave breaches of international law, including war crimes, against Palestinian civilians in a manner unprecedented since 1967. The sixth year of the Intifada witnessed an increasing escalation in Israeli war crimes as the international community remained silent and the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 failed to meet their obligations to provide protection for Palestinian civilians. 

Bad faith and the destruction of Palestine

Jonathan Cook 29 September 2006


A mistake too often made by those examining Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories — or when analysing its treatment of Arabs in general, or interpreting its view of Iran — is to assume that Israel is acting in good faith. Even its most trenchant critics can fall into this trap. Such a reluctance to attribute bad faith was demonstrated this week by Israel’s foremost human rights group, B’Tselem, when it published a report into the bombing by the Israeli air force of Gaza’s power plant in late June. Jonathan Cook comments.