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Bush Urged to Make Israeli-Palestinian Peace Now

Jim Lobe 22 January 2007


WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (IPS) - As U.S. President George W. Bush puts the final touches on his State of the Union Address, an unusually broad group of Middle East specialists here is hoping that he will make his proposed two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a centrepiece of both his speech and his last two years in office. Despite the political weakness of both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the group, the Campaign for American Leadership in the Middle East (CALME), believes that the current moment offers a major opportunity for a breakthrough in the 60-year-old conflict. 

Important Lessons: Integrated Education in the State of Israel

Ilona Drewry 22 January 2007


The current public education system in Israel mirrors the wider divisions in society. It is divided into separate sectors: religious Jewish, secular Jewish, Orthodox Jewish and Arab. Although roughly one quarter of Israel’s 1.6 million schoolchildren are Arab, their parallel education system reveals fundamental inequality. The 2001 Human Rights Watch report “Second Class: Discrimination against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools” details the extent of the inequalities in funding, facilities, teacher-student ratios. Integrated schools represent a glimmer of light in this picture of a discriminatory and segregated education system. 

Jewish Like Me

Jesse Rosenfeld 22 January 2007


Like most kids growing up Jewish, I loved Israel. I identified with the country and saw my Jewish identity expressed in it. Maybe it was because I found inspiration in an Israeli culture that seemed to focus on youth. I liked how David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, referred to the “New Israeli Jew” — strong, committed and independent — as opposed to the idea of a “European Jew” — weak, emasculated, and dependent. The Israeli myth allowed me to reject the stuffiness of North American Jewish culture while keeping a sense of an imagined community that was still accepted, and even encouraged, by my family and community. As I explored this more, I began to realize that Zionism was synonymous with a violent colonization and occupation of another people. 

New TV journalists held for past month on theft charges

19 January 2007


Reporters Without Borders has written to Lebanese information minister Ghazi Aridi urging him to do everything possible to obtain the release of New TV journalists Firas Hatoum and Abdel-Azim Khayat, and their driver Mohammed Barbar, who have been held since 19 December for entering the apartment of a key witness in the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. “These journalists have been in prison for a month now,” the press freedom organisation said. “We will remain on alert until they are freed. We call on the authorities to stop considering this as a criminal case.” 

Carter and Camp David, where it all began

Zachary Wales 22 January 2007


Now it’s on. The debate over President Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace not Apartheid has become a mainstream staple. Turn on Fox News and see resigned Carter aid Steve Berman bullied into saying that Carter is not only anti-Semitic, but supports terror. Open the New York Times, Amazon.com, Washington Post and find outraged columnists, petitioning consumers, D-Rep. Lady Macbeth washing her hands of that dreaded a-word. But like most things Israeli and Palestinian, few are taking note of history and what it might mean to an ex-president. 

Hebron Occupied, And Deserted

Nora Barrows-Friedman 22 January 2007


HEBRON, Jan. 22 (IPS) - As the illegal Israeli occupation grinds on, the daily situation for Palestinians worsens by the day. Hebron presents a vivid picture of the cumulative face of this colonial project. Hebron, about 35km south of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, has historically existed as a mixed Muslim-Jewish city, but over the last few decades the Israeli authorities have been choking its 150,000 Palestinians while supporting the settler movement. Approximately 650 radical right-wing settlers have taken over parts of the old city, destroyed Palestinian neighbourhoods and the economic infrastructure, and are free to terrorise Palestinians at whim. 

Let our children live

Nurit Peled-Elhanan Israel 21 January 2007


Bassam Aramin spent nine years in an Israeli jail for being a member of the Fatah in the Hebron area and trying to throw a grenade at an Israeli army Jeep which was patrolling in Occupied Hebron. On Wednesday morning, an Israeli soldier shot his nine-year-old daughter, Abir, in the head. The soldier will not spend an hour in jail. In Israel, soldiers are not imprisoned for killing Arabs. Never. It does not matter whether the Arabs are young or old, real or potential terrorists, peaceful demonstrators or stone throwers. The army has not conducted an inquiry in Abir Aramin’s death. As far as the Israeli Defense Forces are concerned, the shooting did not happen. 

The Coming Storm

Nora Barrows-Friedman Dheisheh refugee camp, Palestine 21 January 2007


It is the dead of winter here in Palestine. Slick rivers of mud and sewage drain into the gutters as hot tea is served in small glass cups, over and over again, to ward off the biting cold. People sit huddled near the gas heaters, rain pounding against the windows and steel doors as they brace for the next storm — not just the one coming down in a torrent from above, but the one just five miles up the road, past the illegal checkpoints, where Israel is planning the next step in its project of ethnic expulsion and sanitization. Six months after my last trip here, and I am once again in a permanent state of shock and fury. 

Unexploded ordnance killed 27 since end of war

19 January 2007


There have been 27 reported fatalities and 179 reported injuries from all types of unexploded ordnance in Lebanon. Of these totals, males and females 18 years old or younger accounted for six of the fatalities and 64 of the injuries, according to MACC-SL. All the fatalities and all but five of the injuries resulted from cluster munitions. So far, 839 cluster bomb strike locations have been identified in the south. For each cluster-bomb strike, clearance personnel must verify an area totaling 196,000 square meters to locate (and eventually destroy) all unexploded bomblets. 

The hate that dare not speak its name

Eóin Murray West Bank, Palestine 20 January 2007


Topography here is in constant fluctuation. From one visit to the next a whole area, or just a small street, can look completely different. In Gaza, maybe it has been destroyed or, sometimes, rebuilt. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, a flow of ongoing construction manifests itself in the wall, in the illegal settlements and in the construction of the discriminatory road system. Today, while driving through the western edges of the West Bank, we began to understand what the “forbidden roads regime” actually means — through an intricate series of road systems Israelis will travel on one set of roads while Palestinians will travel on roads built underneath them.