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UN food aid agency calls for permanent opening of crossing from Israel to Gaza

24 March 2006


With the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip deteriorating and food and other supplies running short due to Israeli closures, the United Nations World Food Programme warned today that it was crucial for this week’s 48-hour opening of the Karni crossing point to become permanent. WFP, which provides food aid to some 160,000 Palestinians in Gaza, was able to bring in 16 containers, containing 300 tons of food, mainly beans and vegetable oil, but this was a very limited amount, agency spokesperson Christiane Berthiaume told a news briefing in Geneva. A further problem was that the Israeli authorities were not allowing WFP to bring out the empty containers, and the agency needed to fill them again and bring them back in. 

Faith-based coalition explores Israeli-Palestinian issue

Kathrynne Skonicki 2 March 2006


The second keynote speaker, Ali Abunimah, compared the current status of Palestinians to the apartheid of South Africa. The writer and commentator on Middle East and Arab-American affairs called for action on the part of Americans. He said, “If you don’t want violence, it’s up to you to provide an alternative.” Abunimah called for boycotts of Israeli products and investments. He also urged those present to contact American legislators who are appropriating funds to the Israeli government. He concluded, “It’s not an option to stay neutral between the strong and the weak because then you are siding with the strong.” 

Rewriting H.R. 4681 so that it actually produces peace

Rima Merriman 24 March 2006


Palestinian newspapers are full of the faces of the new Palestinian government, smart men and one woman, who will come in to lead an already impossible task. There is not one terrorist among them, but that makes no difference to the US which has already started undermining the new government in the name, outrageously, of promoting “the development of democratic institutions in areas under the administrative control of the Palestinian Authority, and for other purposes”. This is the language of an anti-Palestinian bill (H.R. 4681) just introduced in the US House of Representatives. Rima Merriman suggests a rewrite. 

Blaming the lobby

Joseph Massad 24 March 2006


In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other Arabs, in the United States and in the Arab world, have been so awed by the power of the US pro-Israel lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article that exposes the inner workings, the substantial influence, and the financial and political power of this lobby have been greeted with ecstatic sighs of relief that Americans finally can see the “truth” and the “error” of their ways. “But,” asks Jospeh Massad, “when and in what context has the United States government ever supported national liberation in the Third World?” 

Israeli Elections: A Vote for Separation

Jonathan Cook 23 March 2006


A few weeks after Ariel Sharon broke up his Likud party to form a new “centrist” faction, Kadima, his advisers conducted a poll to find out how potential voters would respond if its list of candidates included an Arab. The results were unequivocal: Kadima would lose votes equivalent to between five and seven seats in the 120-member Knesset from Israeli Jews worried that they might be helping to elect an Arab. Kadima appears to be on a winning streak. Separation of the crudest and most ruthless kind is now, as the polls all too clearly demonstrate, precisely what the Israeli consensus demands, writes Jonathan Cook. 

Poll: 68% of American Christians would refuse to live in same building as an American Jew

23 March 2006


From the BNN Department of Change One or Two Words in an Israeli Media Article and See How it Flies Then. Sixty-eight percent of Americans would refuse to live in the same apartment building as an American Jew, according to the results of an annual poll released Wednesday by the Center for the Struggle Against Racism. The “Index of Racism Towards American Jews,” conducted by Geocartographia, revealed only 26 percent of Americans would agree to live with Jewish neighbors in the same building. 

After Palestinian Vote, U.S. Democracy Campaign Questioned

Jefferson Morley 17 March 2006


The United States, declared President Bush in his 2005 inaugural address, seeks to “support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Later this month the State Department will release it annual report on U.S. efforts to support human rights and democracy. U.S. demands for democratic behavior are inconsistent, according to two journalists of Palestinian descent who run the Electronic Intifada Web site. Ali Abunimah and Arjan El Fassed say democracy cannot take root under Israeli occupation. Palestinians continue to live “under full Israeli military dictatorship.” 

"Only a fully functioning Karni Crossing can avert looming humanitarian crisis"

22 March 2006


The Director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, Mr. John Ging, stated that he was “struggling to be optimistic” upon his return from a visit to the “reopened” Karni commercial crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning. He explained that “the situation on the streets of Gaza was worse than it had been the day before, as the half hour opening of Karni on Monday afternoon had absolutely no impact on the developing humanitarian crisis.” Ging said on Tuesday that he hoped that the opening of Karni is the beginning of a return to normality. “For Gazans, this is the first rationing of bread in living memory,” he said. 

The Humanitarian Impact of the Karni Crossing Closure: Bread running out in Gaza

18 March 2006


Following the closure of Karni, most bakeries in the Gaza Strip today are closed, because wheat flour stocks have finished. Bread is the staple food for 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. There are long lines of people outside the few bakeries that still have limited stocks of bread and the bakeries are rationing bread to those waiting. Gaza requires 450MT of wheat each day to maintain bread supplies.1 The usual 30-60 day wheat stock kept in Gaza is exhausted. Other basic food commodities are in extremely short supply including dairy products and fruit. Rice and sugar are selling at more than twice their normal price and are also very difficult to find in stores. 

With Gaza food crisis looming, UN official urges opening of crossing with Israel

20 March 2006


As the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip deteriorates with food and other supplies running short due to the Israeli closure, a senior official of the main United Nations agency helping Palestinian refugees said he sincerely hopes Israel’s opening today of the Karni crossing point is “the beginning of a return to normality.” “The situation on the streets of Gaza was worse today than it was yesterday as the half hour opening of Karni yesterday afternoon had absolutely no impact on the developing humanitarian crisis,” the Director of Gaza operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), John Ging, said.