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Ban Ki-moon looks for more than words from Friday's high-level Middle East meeting

1 February 2007


United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for more than mere words from tomorrow’s high-level diplomatic meeting in Washington of key partners seeking a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution. Mr. Ban will be participating in his first meeting of the so-called diplomatic Quartet with top officials of the other three partners - United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; and European Union (EU) High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, European Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. 

Bloody fighting between Hamas and Fatah continues in Gaza

2 February 2007


The clashes between the rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, continued in the Gaza Strip on Thursday night and into Friday. In these clashes, Palestinian sources said that at least 22 Palestinians were killed and approximately 220 injured. Palestinian sources said that the clashes were fiercest in Gaza City and the shooting spread to Beit Lahiya and Jabalia in the north of the Strip. In addition, sources reported that the presidential security forces and other members of the national security forces, “in addition to other security forces”, broke into the Islamic University in Gaza City on Thursday night. 

Massive Attack Announce Shows in Support of Palestinian refugees

2 February 2007


Massive Attack will play three benefit gigs in February 2007 in aid of the Hoping Foundation. Hoping stands for Hope and Optimism for Palestinians in the Next Generation. Established in January 2003, the charity is supported exclusively by private donors and public fundraising events, such as concerts and auctions. The charity was launched in order to offer support and encouragement to Palestinian children living in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. 

UK Parliamentary Report slams Western boycott against Palestine

31 January 2007


The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is worse now than it was in 2004, politically, economically and socially, despite their receiving more humanitarian assistance per capita than any other country in the world, says today’s report from the International Development Committee on Development Assistance and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The report questions whether the withholding of funds from a democratically-elected government in the conflict-affected Territories is the most effective response to Hamas’s refusal to accept the Quartet principles. The boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has led it increasingly to look elsewhere for funding which means it is being drawn closer to governments such as that of Iran. 

OCHA: Gaza Situation Report

31 January 2007


The ceasefire between Palestinian factions announced by Palestinian Foreign Minister, Mohammed al Zahar in the early hours of this morning is holding. The ceasefire follows the heaviest loss of life from inter- factional fighting recorded by OCHA with at least 34 deaths and 133 injuries vbetween the evening of 25 January and the evening of 29 January. Three Palestinians, including a 17 year-old boy, were killed and 15 injured by the IDF in January. The majority of casualties occurred in the northern Gaza Strip. Overall, Palestinian access in and out of the Gaza Strip remains severally restricted. The extent of the power outages during the 2006- 2007 winter period is unprecedented. 

Blowback in Lebanon

Mohamad Bazzi 31 January 2007


Arab regimes and the United States are rushing to shore up Siniora’s government. On January 25, the same day of the bloody protests and curfew in Beirut, Siniora attended a donors conference in Paris, where he received pledges of $7.6 billion in aid and loan guarantees. Some of the funding will go toward reconstruction after last summer’s war, but much of it will be used to make interest payments and refinance Lebanon’s crushing $41 billion public debt. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is now about 180 percent—the second-highest in the world (after Malawi). A large proportion of the pledges received at the Paris III conference are tied to unpopular economic reforms that Siniora has vowed to undertake, including raising taxes and privatizing state assets. Most of these measures—such as raising gasoline surcharges and the value-added tax—will most heavily affect Lebanon’s poor and working classes, who are disproportionately Shiite. 

LA Activists to protest Israel Philharmonic

31 January 2007


International and Palestinian human rights leaders have asked supporters worldwide to begin cultural and economic boycotts, along with divestment and sanction campaigns to end Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem and to end Israeli Apartheid in Palestine. When they learned that the Israel Philharmonic would be stopping at Disney Hall while on their U.S. tour, Women in Black-LA joined the international campaign by launching their call for a Boycott of the orchestra, after first writing a letter to the Israel Philharmonic asking them to publicly oppose the occupation. 

Al Mezan alarmed at internal fighting in Gaza

31 January 2007


The state of insecurity saw a severe deterioration during January 2007. Al Mezan has documented the killing of 63 Palestinians (8 children), the injuring of 306 (33 children), and the kidnapping of 90 people during this month. The number of killings since the beginning of 2007 has exceeded the rate of all killings since 2003. 18 persons were killed in infighting in 2003 and 57 persons in 2004. The toll of January 2007 has reached more than 60% of that of 2005, and over 25% of the entire of 2006. Those years witnessed ascending deterioration of the state of insecurity. 

US inquiry into use of cluster bombs

31 January 2007


Israel may have violated agreements regarding the use of American-made cluster bombs during its war in Lebanon in July 2006, the US State Department said on Monday. Spokesman Sean McCormack did not give details about the possible violations but said the results of a preliminary investigation were being forwarded to Congress. During the war, Israel used cluster munitions, possibly dropping one million such bombs, including in civilian areas. Many of the munitions - according to the United Nations, up to 40 percent - did not explode and now pose a hazard to residents of south Lebanon. Unexploded ordnance has killed at least 27 people and injured more than 143 since the war ended. 

Israeli rhetoric on Iran mismatched with realistic analysis

Gareth Porter 31 January 2007


When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared last week at the Herzliya conference that Israel could not risk another “existential threat” such as the Nazi holocaust, he was repeating what has become the dominant theme in Israel’s campaign against Iran — that it cannot tolerate an Iran with the technology that could be used to make nuclear weapons, because Iran is fanatically committed to the physical destruction of Israel. The internal assessment by the Israeli national security apparatus of the Iranian threat, however, is more realistic than the government’s public rhetoric would indicate.