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Civil Servant Strike Continues in the OPT

5 September 2006


Civil servants working in all governmental institutions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including the education and health sectors, started an open general strike on Saturday, 2 September 2006. They are requesting the immediate payment of their salaries, which have not been paid for more than six months, and the regular payment of their salaries in the future. Most ministries and governmental institutions have stopped work, especially the education and health sectors. An estimated 60-90% of the work was halted in these institutions throughout the OPT. 

Power shortages could last months in south

3 September 2006


Thirty-four days of Israeli bombardment have left many residential areas in south Lebanon without power. Towns and villages, particularly those nearest the border with Israel, are strewn with damaged power lines along the roads. “This is what remains of our electricity lines,” said 12-year-old Ali, resident of Qantara village, pointing to lines a few feet away from him. “Nothing.” Qantara is about 70 km south of Beirut and just a few kilometres north of the Israeli border. South Lebanon bore the brunt of Israel’s military offensive against the armed wing of Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party. 

Despite war damage, hospitals meet patients' needs

4 September 2006


In spite of damage caused to Lebanon’s health sector by a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah, its primary health care sector is coping, according to aid agencies. “People now have access to primary health services in most affected areas,” said Dr Sarmad Suleiman, World Health Organisation (WHO) team leader in Tyre, 80 km south of the capital Beirut. With a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in place since 14 August, humanitarian assistance from the Lebanese government and international aid agencies has been reaching the majority of areas most affected by the conflict with vastly greater ease. 

Will Robert Fisk tell us the whole story?

Jonathan Cook 5 September 2006


More than a little uncomfortably, I find myself with a bone to pick with one of our finest champions of humanitarian values and opponents of war. During Israel’s attack on Lebanon this summer, the distinguished British journalist Robert Fisk did sterling work — as might have been expected — debunking some of the main myths that littered the battlefield almost as dangerously as the tens of thousands of US-made cluster bombs that Israel dropped in the last days of the fighting. But possibly in an attempt at even-handedness, Fisk has also muddied the picture in relation to the actions of Hizbullah and thereby contributed towards the very mythical narratives he seeks to undermine. 

"As long as you are alive, you can regain everything."

Saida 4 September 2006


Lens on Lebanon interviews Saida residents: I was affected financially and psychologically. I have no money at all. Psychologically, I have two sons. They don’t want to stay in the country anymore. They want to immigrate now after they realized there is no safe area in Lebanon. My little daughters have a phobia. When they hear any bombs, they just hold in the arms of their mother and can’t move. As for work, there is nothing. Everything has stopped after the Israelis bombed all bridges. I went one month without any job. Now some fishermen have started getting fish from Syria, so I started to clean the fish to survive. 

Lebanon in Context: An Interview with Bilal El-Amine

Bilal El-Amine and Sasha Wright 4 September 2006


On the Israeli/Lebanese front - even though Israel was forced to withdraw from Lebanon in May of 2000 - there were a number of issues that Israel deliberately left open that could have easily been resolved. Israel kept some Lebanese land called the Shebaa Farms. Israel would not provide maps for the mines that they had planted throughout South Lebanon that caused many injuries and deaths in the South. Israel continued its constant breaches of Lebanese airspace with almost daily incursions by Israeli warplanes over Lebanon. Israel also refused to release the Lebanese prisoners still in Israeli prisons - there were many of them at that time. 

The First Post-Zionist War

Roni Ben Efrat 4 September 2006


Three weeks after the cease-fire, the political situation in Israel may be described as one of imminent collapse. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz have fallen to the depths in public opinion. A full 63% of the people think Olmert ought to resign; 74% want Peretz’s head, 54% Halutz’s. Israelis live today with a sense of failure. They search for the source of the “lapse” (mekhdal) - a term much used to describe the disaster of October 1973 (the “Yom Kippur War”). A protest movement of reservists has arisen, divided between those who demand a State Commission of Inquiry and those who call for resignations. 

Killings in Ramallah

Eliza Ernshire Ramallah 4 September 2006


29 August, pre-dawn - It is only now that the gunfire saluting the killed young man has become sporadic and no longer constant, and that the verses of the Koran, chanted in farewell of him, have ceased. But the streets are full; and full too are the hearts of all who had to witness an attack that should only have been imaginable in the darkest back-alleys of some underworld city. By thugs wielding heavy M-16’s. At 9 pm undercover Israeli Special Forces walked down the main street of Ramallah. They wore civilian clothes and Palestinian police-caps. They carried M-16’s as all the police force does. No one looked at them twice. 

A Night in Ramallah

Sonja Karkar Ramallah 4 September 2006


When I began reading the account below of the shooting in Ramallah, I remembered that it was only nine weeks ago that I was walking the streets of Ramallah and I was eating ice-cream at the famour Rucarb ice-cream shop and I was being driven around al-Minara. It all came flooding back to me - those fifteen minutes in the early hours of the morning as my driver, Abu ‘Issa was taking me back to Jerusalem and we were caught in the cross-fire between Palestinian police in riot gear and armed youths. I’ll never forget the painfully hesitant drive up and down narrow streets as shadowy figures ran in and out of shop recesses with guns cocked while others smashed windows. 

Teachers strike keeps children at home

3 September 2006


Public sector teachers in the occupied Palestinian territories began a strike on Saturday to protest against unpaid wages. Timed to concur with the first day of the new academic year, the strike in Gaza and the West Bank has left hundreds of thousands of children without classes to go to. “The strike in government schools on the first day of the academic year succeeded by 80 percent,” said Jameel Shahadah, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Teacher’s Union. “By announcing a strike on the first day of the academic year, we wanted to shock the Palestinian government and the Arab and international community [to show them] that the Palestinian people’s right to education is now threatened due to the embargo.”