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HRW calls on Syria to open border to Palestinian refugees fleeing Iraq

2 February 2007


Syria should immediately reopen its border to Iraqi Palestinian refugees fleeing deadly attacks against their community, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on the international community, and the United States in particular, to provide financial assistance to Syria to help it host the Palestinian refugees, and to share the burden of this refugee problem by offering third-country resettlement opportunities to Palestinian refugees in Syria.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, Palestinian refugees in Iraq have increasingly become targets of violence and persecution, with abductions of scores of Palestinian men in the past week. 

Tale of Two Visits: The Warrior and the Peacemaker

Susan Kerin Washington, DC 5 February 2007


Last October, I traveled to Palestine on a peace delegation with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPTs), a faith-based group committed to using nonviolent alternatives to war and conflict. Instinctively, whenever our group met with one of the many peacemakers of that region, be it Israeli, Palestinian or International we would ask, “What can we do to help?” Surprisingly, the most common response was not to donate money nor “sell all your belongings and follow me.” It was simply to go back home and tell our communities what we saw. To tell them about the suffering, of course, but also about the opportunities…the glimmers of hope. 

Three representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in children's literature (Part 2)

Fouad Moughrabi 5 February 2007


“Back in Tennessee, my son who had lived for three years in Ramallah, was sometimes asked to sing songs in Hebrew to celebrate Yom Kippur; he was given assignments dealing with the Holocaust; and he was told by one teacher that his impressions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are simply in his head. It was, therefore, not surprising at all for him to come home one day with a copy of Lynne Reid Banks’ novel Broken Bridge.” Alarmed by the racist portrayal of Arabs in the book assigned to his 12-year-old son, EI contributor Fouad Moughrabi analyzes some portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in popular children’s literature. 

Three representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in children's literature (Part 1)

Fouad Moughrabi 5 February 2007


“Back in Tennessee, my son who had lived for three years in Ramallah, was sometimes asked to sing songs in Hebrew to celebrate Yom Kippur; he was given assignments dealing with the Holocaust; and he was told by one teacher that his impressions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are simply in his head. It was, therefore, not surprising at all for him to come home one day with a copy of Lynne Reid Banks’ novel Broken Bridge.” Alarmed by the racist portrayal of Arabs in the book assigned to his 12-year-old son, EI contributor Fouad Moughrabi analyzes some portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in popular children’s literature. 

UN Agencies in occupied Palestinian territory "extremely alarmed" by security situation in Gaza

5 February 2007


We the United Nations Agencies working in the occupied Palestinian territory are extremely alarmed by the deteriorating security situation in Gaza. The upsurge of violence, which has taken the lives of innocent civilians, is also putting our workers on the ground at serious risk. It is becoming extremely difficult for us to fulfill our humanitarian mandates to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people. The implications of this for a population already facing extreme hardship are grave. We remain determined to continue with our humanitarian work. 

Gaza fighting threatening aid, says UN

5 February 2007


Six United Nations agencies have warned that bloody street battles between rival Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip are blocking the delivery of vital humanitarian aid to a vulnerable population. Fierce fighting between Hamas, the party of government, and Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, forced the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which looks after Palestinian refugees, to shut schools for some 35,000 children on Saturday and suspend food delivery from its Gaza city warehouse. UNRWA provides food to 1.1 million of the 1.4 million people who live in the Strip. 

Israeli lock-down cripples Nablus economy

5 February 2007


Israeli moves to control movement in and out of the city of Nablus are thwarting humanitarian aid efforts and damaging the local economy, according to aid agencies and local residents. Israeli checkpoints surrounding the city of more than 200,000 people mean that no vehicle can leave or enter Nablus without an Israeli permit. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that such permits are difficult to obtain, particularly for Palestinians. Liz Sime, from the US-based global humanitarian organisation CARE International, said that, “[our] teams lose up to two hours each time they try to exit Nablus, raising costs at an unreasonable rate”. 

Adalah: Arab villages granted "border town" status

5 February 2007


On 31 January 2007, the Ministry of Finance announced its agreement to include four Arab villages in the north of Israel in the list of ‘border towns’ for the purposes of compensation for indirect damages incurred during the Second Lebanon War. The Ministry submitted this agreement in response to a petition filed by Adalah demanding that it grant these four villages ‘border town’ status. It is Adalah’s position that this change of status should have been made many years ago, and that there was no justification for the prior discrimination against the Arab towns. Unfortunately, the filing of the petition was what led to this change. 

Interview with Israeli activist Yeela Raanan

Liam Bailey 5 February 2007


Bedouin villages have been on the land since before the State of Israel was conceived. The Israeli government doesn’t recognise them and calls them illegal, and therefore they are not entitled to any infrastructure or services. The “illegal” villages lack even basic amenities such as running water and electricity. According to Yeela Raanan of the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), the elders have held receipts since the 1970s of payments made to Israel for plots of land in the town of Laquia. They lived on other people’s land in shacks and tents on the outskirts of the town, waiting for the land — which never came — to build homes for their families. 

War Enters the Classrooms

Jon Elmer 5 February 2007


GAZA CITY, Feb 5 (IPS) - The United Nations has indefinitely suspended elementary school classes for tens of thousands of Gaza City’s children following a weekend of unprecedented factional violence, which turned this isolated enclave into a war zone and left at least 27 dead and 250 wounded. John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said, “we try to balance the risk of violence to kids and parents on the one hand, and the need for these kids to get an education on the other.