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Israel must answer

Arjan El Fassed 3 May 2002

SO, Israel has decided not to co-operate with a United Nations fact-finding mission into the military assault on the Jenin refugee camp. But this must not prevent the UN from dispatching a fact-finding team immediately. 

StopTheWall.org Site Launched by the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

Stop the Wall 10 October 2003


After months of anticipation, the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign formally announces the new website for mobilizing to Stop the Wall in Palestine, at StopTheWall.org. The Stop the Wall site comes at a time when the Apartheid Wall’s pace is accelerating daily throughout the West Bank, making momentum and solidarity around the Campaign urgent. 

The mirror of fire and tears

Lora Gordon Rafah, Gaza Strip 10 October 2003

Tanks cut off the main road between Rafah and Khan Younis (the city just north of Rafah) by driving ten tanks right in front of the European Gaza Hospital, the only decent hospital south of Gaza City, and the road has been closed for days. The week before this closure, Rasha spent 5 hours one day waiting for Abu Holi to open so she could go home and the next day it closed all night, leaving her to sleep at her friend’s sister’s house in Gaza City after waiting for 4 hours in a hot taxi in line with hundreds of cars waiting for the checkpoint to open. I compare our worlds, like parallel universes, squinting at each other from both sides of a mirror. Laura Gordon reports from Rafah. 

Edward Said's journey to Ithaka

Joseph Massad 10 October 2003

“ ‘Joseph, are you still sleeping, it’s 8am already?’ These are the first words I would hear upon picking up the phone three, four times a week,” writes Joseph Massad. The powerful teasing voice on the other side was that of Edward Said. Massad remembers his dear friend and teacher, and contemplates how the legacy of this exemplary scholar and public intellectual can teach us how to continue our journey. 

Weekly report on human rights violations

9 October 2003

This week Israeli forces killed six Palestinians, including a child and an elderly man. Two were killed in an extra-judicial execution in Tulkarem. Israeli forces conducted a series of incursions into Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces moved into Jenin and carried out retaliatory attacks against Palestinian civilian and property. Israeli forces razed hundreds of donums of Palestinian agricultural land in the Gaza Strip. In Rafah, Israeli forces demolished five homes. Israeli forces indiscriminately shelled Palestinian residential areas and fired missiles on a home in Gaza City and al-Boreij refugee camp. Israeli forces demolished three homes as part of the continued campaign of retaliation against the families of wanted Palestinians and those who allegedly carried out armed attacks against Israeli targets. Israeli forces continued to use Palestinian civilians as human shields in Israeli military operations. This week, the Israeli Minister of Defense decided to intensify the construction of the “separation wall”. The Gaza Strip was divided into four isolated zones. Palestinian communities in the West Bank were separated from one another and Palestinian vehicles were prohibited from traveling on the main roads in the West Bank. 

Israeli forces kill six Palestinians, 30 civilians wounded in Rafah refugee camp

10 October 2003

Early this morning, Friday October 10, 2003, Israeli occupying forces conducted a large scale incursion into the Rafah refugee camp, adjacent to the Egyptian border in the southern Gaza Strip. Under cover of intense shelling and gunfire from tanks and helicopters, Israeli forces invaded the area which is one of the most densely populated in the Gaza Strip.