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Reporting from the front: Interviews with PLO spokesman in Lebanon and PFLP official (Part 2)

Jackson Allers and Rasha Moumneh Baddawi Refugee Camp 28 May 2007


“Honestly, the first day there was sympathy for the soldiers that were killed. But after the shelling started we felt that the targets were not Fatah al-Islam, but rather the Nahr al-Bared camp. … At the end of the day, there is a people that is being shelled and people are dying.” Jackson Allers and Rasha Moumneh interview PFLP official and Treasurer of the Committee for the Festival of Right of Return in the second of a two-part series. 

"Another Waco in the Making"

Franklin Lamb Baddawi Refugee Camp 28 May 2007


26 May 2007 — Bedawi is teeming with new arrivals from Nahr al-Bared where there is still no water, power or food. A few NGOs are still negotiating with the army for permission to enter. (Still possible to sneak in from the east but getting more dangerous to try it.) The problem is not being shot by Fatah al-Islam anymore. They are digging in. And the army is not as trigger happy as it was Monday through Wednesday. The “security agents” on the slopes above the army looking down into al-Bared are the main sniper danger. 

Nahr al-Bared is a ghost town, smelling of death

28 May 2007


BEIRUT, 28 May 2007 (IRIN) - Heavy overnight bombardment on Friday of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp by the Lebanese army killed at least four civilians and injured dozens, with eye-witnesses describing scenes of devastation after the military’s week-long clashes with Islamist militants in the once densely populated camp. “Nahr al-Bared looks like Leningrad,” Bilal Aslan, a commander in the military wing of the secular Palestinian faction Fatah, who has spent the week inside the camp, told IRIN, referring to the German World War II siege of the Russian city. 

Chronic disease sufferers in refugee camps urgently need medication

28 May 2007


BEIRUT, 28 May 2007 (IRIN) - Thousands of elderly and sick refugees in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp and neighbouring Badawi camp in northern Lebanon are in urgent need of chronic disease medication currently unavailable to aid agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told IRIN. ICRC representatives at the military checkpoint to the south of the camp say thousands of people are in need of treatment for chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney failure. 

Israeli strike on Jabalya camp damages civilian property; human rights offices

28 May 2007


At approximately 23:00 on Saturday, 26 May 2007, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at a security room belonging to the Executive Force of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior near Timraz fuel station in the center of the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. The missile hit the room from the south and penetrated its roof. It then hit the ground causing heavy damage to PCHR’s branch office in Jabalya, nearly 40 meters away, and to dozens of houses and shops. 

IOF offensive continues; 47 Killed and 189 wounded in Gaza

27 May 2007


The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) continued its offensive on Gaza which started on 15 May 2007. Air strikes against Executive Force targets and other civilian facilities have been focused on Gaza City and occurred with more intensity at the late night hours. Al Mezan has documented that 47 Palestinians have been killed and 189 others injured since the start of the offensive. Dozens of homes have been destroyed or damaged from the 58 air strikes and 19 artillery and heavy machine gun attacks on different locations around the Gaza Strip. 

Boycott the Israeli Academy Now!

26 May 2007


The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) salutes the courage and moral consistency of British academics who support an institutional academic boycott of Israel similar to that imposed on apartheid South Africa in the past. We specifically welcome the motions submitted to the upcoming University and College Union (UCU) Council in Bournemouth that recognize the complicity of the Israeli academy in the occupation, and urge academics “to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions.” 

On the Academic Boycott of Israel

Virginia Tilley 27 May 2007


In very exceptional cases, an academic boycott comes onto our agenda. This happens when a country’s universities are recognized as central players in legitimizing a regime that systematically inflicts massive human rights abuses on its own people and any pretence that the universities are independent fortresses of principled intellectual thought becomes too insulting to the human conscience. But since universities in many oppressive regimes fit those criteria, in practice a second condition is required: their faculties have the freedom to act differently. 

Lebanese Army imposes restrictions on coverage of camp siege

26 May 2007


The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned that journalists have been prevented since Monday from entering a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon during clashes between Islamist militants and the Lebanese Army. The Lebanese Army restricted public access to the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, near Tripoli, the day after fighting broke out between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Army. Journalists, both local and foreign, are covering the clashes and their effect on more than 30,000 Palestinian refugees caught up in the fighting 

Solidarity in Shatila

Mayssoun Sukarieh Shatila refugee camp 26 May 2007


Coming into Shatila, I heard loudspeakers calling for donations for the displaced from the Nahr al-Bared camp. “Help us help the families hosting their relatives from Nahr al-Bared; any donations would be appreciated,” the person on the loudspeaker called out. I went to the site appointed for donations collection, and met a woman asking if clothes were among the needed items. “These are old clothes, like the ones we wear, I swear, I am not differentiating between my family and them. I wish I had money but this is all what I could find at home,” she said.