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EI's Ali Abunimah in USA Today's "Talk Today"

21 August 2003


This week’s devastating violence between Israel and the Palestinians appears to have rendered the eight-week-old truce, or hudna, null and void. After Thursday’s killing of a senior Hamas official by Israel in retaliation for a suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem which 20 people died. The Islamic militant group Hamas threatened revenge and formally abandoned the cease-fire. EI’s Ali Abunimah answers questions from readers of USA Today on what it takes “to stop the violence between Israel and the Palestinians.” 

Weekly report on human rights violations

21 August 2003

This week, Israeli forces assassinated a Palestinian activist in Hebron and in an apparent wilful killing Israeli forces killed a child in Tulkarem. Israeli forces continued to indiscriminately shell Palestinian residential areas and invaded a number Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces demolished a home in Rafah and raided a number of homes in the West Bank. Three homes were demolished as Israel continued its reprisals against families of wanted Palestinians. Israeli forces established three new observation towers in Khan Yunis and instated a total siege on the occupied Palestinian territories. 

Israel rules to compensate Palestinian fishermen for destruction of boat

20 August 2003

In an unprecedented ruling since the beginning of the current Intifada, the compensation department of the Israeli Ministry of Defense ruled to award two Palestinians from Deir al-Balah - represented by PCHR – NIS 245,000 (approximately US$10,200) in compensation for the loss of their boat that was destroyed by Israeli occupying forces on 18 January 2002. 

Before we blame the Palestinians

Hillel Schocken 20 August 2003

In “All talk and no dialogue” (Haaretz, August 15), Ze’ev Schiff states that it’s “clear that the truce does not in fact exist,” and explains that the Palestinian government “is incapable of implementing the hudna,” that Abu Mazen cannot “enforce” the agreement among the various Palestinian organizations, and that “the leading trio - Abu Mazen, Minister of State for Security Affairs Mohammed Dahlan, and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad - is incapable of enforcing the hudna even on the armed groups within its own movement, the Fatah.” Hillel Schocken comments in Ha’aretz. 

Palestinian residents of old city Hebron leave their homes

19 August 2003

B’Tselem’s new report, released today, shows that since the outbreak of the intifada, many Palestinians have left their homes in Area H-2 in Hebron (the area in which the settlers also reside). B’Tselem’s research indicates that since September 2000, some 43% of the residents of the three main streets in the Casbah have left their homes, at least 2,000 businesses have closed, and three schools in which 1,835 pupils studied were taken over by the IDF and closed. 

Destruction for the Wall

19 August 2003

Israeli bulldozers, accompanied with three military jeeps along with armed guards of the Israeli construction companies, began bulldozing 50 dunums of lands along the eastern side of the Qalqiliya Wall for its so-called “buffer zone”. Among the destruction were vegetables crops and water pipes. The buffer zone of this portion of the Wall will be 50 meters wide and run the length of 2 kilometers. The decision to restart the work in the area was sudden and with no notification as very few people among the landowners were present upon the arrival of the bulldozers. 

Road Map obscured by blood

Michael Shaik 19 August 2003


Last Tuesday two Palestinian suicide bombers attacked targets in Rosh Ha’ayin in northern Israel and the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. Two Israelis were killed and thirteen wounded in the attacks. The Hamas organisation and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, to which the bombers belonged, claimed that the attacks were in retaliation for an Israeli attack on the Askar refugee camp, in which two Palestinians were killed. Israel’s immediate response has been to cancel any further releases of Palestinian prisoners and to demolish the family home of one of the bombers, as well as the homes of those families who had the misfortune of living in the same building. In the longer term, if previous practice is anything to go by, the family home of the other bomber will be demolished and Israel will insist that it can make no further concessions until the Palestinian Authority eliminates all forms of militant resistance to the Occupation. Former ISM Media Coordinator Michael Shaik comments. 

Up against the Apartheid Wall

Daniel Jacob Quinn Jenin, Palestine 19 August 2003


Life here on the ground in occupied Palestine is rarely reported in the United States. The brutal impact of Israel’s military occupation is hidden behind the rhetoric of pundits and politicians, many of whom have never met a Palestinian. They have never, as I have, held a sick Palestinian child in their arms as her parents beg soldiers to let them pass a checkpoint. They have never babysat Palestinian children while their mother goes out to find out what happened to her husband during an armed invasion of their refugee camp. Daniel Jacob Quinn writes from occupied Jenin.