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US Jews tilt rightwards on Israel

Jim Lobe 13 December 2007


WASHINGTON, December 12 (IPS) - US Jews appear to have become more opposed both to Israel’s making key concessions in renewed peace talks with Palestinians and to the US carrying out a military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to the latest in an annual series of surveys of Jewish opinion released here this week by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The poll, which was carried out during November before the formal resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Annapolis late last month, also found continued skepticism in the Jewish community over both the war in Iraq and the “war on terror” as conducted by the administration of President George W. Bush. 

Israel's Palestinians speak out

Nadim Rouhana 12 December 2007


The Annapolis peace talks regard me as an interloper in my own land. Israel’s deputy prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, argues that I should “take [my] bundles and get lost.” Henry Kissinger thinks I ought to be summarily swapped from inside Israel to the would-be Palestinian state. I am a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship — one of 1.4 million. We are Palestinian Arabs — Christian, Muslim and Druze — not Jewish. More than twenty Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. Nadim Rouhana comments. 

Report: Israeli military installations near Arab villages harmed civilians

12 December 2007


A new report from the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) focuses on one claim — one that was also raised during the war, particularly by Arab public figures in Israel, but which has not been the subject of detailed attention. This claim is that military installations were positioned by the Israeli army in proximity to Arab civilian locales. The report is based on the testimonies of 80 Arab residents interviewed by the HRA, documenting 20 Arab communities that were hit by an estimated total of some 660 rockets, killing 14 civilians directly. 

The first intifada 20 years later

Sonja Karkar 10 December 2007


The first Palestinian intifada (uprising or shaking off) erupted dramatically on 9 December 1987 after twenty long years of brutal Israeli military occupation. The Palestinians had had enough. Not only had they been dispossessed of their homeland and expelled from their homes in 1948 to make way for the boatloads of European Jewish immigrants flooding into Palestine on a promise of a Jewish state, they had been made to suffer the indignities of a people despised and rejected by the whole world. Sonja Karkar comments for EI on the anniversary of the beginning of the first intifada. 

Towards first-rate university instruction

Rima Merriman 10 December 2007


The Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research produced a report in August 2002 with financial and technical assistance provided by the World Bank. The paper has two objectives. The first is to provide an analytic rationale for donors wishing to finance higher education in Palestine, and the other, thornier one, is to “build stakeholders consensus on the rationale and mechanism for financing reform.” Given the nature of the document, it is taken for granted that the answer to the challenges higher education faces in Palestine is “a compelling financial strategy” and that’s what the document provides. Rima Merriman comments. 

Dershowitz jewelry purchase booed by Leviev protesters

9 December 2007


Wealthy Madison Avenue holiday shoppers were greeted the afternoon of 8 December 2007 by boisterous music and dancing, as 60 New Yorkers protested in a growing campaign to boycott Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev over his settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Participants performed a joyous dabke, a traditional Palestinian dance, and chanted to music from the eight-piece Rude Mechanical Orchestra. During the protest, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz entered LEVIEV New York and emerged to jeers as he displayed a LEVIEV shopping bag to the crowd. 

Funds dry up for hospital in Ain al-Hilweh camp

9 December 2007


AIN AL-HILWEH, 9 December (IRIN) - A desperately needed hospital in Lebanon’s largest and most violent Palestinian refugee camp has been unable to open on time because funds to buy beds and other basic medical equipment have dried up. The US$5m al-Quds hospital in Ain al-Hilweh, just outside the southern port city of Sidon, is the single largest investment in the camp’s 60-year history and aims to treat a range of chronic diseases, heart problems, cancers and nervous disorders suffered by Ain al-Hilweh residents. It also aims to have a children’s wing and an intensive care unit. 

Only 41 percent of Gaza's food import needs being met

7 December 2007


JERUSALEM, 6 December (IRIN) - Food imports into the Gaza Strip are only enough to meet 41 percent of demand, the World Food Program (WFP) has said, though critical UN humanitarian food supplies are being allowed in. The cost of many basic items, such as beef, wheat and some dairy products have increased significantly, while locally grown produce is fetching extremely low prices on the local market, as exports are banned, threatening the livelihood of farmers. Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June, the commercial crossing points with Israel have been all but shut, except for the import of basic humanitarian goods. 

Testimony: Israel delays treatment of two Gaza toddlers

6 December 2007


I was born in Jordan to a father from the Gaza Strip. In 1994, I came to Gaza on a visitor’s permit that my uncle obtained for me. In 1995, my fiancee also entered Gaza on a visitor’s permit and we got married. At the time, we thought we would be able to obtain Palestinian identity cards. I worked in the office of the Palestinian Naval Police. In 1996, our first child was born, a daughter, whom we named Ghaida’, and in 1998, our daughter Maysa’ was born. In 2000, our first son, Muhammad, was born. Ten days after he was born, we noticed that his skin was yellow, so we took him to al-Shifa’a Hospital, in Gaza, for an examination. 

Largest Dutch trade union will increase pressure on Israel

Adri Nieuwhof 6 December 2007


Since 1994 Palestine has been part of the largest Dutch trade union, FNV ABVAKABO’s international solidarity policy. In a letter to Palestinian unions it refers to a resolution of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions which was adopted in December 2004. The ICFTU has 241 affiliated organizations in 156 countries with a membership of 155 million. The resolution calls for the immediate ending of the occupation of 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza, including the existence of the wall and Jewish settlements.