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Palestinian women demand UN action in letter to Annan

4 November 2006



We, women of Palestine, are appalled by the perpetration of the Israeli onslaught against our people which has culminated recently in the criminal aerial bombardment of Israel of innocent Palestinians in Beit Hanon - Gaza, and of several civil infrastructures in Palestine. Millions of Arab women wonder when the United Nations would assume its responsibility in securing and safe guarding human lives in our area. They wonder why the UN and the International Community remain silent and helpless in the face of the present destruction and massacres perpetrated by the State of Israel with the blessing of its staunch American ally and why they continue to allow the state of Israel to contravene International law and to violate with impunity all UN resolutions and international human rights conventions. 

Protecting Palestinian females: HRW misses the mark

Helena Cobban 7 November 2006



I truly do not understand some of the decisions that my colleagues and friends at Human Rights Watch have been making. This week, to much fanfare, they rolled out a very well-funded study about domestic violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in which their main order of business is to blame the Palestinian Authority for having, “failed to establish an effective framework to respond to violence against women and girls.” As a woman, as someone who survived some long-ago domestic violence, as the mother of two daughters, and as quite simply a member of the human race I am deeply concerned about the question of domestic violence. But this study seems wrongly conceived and wrongly focused for a number of reasons. 

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator: End use of cluster munitions

7 November 2006



“As a matter of urgency, I call on all States to implement an immediate freeze on the use of cluster munitions. This freeze is essential until the international community puts in place effective legal instruments to address urgent humanitarian concerns about their use,” said Jan Egeland, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator ahead of the convening of the Third Review Conference on the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), which opened today in Geneva. “I welcome the entry into force of Protocol V to the Convention. I call upon all States to ratify and implement it in order to help us in the humanitarian community address the challenges posed by cluster munitions in post-conflict settings,” added Mr. Egeland. 

UN agency reports significant damage in Beit Hanoun after Israeli withdrawal

7 November 2006



Israeli military forces withdrew from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun today, leaving behind significant damage to roads and houses, destroyed phone and electricity lines and shortage of food and water, the main United Nations refugee agency caring for Palestinians reported. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said Israeli forces were still present in other parts of Gaza. Since last Friday, a joint humanitarian convoy of UNRWA and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been in Beit Hanoun delivering food, water, milk, blankets and mattresses to the hospital there. Additional convoys entered over the weekend and yesterday. 

Visa regime splits Palestinian families

7 November 2006



A thousand West Bank Palestinians holding foreign passports have been expelled from their homes and thousands more face a similar fate after Israel tightened its visa regime, according to Palestinian campaigners. “After being married for 31 years, I face today a compulsory divorce as the Israeli government has refused to renew the visit visa of my wife who holds a US passport,” said Dr Adel Samara from Ramallah. Under the new policy, tourist visas are no longer being issued to foreigners. Up until March this year, Palestinians holding foreign passports had previously been renewing their three-month tourist visas, rather than go through the long and uncertain process of applying for residency permits from the Israeli government. 

Report: Authorities Must Address Violence against Women and Girls

6 November 2006



The Palestinian Authority (PA) has failed to establish an effective framework to respond to violence against women and girls, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Despite the current political and economic crisis, there are steps that the PA can and should take to address these abuses as a priority issue within its security agenda. The 101-page report, “A Question of Security: Violence Against Palestinian Women and Girls,” based on field research conducted in the West Bank and Gaza in November 2005 and early 2006, documents dozens of cases of violence. 

Two White Sisters in Asia: Israel and Australia

M. Shahid Alam 7 November 2006



In a recent interview published in Haaretz, Naftali Tamir, the Israeli ambassador to Australia, articulates a perennial need for ‘white’ collaborators that has defined the Zionist project since its inception. He speaks bluntly of an Israeli partnership with Australia, founded on racial solidarity, to “enhance” Israeli influence over East Asia. Only perhaps in the nineteenth century could a Western diplomat have spoken so plainly about race as the basis of a political alliance. Infinitely better armed against their Arab victims, the Israelis have no need for caution. They can dispense with diplomacy, with political correctness. 

Lebanon II: The Wider Picture

Yacov Ben Efrat 7 November 2006



The ramifications of Israel’s second Lebanon War should be gauged against the background of the dramatic events that the region has undergone in the last three years: the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Hamas electoral victory, and changes in Israel’s political economy. These events, in turn, should be viewed against the political vacuum created by the fall of the Soviet Union. The vacuum has been filled in two very different ways: 1) by the neo-liberal conceptions of the global capitalist regime, and 2) by Islamic fundamentalism. The Organization for Democratic Action (ODA-Da’am) opposed the war in Lebanon. 

Beit Hanoun: A People's Will versus an Army's Arsenal

Rami Almeghari Gaza Strip 7 November 2006



“The Israeli army soldiers are now blockading the mosque; while a number of resistance fighters are inside, where they have taken sanctuary for fear of being attacked. Dozens of women made their way into the mosque, to make a defensive shield for the helpless men inside,” Faten Sehwail of Beit Hanoun told me by cellphone while huddled inside her home, unable to go outside because of the Israeli army-imposed curfew. Beit Hanoun is a small Palestinian city in the northern Gaza Strip, where Israeli-created “autumn clouds” are now over the heads of its residents, making their days as black as their nights. 

Renewed violence in Gaza raises serious concerns for children's safety

Sabine Dolan 7 November 2006



Renewed violence in Gaza is again raising serious concerns about the welfare of civilians, including children. Now in its sixth day, the armed conflict has claimed the lives of an estimated 50 Palestinians - half of them civilians, and 8 of them children. “The situation in northern Gaza, and in particular in Beit Hanoun, is very serious and is getting worse,” says UNICEF Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Dan Rohrmann. “We have seen an extraordinary number of children being killed just in the last five days. There are tanks everywhere, shelling, house demolitions and there is fighting in the streets. People are getting quite desperate.”