The latest Israeli military siege on the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun began on 1 November, greatly disrupting the lives of residents, the overwhelming majority of whom are Palestine refugees. UNRWA operations in the area have been severely hampered. Three UNRWA humanitarian convoys entered Beit Hanoun on Friday afternoon, and delivered food, water, milk, blankets and mattresses. UNRWA also sent a medical team to the Beit Hanoun health clinic to provide much-needed health services to the population there. UNRWA staff delivering humanitarian supplies noted significant damage to roads and houses as well as the presence of several Israeli military bulldozers and five tanks, close to Beit Hanoun hospital. Read more about Beit Hanoun under Siege: Palestine Refugees Severely Affected
When Israel launched its demographic war against Palestinians in 1947, it was carried out through military tactics that were difficult to conceal from the international community. The unresolved result of that war can be seen in refugee camps all over the Arab world. According to U.N. figures, between 1947 and 1949 Zionist military forces forcibly expelled or caused to flee approximately 800,000 Palestinians (amounting to 75 percent of the Arab population of what became Israel). In 1967, more than 200,000 Palestinians fled their homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1967, Israel has continued its demographic war but the tactics have become obscured through the use of so-called legal and political criteria. Read more about The Demographic and Economic War against Palestinians
Over 300 Palestinian organisations, representing civil society organisations, charities, human rights groups, and popular committees, have sent a joint letter to the Finnish representative to the Palestinian Authority, condemning the fact that the European Union policy chief, Javier Solana, met with the extreme right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman during his visit to the region. The letter reminds the Europeans of Lieberman’s “fascist tendencies”, such as his belief that all Palestinian citizens of Israel should be transferred outside the boundaries of Israel. Read more about Palestinian NGOs accuse EU of double standards after Solana meets Lieberman
Unrelenting armed conflict, severe movement restrictions, widespread unemployment and unprecedented material hardship has made the Occupied Palestinian Territories synonymous with violations of international law, and a political solution is desperately needed, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency told the General Assembly yesterday. “If the picture I have painted is dismal and depressing, it is because the reality is dismal and depressing,” UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Karen Koning AbuZayd said when presenting her annual report. Read more about UN Palestine refugee agency chief says deplorable conditions need a political solution
Since Oslo, the Palestinians have been trying to establish and build sustainable institutions that would form the basis of an independent state. This necessitates investment by Palestinians in the diaspora both in terms of money and skills. Such a vital objective for Palestinians is now being severely undermined by the insistence of Israel and western countries on isolating and starving the Hamas-led Palestinian government that came into power in January 2006 after fair and democratic elections. Israel is currently withholding from the Palestinian Authority millions in Palestinian funds it has collected in the form of taxes and custom duties. Read more about Palestinian Brain Drain
Unknown gunmen have on Monday afternoon, kidnapped a Spanish aid worker named Roberto Vila Xesto in the central Gaza Strip. Eyewitnesses told Ma’an’s reporter that the Spanish citizen was accompanying another aid worker, Celine Gagne, and an interpreter in a car travelling on Salahaddin Street, in Deir al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip, when a number of gunmen blocked the way and kidnapped him, taking him from the car. Vila Xesto, 34, from Ourense in Galicia, is in Gaza working for the institution “Cooperacion por la Paz” [Cooperation for Peace], which works closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Read more about Spanish aid worker kidnapped in Gaza
Hopes that the single border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt would reopen and bring relief to hundreds of Gazan medical patients have been dashed after reports of an imminent Israeli attack on the border were met by the deployment of thousands of Egyptian troops to the area. Maariv, an Israeli daily newspaper, reported on 27 October that the Israeli government had discovered tunnels allegedly used by Palestinian militants to smuggle weapons from Egypt to the Gaza Strip. It said the Israeli government planned to attack the border region with precision-guided rockets. Read more about Gaza's medical lifeline cut by border closures
Abu Musa had to go back to his shack, under threat of demolition and ethnic transfer by the Wall and army (the very un-Civil Administration!), to find 20,000 shekels for treatment. If he does, he can go back and try to save his leg and life. Then he can start saving $15,000 for a back operation he hasn’t been able to afford for the past two years, without which he won’t get back on his legs — if one hasn’t had to be amputated by then. He’s only 52. His heart is starting to go. Abu Musa was told long ago by an Israeli professor that he needed an operation on his back. He was badly beaten by Israeli Border Police, when homes - tin and cardboard shacks — were bulldozed on his hillside. Read more about No right to health: Abu Musa Jahalin's story
The Eid ul-Fitr, typically a time of great celebration, literally means ‘the feast of the breaking of the fast;’ it marks the end of Ramadan, a month of daily fasting for Muslims. Traditionally, Eid is a joyful occasion; families and friends meet, gifts are exchanged, news clothes are bought and a great feast is eaten. The wearing of new clothes symbolizes the new beginning to which a month of fasting leads - the shedding of sins and the asking of forgiveness. This year, however, due to economic siege, there are few new clothes being given as Eid presents. Read more about Only its name remains: Eid this year in Gaza
Warning that “crisis and opportunity” exist side-by-side every day in the Middle East, the top United Nations envoy for peace in the region told the Security Council today that only simultaneous dialogue with all parties in the conflict will bring a lasting end to the bloodshed. “A serious and systematic search for peace in the region requires dialogue with all the parties in the conflict, pari pasu, to ensure that crises are managed and opportunities explored, and that developments on one track are not undermined by developments on another,” said Alvaro de Soto, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. Read more about Top UN envoy says only dialogue with all parties in the Middle East will bring peace
