As the United Nations International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace entered its second day with events on the ground increasingly drawing world attention, participants considered the peace process and challenges ahead, hearing expert views about the “catastrophic” developments in the Gaza Strip, and the critical need to renew the peace negotiations and strictly uphold international law and United Nations resolutions. The two-day meeting brought together experts, UN member states, parliamentarians, NGO’s and the media to examine the state of the conflict. Read more about UN-sponsored meeting calls on Israel to pull out of Gaza, Palestinians to stop rockets
Voicing deep concern over developments in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on both sides to take measures to defuse the tension. In a statement issued by his spokesman, Mr. Annan cited the continued detention of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants; the killing by Palestinian militants of an Israeli civilian; further rocket attacks against Israel; and Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip which have resulted in a serious deterioration in humanitarian conditions. Read more about Annan calls on both Palestinians and Israelis to take measures to defuse crisis
Calling on all sides in the upsurge of violence in the Gaza Strip to exercise maximum restraint and ensure that civilians are not harmed, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today the first step towards a solution would be the release of the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Palestinian militants. “I’ve been following with great concern developments in the Middle East,” Mr. Annan told reporters at UN Headquarters in New York, noting that he had been in touch with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Read more about Secretary-General calls for ‘maximum restraint’ in Israeli-Palestinian flare-up
“During the last six months specifically, the Israelis basically in my opinion have been spinning out of control. They have unleashed, literally daily attacks on Palestinians. Unfortunately, the world only sees every once in a while what’s happening there, when there is a camera taking a picture such as the incident when the whole family of civilians was killed on the beach. For the last six years, there’s been a non-stop onslaught in terms of not only killing Palestinians, but also raids into Palestinian cities where they’re actually arresting people on a nightly basis.” Christopher Brown talks to Sam Bahour in Palestine. Read more about A Race Against Time: An interview with Sam Bahour
On weekdays, he brings a new generation of Jewish Israelis to life. On weekends, he goes back to his Palestinian patients at the packed Jabaliya refugee camp to try and help them get appointments and transfers to the more developed Israeli hospitals. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, 51, gynecologist and obstetrician, is the first Palestinian doctor working at the Israeli Soroka University Hospital in the city of Beersheba. He goes through security checks and a multitude of checkpoints almost every day to reach his workplace. Read more about A doctor of peace
The second and final day of PCHR’s conference entitled “The New Palestinian Government and the Human Rights Agenda” ended on the afternoon of Thursday, 22 June 2006, in Gaza City. Former Health Minister, Dr. Riyad Zanoun, headed the second session of the day and the last session of the conference. The session discussed economic, social, and cultural rights, and included four presentations, as well as a closing session that stressed the importance of Palestinian national unity. Read more about Closing session of the new Palestinian government and the human rights agenda
Palestinian refugees in Egypt continue to face major obstacles, including formidable travel restrictions and a lack of access to basic government services, such as free education. “They don’t have many rights,” said Ashraf Milad, a lawyer specialising in forced migration studies at the American University in Cairo. There are currently some 70,000 Palestinians in Egypt who - unlike their compatriots in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon - are not served by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), established in 1949 with the express purpose of assisting Palestinian refugees fleeing the nascent Israeli occupation. Read more about Palestinian refugees in Egypt face discrimination, say experts
The UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Professor Paul Hunt, reminded the donor community that it has a responsibility to provide humanitarian assistance to the population in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). While welcoming last weekend’s emergency aid plan, the UN health rights expert emphasised that the acute funding crisis in the OPT, which is jeopardising the delivery of basic health services to the sick and infirm, arises from the deliberate actions of the donors themselves. Read more about UN Health Rights Expert criticizes donors for failing their humanitarian responsibilities
The diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East – made up of the United Nations, United States, European Union (EU) and Russian Federation – today issued a statement elaborating on an EU proposal for channeling aid directly to the Palestinian people and voiced hope that others will participate in it. The “temporary international mechanism” would be limited in scope and duration and operate with full transparency and accountability, the Quartet said in a statement, pledging to review whether it is still needed after three months. Read more about Diplomatic Quartet backs international mechanism to aid Palestinian people
One of the most important measures that the Israeli and Palestinian architects of the Oslo agreement took in order to guarantee the structural survival of what came to be known as the Oslo “peace process” was the creation of structures, institutions, and classes, that would be directly connected to it, and that can survive the very collapse of the Oslo agreement itself while preserving the “process” that the agreement generated. This guarantee was enshrined in law and upheld by international funding predicated on the continuation of the “Oslo process”… Read more about The (Anti-) Palestinian Authority
