12 June 2008
JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza, 11 June (IPS) - In the brightly painted new intensive care unit wing of al-Awda, northern Gaza’s only emergency medical facility in the massive Jabaliya refugee camp, doctors, nurses, aides and administrators are ready to provide emergency surgery services for the area’s 300,000 people. Read more about Gaza hospitals in need of care
11 June 2008
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and US President George W. Bush follow contradictory policy tracks. In the major media offensive accompanying last November’s US-sponsored Annapolis peace conference both leaders presented themselves as the peace makers of the region. In Annapolis, Olmert committed to freezing settlement expansion. However, since that time according to numerous sources Olmert’s government has been accelerating illegal settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land. Read more about Israel accelerates settlement expansion after Annapolis
5 June 2008
For the mainstream press, the story of the Gaza Fulbright seven “moved quickly” and has now concluded with a positive ending. But hundreds of other Palestinian students remain stranded inside the Gaza Strip, and the number is expected to rise this summer. According to data from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, almost 700 Palestinian students are still waiting to leave Gaza in order to pursue studies, and scholarships, abroad. Read more about Gaza's 700 (and counting) stranded students
2 June 2008
Every Monday morning a crowd of women gather in the courtyard of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza City. Most of the women arrive carrying a framed photograph of one or two men. When journalists start to arrive at around 10am, the women ask them to take pictures, and to film the vigil. Read more about "We are still waiting to visit our sons and daughters"
2 June 2008
WASHINGTON, 2 June (IPS) - Israel and the US said Friday they would “revisit” a policy that prevents Palestinians from leaving the Gaza Strip to pursue their educational goals one day after a controversial US State Department decision to withdraw all Fulbright Scholarships from students living in the territory. Read more about Gaza Fulbrights, small yet symbolic
30 May 2008
From the veranda of his home up on the hillside, Hassan Abed Hassan Jermeh looks out over his village, fertile green fields, and all the way over to the mountains across the border in Jordan. Village elder since 1995, he is intimately familiar with the challenges facing Palestinians in the Jordan Valley. Ben White writes for EI about the continued ethnic cleansing happening in this crucial area of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Read more about The Jordan Valley's forgotten Palestinians
28 May 2008
“They came at four in the morning with two bulldozers, and they left before 8:00am. I own this chicken farm with my three brothers, and we worked day and night for 18 years to build up our business. The Israelis destroyed everything in less than four hours.” Nasser Jaber’s chicken farm was bulldozed by the Israeli Occupation Forces 10 days ago, in the early morning hours of 16 May, while he was sleeping at home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Read more about "Now we have nothing left"
22 May 2008
JERUSALEM, 22 May (IRIN) - Ahmed al-Baghdadi’s doctors said he must leave the Gaza Strip and travel to Israel to receive urgent life-saving medical care if he hopes to fight the tumours in his body. Rada al-Khadir, aged 22, needs to get treatment immediately, her Israeli doctor said, or her liver disease could prove fatal. Both patients have been denied permission to leave by the Israeli military. Read more about Critically ill patients from Gaza appeal to Israeli court
19 May 2008
Every day parents call the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City and ask Suad Lubbad when the school will re-open. Suad is the Administrative Director of the school, which has 275 pupils aged 4-17, and was forced to close without notice in mid-April. Because of chronic fuel shortages, the buses that normally transport the pupils to school were suddenly grounded. Read more about Israeli siege hits Gaza's special needs children
18 May 2008
At approximately 9:15 am on 14 May 2008, 17-year-old Hamdi Salemeh Khader was riding his bicycle on al-Karama Road near a local cement factory in the northern Gaza Strip when he was shot twice (once in the shoulder and once in the upper right quadrant of the chest) by machine gun fire emanating from the tanks, killing him instantly. Hamdi’s death is just one of many willful killings perpetrated by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. Read more about Rights org: "Fog of war" no cover for Gaza killings