According to Canadian foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier and the Harper government Israel does not practice torture. After it was exposed that Canada had Israel and the United States listed as offenders in a training manual for diplomats about torture, the two countries were promptly dropped on 19 January with Bernier’s expression of regret and embarrassment. EI contributor Jesse Rosenfeld reports. Read more about See no evil: Canadian government denies torture in Israel
GAZACITY, 19 March (IPS) - You would think the baby boy named Yousef has his life ahead of him. But who knows, with a child born to Palestinian parents from Gaza. What’s more, Yousef was born in an Israeli prison. He is the only one of Fatima al-Zeq’s nine children who is with her for that reason — she was arrested nine months ago. But these days the baby is not with her. Read more about In prison, who knows why?
PCHR is deeply concerned over storming the headquarters of Ramattan Press Agency in Ramallah by members of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service (PSS) and the arrest of a Palestinian journalist on Wednesday, 12 March 2008. PCHR believes that this attack constitutes an assault on press freedoms and the right to freedom of expression, and stresses that the rights to freedom of expression and to receive and impart information are ensured by the Palestinian Basic Law and international human rights instruments. Read more about Palestinian PSS storms Ramattan Press Agency in Ramallah
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) continues its tight siege and prevents movement of people and goods in and out of the Gaza Strip. This includes patients who are close to dying due to denied access to hospitals abroad. Sources from the Palestinian Ministry of Health have indicated that more than 100 patients have died since mid-June 2007. Read more about Palestinians in Gaza lose their livelihoods
On 11 March 2008, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) stormed into Al Quds Radio and Al Majd Radio headquarters in Jenin, West Bank and confiscated most of the contents in the buildings. According to sources from Al Quds Radio, the IOF, which carried out an incursion into the town of Jenin, in the northern West Bank, raided the headquarters of the radio station. Read more about IOF shuts down two radio stations in Jenin
JERUSALEM/GAZA, 12 March 2008 (IRIN) - Egypt has allowed over 200 Palestinian patients from the Gaza Strip to make their way into Egypt via the Rafah border crossing, according to Palestinian health officials. After the large-scale Israeli incursion into Jabalya refugee camp at the end of February and beginning of March, which killed about 120 and caused many injuries, Egypt allowed some of the wounded to enter its territory through Rafah. Read more about Egypt quietly lets in 230 patients from Gaza
Access-related deaths of patients referred to medical care outside Gaza are hard to determine with statistical certainty. Since several factors are involved, it is very difficult to define how far the delay or denial of a permit has influenced the final outcome in each case. The fact that in Gaza the delay has nothing to do with medical constraints of any kind, but with external reasons, makes the violation all the more serious and raises questions regarding the definition of the term “security” in the Israeli Secret Police lexicon. Read more about Four deaths: whose security?
NU’MAN, WESTBANK, 9 March 2008 (IRIN) - “With the Wall’s route like this we can’t go anywhere,” said Yousef al-Darawi, as he drew a map of Israel’s Barrier which blocks Nu’man village off from both East Jerusalem and the West Bank and leaves it a virtual enclave. “All people who want to visit have to be on a list at the checkpoint at the village’s entrance,” he said, including basic service providers. Most of the 170 residents have to enter and exit on foot. Read more about Barrier turns village into virtual enclave
On 8 March, the world celebrates International Women’s Day. This is one of the most distinguished events renewing support for women’s issues, their struggle for equality and commitment to women’s enjoyment of all their rights in accordance with international standards and conventions. The latest form of systematic violence by IOF was the military campaign against Jabaliya town in the northern Gaza Strip, which lasted from 28 February to 4 March 2008 Read more about On International Women's Day, Palestinian women continue their struggle
JERUSALEM, 6 March (IRIN) - The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is “man-made” and worse than it has ever been since the Israeli occupation in 1967, a coalition of British organizations said in a new report released on 6 March, urging better regional cooperation and saying Hamas can no longer be ignored. Read more about Gaza "man-made" crisis: rights orgs.
