The construction of sections of a controversial segregated road network in the West Bank planned by Israel for Palestinians — leaving the main roads for exclusive use by settlers — is being financed by a US government aid agency, a map prepared by Palestinian researchers has revealed. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about USAID funding Israel's apartheid road construction
The recent arrest of two respected public figures from Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority in nighttime raids on their homes by the Shin Bet secret police — brought to light this week when a gag order was partially lifted — has sent shock waves through the community. Jonathan Cook analyzes. Read more about Arrest of Palestinian leaders in Israel "a dangerous development"
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu has been sentenced to another three months imprisonment for allegedly refusing to perform community service in West Jerusalem. His arrest follows the detention of Palestinian leaders in Israel. Read more about Israel increasingly resembling a police state
LUBBANAL-SHARQIYA, occupied West Bank (IPS) - “There is immense anger as well as a feeling of vulnerability and fear when a place of sanctuary and holiness is subject to indiscriminate violence,” says Issa Hussein. “Despite living under a brutal military occupation and being subjected to regular attacks by Israeli settlers for decades, normally places of worship were spared.” Read more about Israeli settlers attack Palestinian mosques
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Several Palestinians have set up a protest tent in no-man’s land in the northern Gaza Strip, near the Erez border crossing into Israel, as they protest their deportation from the Israeli occupied West Bank into Gaza where Hamas authorities have refused them entry. Read more about New Israeli order allows for mass expulsion from West Bank
This morning at 3:10am, Israeli Security Agency agents accompanied by Israeli police raided Ameer Makhoul’s family home in Haifa and arrested him. Makhoul is a human rights defender and serves as the general director of Ittijah - The Union of Arab Community-Based Associations and as the Chairman of the Public Committee for the Defense of Political Freedom in the framework of the High Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel. Read more about Rights orgs condemn arrest of Palestinian civil society leader
“There was a single shot without any warning, and a young man was carried away,” Adie Mormech explained. Mormech, currently in Gaza, is a British activist with the International Solidarity Movement. He was an eyewitness at the 28 April demonstration at Nahal Oz, east of Gaza City, when Ahmed Deeb was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier. Eva Bartlett reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about The pretext of "security" along Gaza's buffer zone
Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the lid on Israel’s secret surveillance of the country’s Islamic leaders. Jonathan Cook reports from Jaffa. Read more about Israel's secret police surveilling Islamic leaders
On Monday 26 April 2010, Israeli occupation forces killed a Palestinian man, Ali Ismael Ali Swaiti, 45, in Beit Awwa in the West Bank district of Hebron, after demolishing a house while he was inside. Israeli occupation forces claim that Ali Swaiti had been wanted for several years. Read more about Caterpillar equipment used in extrajudicial killing near Hebron
Former World Bank president and Middle East Quartet envoy James D. Wolfensohn is an investor in an Israeli company that is developing transport infrastructure for Jewish-only settlements built in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law, an investigation by The Electronic Intifada reveals. Read more about Quartet ex-envoy's investment helps Israel greenwash settlements