RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din is taking the Israeli military, the Israeli civil administration and a number of Israeli mining companies to court. The rights group alleges they are illegally stripping Palestinian West Bank quarries of raw construction material for the benefit of the Israeli construction industry and the building of illegal Israeli settlements. Read more about Israel stripping West Bank quarries
RAFAH, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - Pickup trucks speed westward on the Barth highway that flanks the Israeli border in Egypt’s North Sinai region, stacked high with cartons of petrol. They are headed “for Gaza,” the Bedouin residents of Barth village say — through the tunnels that burrow under the Egypt-Gaza border and are filling Gaza’s aid gap in the aftermath of Israel’s deadly assault on the territory. Read more about Tunnels become a lifeline
An elderly Palestinian woman grabbed my hand and held it over her chest. “Feel my heartbeat,” she said. “We are really afraid of the settlers.” Only half an hour before she took my hand, a group of 20 settlers from Maon settlement entered the village of Juwwiya and shot at her and her family as they grazed their sheep. Joy Ellison writes from the occupied West Bank. Read more about Tony Blair and the full measure of justice
Umm Raed’s sick husband hasn’t worked in more than 20 years. Her own family can’t, or won’t, help support her and her seven children. So her job in the Royalife factory in the Barkan industrial zone, built on illegally confiscated Palestinian land in the Salfit governorate in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was the household’s main source of income. Sarah Irving reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Palestinian women settlement workers' plight
GAZACITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) - UN agencies and the health ministry in Gaza are working to strengthen communicable disease surveillance systems in Gaza, in light of the fact that leaking sewage may be contaminating drinking water. Read more about Efforts to track communicable diseases in Gaza
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani28 April 2009
CAIRO (IPS) - Egyptian authorities announced earlier this month the discovery of a Hizballah “cell” allegedly planning to carry out violent operations in Egypt. Although Hizballah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah insists the group was only tasked to assist the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, the government has used the episode to launch a blistering media campaign against the Lebanese Shia resistance group. Read more about Egypt's dubious claims spark row with Hizballah
As the pressure on companies to pull out from business facilitating Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip grows, it has been recently revealed that in Norway three private banks and the state pension fund invested in one such company. Adri Nieuwhof reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Norway gov't, banks investing in settlement construction company
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani27 April 2009
CAIRO (IPS) - The recent onslaught against the Gaza Strip — and Israel’s failure to achieve its military objectives there — left Palestinian resistance group Hamas politically stronger than ever. Concurrently, it dealt a possible death blow to the faction within Fatah led by strongman Mohammed Dahlan, long known for its closeness to Israel. Read more about Dahlan comeback to Gaza fails
GAZACITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) - Rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity in Gaza, compounded by the recent 23-day Israeli offensive, have increased the threat of child malnutrition, say UN agencies, health ministry officials and healthcare non-governmental organizations in Gaza. Read more about Signs of worsening malnutrition among children
GAZACITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) - Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only official border crossing into Egypt, opened to a limited number of Gazans on 18-21 April. Some 1,600 medical patients, students and business people crossed into Egypt. Some 400 were turned back by the Egyptian authorities, according to the Gaza interior ministry, and thousands remain stranded on both sides of the border. Read more about Some Gazans allowed to cross into Egypt
