News

Ethnic cleansing, one home at a time


In the Sadiyya neighborhood inside the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City is the Jaber family home. There, three members of the Jaber family, as well as the Karaki family, have lived with their parents, and later spouses and children, since the 1930s. Six years ago Israeli police came to the house and told Nasser Jaber that his house no longer belonged to his family. Marcy Newman writes from occupied Jerusalem. 

UN Protects Israel from racism charges


BETHLEHEM, occupied West Bank (IPS) - As the wreckage from Israel’s recent siege on Gaza continues to smolder, international civil society organizations are assembling this week in Switzerland to address Israel’s crimes of military occupation and racism. But any discussion on Israel’s actions in Palestine will be excluded from the formal framework at the Durban Anti-Racism Review Conference in Geneva Monday. 

Aid rots outside Gaza


AL-ARISH, Egypt (IPS) - Hundreds of thousands of tons of aid intended for the Gaza Strip is piling up in cities across Egypt’s North Sinai region, despite recent calls from the United Nations to ease aid flow restrictions to the embattled territory in the wake of Israel’s 22-day assault. 

Punitive house demolitions as "deterrence"


By the time we arrived in Sur Bahir, a Palestinian village near Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on the afternoon of 7 April, it was calm. At 6am, some 2,000 Israeli border police and special forces and other personnel descended on the village to demolish a wing of a house that belonged to the family of a Palestinian construction worker who allegedly went on a rampage while operating a bulldozer last July. Marian Houk reports. 

Gaza needs more aid


RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - John Ging, head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, has urged Israel to ease aid flow restrictions that are having a devastating effect on the 1.5 million inhabitants. Ging says the amount of aid being allowed into Gaza at present is “wholly and totally inadequate. It’s having a very devastating impact on the physical circumstances and also the mindset of people on the ground,” Ging told IPS

In Gaza, farming under fire


KHAN YOUNIS, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - “They’re always shooting at us. Every day they shoot at us,” says Alaa Samour, 19, pulling aside his shirt to show a scar on his shoulder. Samour said he was shot on 28 December last year by Israeli soldiers positioned along the border fence near New Abassan village, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip. 

Sheikh Jarrah residents organize in the face of mass house evictions


“We are like the roots of a tree. The Israelis may cut us in places, but we will never die. We will not be transplanted from Jerusalem. I will not leave this house,” Maher Hanun tells a crowded room of Palestinian community members supported by Israeli and international solidarity activists. Jeff Pickert writes from occupied East Jerusalem.