News

Experts to Obama: Political Islam not the enemy

Ali Gharib 12 March 2009


WASHINGTON (IPS) - Scores of Middle East and democracy experts released an open letter to US President Barack Obama Tuesday asking him to focus more of his foreign policy efforts at making reforms in the region, including boosting human rights. Signed by more than 120 academics, scholars, experts and others, the letter said that previous US policy had been “misguided” and “produced a region increasingly tormented by rampant corruption, extremism, and instability.” 

Israeli settlers terrorize Palestinian villagers

Mel Frykberg 11 March 2009


AL-TUWANI, occupied West Bank (IPS) - “I couldn’t run. My pregnancy was too far advanced and there was nowhere to hide,” said Amna Salman Rabaye, 31, as she recalled the terrifying incident several months ago. Rabaye from the Palestinian Bedouin village of al-Tuwani in the southern West Bank was grazing her sheep when she was assaulted by a security guard from the adjacent illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’on. 

French company runs Israeli bus services to settlements

Adri Nieuwhof and Daniel Machover 11 March 2009


The international Derail Veolia and Alstom campaign is gaining momentum by coordinating efforts to pressure French transportation giants Veolia and Alstom to withdraw from the Israeli tramway project in Jerusalem that runs illegally on Palestinian land. With its involvement in this project, Veolia is directly implicated in maintaining illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 

Canada Park and Israeli "memoricide"

Jonathan Cook 10 March 2009


As spring sets in early, Israelis have been pouring into one of the country’s most popular leisure spots. Visitors to Canada Park, a few kilometers northwest of Jerusalem, enjoy its spectacular panoramas, woodland paths, mountain-bike trails, caves and idyllic picnic areas. Few, if any, visitors take notice of the stone blocks that litter sections of the park. Jonathan Cook reports. 

UNICEF head: Gaza children need more support

10 March 2009


GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) - UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann M. Veneman recently paid a visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) to assess the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with special focus on children. As of 5 February, 431 Palestinian children had died and 1,872 had been wounded in the 22-day Israeli offensive which ended on 18 January, according to the Gaza health ministry. 

East Jerusalem settlements ratchet up tensions

Helena Cobban 10 March 2009


OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM (IPS) - As the fires of human misery continue to smolder in Gaza, the situation in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem is emerging as another potentially explosive issue in, and far beyond, the Middle East. The future of the city is considered an issue of prime importance to both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as to their supporters around the world. 

Ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem

Marcy Newman East Jerusalem 10 March 2009


I recently visited the al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan, one of the many slated for demolition any day now. The roads into the valley where al-Bustan lies were all closed to Palestinian cars with border police blocking off almost every street. The Electronic Intifada contributor Dr. Marcy Newman writes from occupied East Jerusalem. 

Where every day is a woman's day

Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler 9 March 2009


BEIT SAHOUR, occupied West Bank (IPS) - We’ve been warned she’s a “harsh case.” Hesitantly she enters, a withdrawn smile hidden behind glasses and a canopy of thick black hair. Impassively, she tells her life story — as if it’s about someone else entirely: she’s 19. Since seven, she’s been sexually assaulted by “an influential family relative.” He used to tell her what they were doing was “normal between a man and a woman.” She felt secluded from her own family by a vow forced upon her not to reveal their “little secret.” 

Suddenly, home was gone

Eva Bartlett 9 March 2009


BEIT HANOUN, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - Dates in the calendar to mark the rights of women mean little to Manwa Tarrabin, 56, and her two daughters. They have lost home, and any rights to it. Until 17 January, they were living in a small bungalow in the al-Amal quarter of Beit Hanoun, within 200 meters of Gaza’s eastern border, in a region declared by the Israeli authorities a “closed military zone.”