Israel seems to have little time for the irony that a modern Jewish shrine to “coexistence and tolerance” is being built on the graves of the city’s Muslim forefathers. The Israeli Supreme Court’s approval last week of the building of a Jewish Museum of Tolerance over an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem is the latest in a series of legal and physical assaults on Islamic holy places since Israel’s founding in 1948. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Travesty of tolerance on display
In a conflict that has produced more than its share of suffering and tragedy, the name of Kafr Qassem lives on in infamy more than half a century after Israeli police gunned down 47 Palestinian civilians, including women and children, in the village. This week Kafr Qassem’s inhabitants, joined by a handful of Israeli Jewish sympathizers, commemorated the anniversary of the deaths 52 years ago. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Execution of 47 in Kafr Qassem commemorated
RAMALLAH (IRIN) - Some 100 academics and mental health workers were denied entry to the Gaza Strip to attend an international medical conference, but the conference took place anyway — by video link, with one group gathering in Gaza City and another in Ramallah. “It made it harder to exchange experiences,” said Samir Qouta, a psychologist at the Islamic University in Gaza, told IRIN. Read more about Israel tries to block Gaza health conference
Eddie VassalloBalata refugee camp, West Bank31 October 2008
The group of internationals I had traveled with to the northern West Bank city of Nablus had decided to park our car just behind the Huwwara checkpoint, where Israeli soldiers control Palestinian movement to and from the city. From the outset, I began taking pictures of an Israeli military outpost littered with heavy tanks and armored vehicles. Eddie Vassallo writes from the Balata refugee camp. Read more about Is Spain inside or outside the Nablus checkpoint?
Ask Saif Abukeshek when he became an online activist, and he’ll give you the same answer as many of his Palestinian peers: after the second intifada erupted, in 2000. That explosion of violence in the occupied territories brought about a tough lockdown on Palestinian mobility by Israeli forces and produced the right conditions for a home-grown, grass-roots activism — frustrated youth trapped inside all day with nothing but the TV and the internet to turn to. Don Duncan reports. Read more about Palestinian youth bring their politics online
This morning I walked to the Indian Ocean and made salt in defiance of the British Occupation of India. This morning I marched in Selma, I stood down tanks in Tiananmen Square, and I helped tear down the Berlin Wall. This morning I became a Freedom Rider. Ramzi Kysia of the Free Gaza Movement writes from the Gaza Strip. Read more about Freedom Riders on the sea
Salwa Salam Qupty clutches a fading sepia photograph of a young Palestinian man wearing a traditional white headscarf. It is the sole memento that survives of her father, killed by a Jewish militia during the 1948 war that established Israel. “He was killed 60 years ago as he was traveling to work,” she said, struggling to hold back the tears. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Denied visit to father's grave
RAMALLAH (IPS) - Israeli soldiers shot and killed three young Palestinians in the Ramallah district of the central West Bank last week. The army claimed the Palestinians were about to throw Molotov cocktails at soldiers and settlers in the Bet El settlement. But the circumstances in which the young men were shot has been questioned. Read more about Israeli forces kill three Palestinian youths near Ramallah
For the past decade and a half, as I stood at the roof of my house in the morning enjoying the sunrise over the Ramallah hills, a few meters down the hill the Jewish settlers were watching the sun rise over the same hills and planning their next move to make them their own. Raja Shehadeh writes from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Read more about Hope for Palestine's hills
Paul Adrian RaymondYanoun, West Bank3 November 2008
The children playing in the dusty yard of the house below my olive tree know that they are surrounded by foes. The tops of the surrounding hills, which used to belong to the village but have been confiscated for use by an Israeli settlement, are scattered with watchtowers, mobile trailers and chicken sheds. Groups of settlers, often teenagers, regularly come through the village accompanied by dogs and carrying M-16 machine guns. Paul Adrian Raymond writes from Yanoun. Read more about Protecting Yanoun
