In an interview with The Electronic Intifada, Jeff Halper, the Israeli-American director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, discussed the ongoing Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip and the Free Gaza Movement (FGM). Halper was one of 46 members to take part in FGM’s action to challenge Israel 14-month siege on Gaza. Read more about Jeff Halper in Gaza: "We are the oppressors" 

BAGHDAD (IRIN) - The Iraqi government has launched a registration process for Palestinian refugees who arrived between 1948 and 1967 — and their descendants — to help ensure they benefit from government aid programs. Those registered will be issued with ID cards which identify them as refugees, the Ministry of Displacement and Migration said on 26 August. Read more about Some Palestinian refugees in Iraq to get special IDs 

CAIRO (IPS) - Following renewed fighting between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, Egypt has stepped up calls for dialogue and reconciliation. But critics say Cairo’s partiality to Fatah — which is backed, like the Egyptian regime itself, by the US — prevents it from mediating fairly in the crisis. Read more about Egyptian kinship with Fatah hampers mediation 

Tears filled the eyes of Ramattan News Agency’s Head of African Operations Hayyan Jubeh when he caught his first glimpse of the skyline on the coast of Gaza along the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea after a 37-hour voyage launched from Cyprus. Jubeh, 48, a Palestinian filmmaker from Jerusalem, is one of 44 international peace activists on board the ships. Sami Abu Salem writes from the Gaza Strip. Read more about Ramattan reporter reaches Gaza on board the Liberty 

In Gaza City, scores of journalists participated in a rally condemning an official Israeli statement clearing Israeli soldiers of wrongdoing in the killing of Palestinian journalist Fadel Shana’a. Protesters demanded an international probe and chanted slogans such as “we are keeping up on your path Fadel, as you lay in rest.” EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports from the occupied Gaza Strip. Read more about No justice for murdered journalist 

CAIRO (IPS) - Recent weeks have seen the worst fighting between rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas since the latter’s takeover of the Gaza Strip last summer. Hamas accuses the “treasonous faction” within Fatah — which worked with US military intelligence in last year’s failed bid to destroy the resistance group — of instigating the violence. Read more about A civil war in the making 

Yehudit Genud hardly feels she is on the frontier of Israel’s settlement project, although the huddle of mobile homes on a wind-swept West Bank hilltop she calls home is controversial even by Israeli standards. Jonathan Cook reports from Migron settlement in the occupied West Bank. Read more about Creating a fact on the ground 

The four-story building in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood a few miles north of East Jerusalem, was clearly home to wealth. As our carload of internationals pulled up the small street leading to Abu Majed Eisha’s house at around midnight I noticed several BMWs parked along the way. From what I had learned during my brief time in the West Bank, Palestine, I knew already that this was not going to be an ordinary house demolition. Jill Shaw writes from Beit Hanina. Read more about Israel's weapon of house demolitions