Three young Palestinian sisters; Shahd Okal, eight months old, Maria Okal, five years old and Somaia Okal, 15 years old, and their mother were killed when an Israeli rocket hit their house on 26 July 2006 while they were swinging inside their house. But on 18 March 2008, Shahd, Maria and Somaia were born in the same Izbet Abed Rabbu neighborhood of Jabaliya town in the northern Gaza Strip. Sami Abu Salem writes from the occupied Gaza Strip. Read more about Sisters killed in Gaza "reborn" through cousins
As a lawyer for the Palestinian peace negotiating team, I met presidents, prime ministers, Nobel laureates, secretaries of state and other important figures. But none of these individuals hit me with the same emotional wallop as a young woman named Majda. Diana Buttu writes from occupied Ramallah. Read more about Far from Palestine's sea
JERUSALEM/GAZA, 12 March 2008 (IRIN) - Egypt has allowed over 200 Palestinian patients from the Gaza Strip to make their way into Egypt via the Rafah border crossing, according to Palestinian health officials. After the large-scale Israeli incursion into Jabalya refugee camp at the end of February and beginning of March, which killed about 120 and caused many injuries, Egypt allowed some of the wounded to enter its territory through Rafah. Read more about Egypt quietly lets in 230 patients from Gaza
Dear Rima Haimov, When I read your words the only thing I can say is that I feel sorry for your son, and that I can understand you as a mother and the traumatic events that your child is experiencing. I cannot deny the fact that life becomes very difficult in such circumstances when you realize that you and your family are in danger at any moment; I fully understand your worries, your feelings and concerns. I am addressing this letter to you with the hope that you will understand my pain too. Read more about A letter from a mother in Gaza to a mother in Sderot
NU’MAN, WESTBANK, 9 March 2008 (IRIN) - “With the Wall’s route like this we can’t go anywhere,” said Yousef al-Darawi, as he drew a map of Israel’s Barrier which blocks Nu’man village off from both East Jerusalem and the West Bank and leaves it a virtual enclave. “All people who want to visit have to be on a list at the checkpoint at the village’s entrance,” he said, including basic service providers. Most of the 170 residents have to enter and exit on foot. Read more about Barrier turns village into virtual enclave
Israeli officials said on 3 March that they finished their military operation in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli attacks continue, and we fear that Israel is still planning a major invasion. What is happening in Gaza hurts all Palestinians, not just Hamas. Before this assault, the Gaza Strip, with 1.5 million residents, was already like a prison under siege, with dwindling supplies of food, medicine, fuel, clean water and electricity, and growing poverty. Fida Qishta writes from occupied Rafah. Read more about Dreaming of a better future in Gaza
GAZACITY, 7 March (IPS) - Mahasen Darduna suffers in ways the world recognizes; her suffering comes at the hands of the Israelis. But there are many Palestinian women whose suffering the world does not see, because their hell is inflicted on them by fellow Palestinians. One way or another, no day is woman’s day in Gaza. For a week, Mahasen Darduna, 30, has sat day and night by her son’s bedside in the hospital. The boy, Yahiya, nine, was among a group of children hit by an Israeli missile while playing football on a field at the Jabaliya refugee camp. Read more about No day is women's day in Gaza
“The establishment of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders is unfeasible. A Bantustan-based system does not guarantee a comprehensive peace. It never did in Apartheid South Africa. Ironically, therefore, what the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 between Israel and the PLO, have led to is a situation that was not envisaged by its signatories, that is the impossibility of establishing a sovereign independent Palestinian state on 22 percent of historic Palestine.” Dr. Haider Eid speaks with Anna Weekes. Read more about Interview with single-state activist Dr. Haider Eid
At the end of last November, filmmaker Mohammad Bakri furiously left a press conference organized at the Library of the Auditorium of Rome. He was present because of the performance of the opera Al Kamandjati based on the story of Palestinian musician Ramzi Aburedwan and his music school in Ramallah. The reason for his anger was that not a single journalist asked him any questions when he announced that he would soon be tried in Israel because of his 2002 film Jenin Jenin. Read more about Italian solidarity with Palestinian filmmaker on trial in Israel
This year, it will sixty years since the Nakba, the catastrophe of expulsion of Palestinians from historic Palestine. Generations have been born, have grown up, and have died in refugee camps, but the international community still continues to ignore the political rights of the Palestinian refugees. What makes it sad for me as a refugee — one who was born and grew up in a refugee camp, and struggling not to die in a refugee camp — is that the Nakba generation is dying. Ziad Abbas writes. Read more about The Nakba generation
