JERUSALEM, 6 March (IRIN) - The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is “man-made” and worse than it has ever been since the Israeli occupation in 1967, a coalition of British organizations said in a new report released on 6 March, urging better regional cooperation and saying Hamas can no longer be ignored. Read more about Gaza "man-made" crisis: rights orgs. 

CAIRO, 6 March (IPS) - Fury erupted on the streets and in parliament this week following violent Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip. But as protests were held nationwide in support of besieged Palestinians next door, Cairo continued to keep the volatile Rafah border crossing — the only means out of the strip not under direct Israeli control — tightly sealed. Read more about Egyptian anger over Israel "approaching boiling point" 

GAZA CITY, 4 March (IPS) - Two F-16 missiles were all it took to bring down the five-story headquarters of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. The Union, established in 1965, is one of the forerunners of the movement calling for an international boycott of Israel, and imposition of sanctions on it until Israel meets its obligations over UN resolutions, borders, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. Read more about Trade union building targeted in Gaza 

United States officials participated in a conspiracy to arm and train Contra-style Palestinian militias nominally loyal to the Fatah party to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government. Read more about Revealed: the US plan to start a Palestinian civil war 

We celebrated Yousuf’s fourth birthday today. We ate cake. And we counted the bodies. We sang happy birthday. And my mother sobbed. We watched the fighter jets roar voraciously on our television screen, pounding street after street, then heard a train screech outside, and shuddered. Yousuf tore open his presents, and asked my mother to make a paper zanana, a drone, for him with origami; we were torn open from the inside, engulfed by a feeling of impotence and helplessness, fear and anger and grief, despondence and confusion. Laila El-Haddad writes on the “long-term” Gaza genocide. Read more about The Gaza genocide 

GAZA CITY, 1 March (IPS) - Tamer was nine, and no child soldier. He did not live in the area from where homemade rockets are launched into Israeli territory. The day he was killed, he was at least two kilometers from the place Israeli troops had entered Gaza, and met with return fire by Palestinian resistance. His tragedy was that the family home was near Deir al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip, close to the area the Israelis have set up as their Kussfim base. Read more about Israel kills some more children 

CAIRO, 27 February (IPS) - One month after throngs of Palestinians flooded into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip, the flashpoint Rafah border crossing remains tightly shut. But according to some opposition figures, the breach — viewed by many as a victory for Palestinian resistance faction Hamas — signaled the need for new border protocols consistent with shifting political realities. Read more about Gaza-Egypt border in political limbo 

CAIRO, 29 February (IPS) - On Monday, Egypt began pumping natural gas to Israel in accordance with an energy accord between Cairo and Tel Aviv. While the Egyptian government defends the move as being in the country’s best interest, opposition figures decry the notion of economic cooperation with Israel, especially in light of the latter’s ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip. Read more about Egypt begins pumping gas to Israel despite Gaza siege 

For the last two months the residents of al-Khader have demonstrated every week against the illegal construction of the Israeli wall on their land. The demonstrations are organized by the al-Khader Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, with the support of al-Khader institutions, residents as well as Israeli and international activists. Adri Nieuwhof and Samer Jaber report. Read more about Al-Khader village protests the wall