“I’m still in New Orleans. It’s so much like Palestine it’s eerie. It’s a different kind of devastation than right after the storm. Some of the worst wreckage has been cleaned up — there are no longer throngs of people camping out on the I-10 Causeway or waterlogged bodies lining the streets. Now it’s the emptiness that is most striking. Some parts of the city are like a ghost town.” Writing from New Orleans, EI contributor Lora Gordan finds parallels between the struggle for justice in New Orleans and that in Palestine. Read more about The geography of dissent: New Orleans and Palestine 

The fears of sectarian strife may be the reason why a good number of bloggers wrote about sectarianism this week. However, as one may expect, bloggers do not agree on how to define or confront this issue. While some see that it is blown out of proportion, or that ignoring it may bring calamity, others think that it is a blessing and a Lebanese exceptionality. Nevertheless, many anti-sectarian youth peace groups have popped-up in Beirut in an attempt to save Lebanon from the seemingly inevitable future of a civil war or violence such as those occurring in neighboring countries in the region. Read more about Lebanon Bloggers Roundup: Sectarianism and Peace Groups 

WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (IPS) - U.S. and Israeli hopes of forging of a Sunni Arab alliance to contain Iran and its regional allies may be misplaced, at least at the popular level, according to a major survey of six Arab countries released here Thursday. The face-to-face survey of a total of 3,850 respondents in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates found that close to 80 percent of Arabs consider Israel and the United States the two biggest external threats to their security. Only six percent cited Iran. Read more about Arabs Less Worried About Iran, Poll Finds 

“Now life in Gaza is complete” says Um-Salim, a painful sarcasm tinging her words. Um-Saleem speaks as she run s towards the hospital after hearing that camp children were injured during recent factional infighting. “It is not enough that we have to live in deep poverty and sadness. Now death comes, without warning, to kill our children, our dreams and our hope.” Umm-Salim has four children and lives in Shati refugee camp on the western edge of Gaza City. “I told my children not to go into the streets because the situation is really dangerous. There is shooting everywhere and bullets have no mercy”. Read more about Refugee parents despair as Gaza streets turn into battlegrounds 

Last October, I traveled to Palestine on a peace delegation with the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPTs), a faith-based group committed to using nonviolent alternatives to war and conflict. Instinctively, whenever our group met with one of the many peacemakers of that region, be it Israeli, Palestinian or International we would ask, “What can we do to help?” Surprisingly, the most common response was not to donate money nor “sell all your belongings and follow me.” It was simply to go back home and tell our communities what we saw. To tell them about the suffering, of course, but also about the opportunities…the glimmers of hope. Read more about Tale of Two Visits: The Warrior and the Peacemaker  

Bedouin villages have been on the land since before the State of Israel was conceived. The Israeli government doesn’t recognise them and calls them illegal, and therefore they are not entitled to any infrastructure or services. The “illegal” villages lack even basic amenities such as running water and electricity. According to Yeela Raanan of the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), the elders have held receipts since the 1970s of payments made to Israel for plots of land in the town of Laquia. They lived on other people’s land in shacks and tents on the outskirts of the town, waiting for the land — which never came — to build homes for their families. Read more about Interview with Israeli activist Yeela Raanan 

GAZA CITY, Feb 5 (IPS) - The United Nations has indefinitely suspended elementary school classes for tens of thousands of Gaza City’s children following a weekend of unprecedented factional violence, which turned this isolated enclave into a war zone and left at least 27 dead and 250 wounded. John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said, “we try to balance the risk of violence to kids and parents on the one hand, and the need for these kids to get an education on the other. Read more about War Enters the Classrooms 

Internal unrest in Gaza City since last Thursday, manifested in clashes between Fatah and Hamas supporters, has claimed 25 lives, wounded dozens of others and caused destruction to many public infrastructure such as universities and governmental buildings. Movement in Gaza city is almost paralyzed. The United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) announced it would keep all its schools closed starting from February 3 until calm is restored. The Palestinian Authority institutions were almost empty on Saturday, as employees refrained from going to places of work out of fear they might come across fire. Read more about "We don't need either Hamas or Fatah"