“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
“I put my hand on her chest to stop the streaming blood. She told me that she could not breathe, her body trembled and she closed her eyes,” said Ra’d Abu Saif of his 12-year-old daughter Safa’s last moments after she was shot by an Israeli sniper last Saturday. Safa was shot in the left side of her chest while she was inside her home in Jabaliya, northern Gaza. Sami Abu Salem reports from Gaza. Read more about Israeli sniper bullet takes 12-year-old girl's life
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.
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani6 March 2008
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"
GAZACITY, 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
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
GAZACITY, 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
