Some of the children and a pregnant woman being held in an immigration jail in Texas are Palestinian refugees whose families came to the USA with visas, says a Dallas lawyer. Immigration attorney John Wheat Gibson represents two families that include a pregnant woman and children ages 2, 3, 5, 12, 14, and 17. The families have been incarcerated since their midnight arrests in early November by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “The children, imprisoned with their mothers, have never been accused of any wrongdoing. Neither have their mothers,” says Gibson. Read more about Palestinian Refugees and Children Held in Hutto, Texas Jail
The Lebanese bloggers are united this week in wishing their readers all the best during Christmas, Al Adha and the New Year. Some of these bloggers have taken up the issue of foreign intervention in the region as a subject of reflection while others highlight the sad state of economy and the effects that the political situation is having on it. The Lebanese bloggers also addressed the March 14 investigations and media coverage thereof. Read more about Lebanese bloggers roundup: Foreign Intervention and Economics
A major Palestinian and Arab demand has been quietly accepted by Israel and the US, but the Palestinians are too engrossed in their internal fighting to realize it. After the collapse of the bilateral and unilateral efforts, the time has come for multilateralism. Palestinian-Israeli bilateral talks saw a high point in the Oslo process, but have stalled ever since. Israel’s unilateralism, both in south Lebanon and Gaza, has also been a major failure. US State Department officials, seeing the failure of their own unilateralism in Iraq, have pushed Israel and found the Olmert administration receptive toward a multilateral approach. Read more about While the Fire Rages
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid26 December 2006
On Saturday 23 December a picket was organized by activists in Toronto and Montreal to officially launch a boycott campaign against Chapters and Indigo Bookstores. The campaign demands an end to the financial support offered by the majority owners of Chapters and Indigo to Heseg - the Foundation for Lone Soldiers. This is a program of financial support for former ‘lone soldiers’ in the Israeli military. The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, came out to the downtown core of Toronto, and held a mass leafleting and information picket to launch this campaign. Read more about Canada: Action to Boycott Chapters and Indigo Bookstores
Yesterday, here in Gaza, I met Scott Kennedy, a former mayor of Santa Cruz, California. He has been traveling in the Middle East and touring the West Bank and Israel. Today Mr. Kennedy is being escorted to visit Rafah, from El Deira Hotel here in Gaza City, by a Palestinian Authority convoy, and I have decided to go along with him. We will also drive through Khan Younis, and through ruins of the former Israeli coastal settlements of Gush Katif, which used take up over a third of the beachfront in the Gaza Strip. We won’t have time to get out of the convoy at these places, however. Read more about Rafah Revisited
Israel has shut down another internationally mandated investigation of its military actions. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and his high-level fact-finding mission, authorized by the UN’s Human Rights Council, have been refused entry by Israel for so long that they have been forced to call off the visit. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mark Regev disingenuously claimed that Israel had not denied entry, but simply not yet reached a decision. The families of the 19 Palestinian civilians slain at Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on 8 November 2006 will apparently not see even an approximation of justice at this time. Read more about Israel blocks another UN fact-finding mission
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been touring the Middle East with one clear message — to make peace in the Middle East, Iran must be isolated. There is little new about Blair’s strategy. Though it contradicts his initial support for the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group to open talks with Syria and Iran — a position he quickly withdrew from after having been corrected by U.S. President George W. Bush — it fits well with the approach of his predecessors when it comes to creating momentum for peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians. Read more about Blair's Mideast Message Echoes Past Failure
While the situation in U.S.-occupied Iraq has slid further into chaos and sectarian strife, Egypt has watched anxiously as two areas closer to home — the occupied Palestinian territories and Lebanon — have also been roiled by the specter of civil war. Although tense political standoffs in both the Gaza Strip and Beirut have prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity by Cairo, there has been little by way of progress in either case. In nearby Gaza, attempts to forge a national unity government between leading opposition party Fatah and the Hamas-led government ended in failure, with the two sides unable to agree on terms for power sharing. Read more about Fearing Civil Wars, Cairo Counsels Restraint
Surveys, opinion polls, and now, consultative approaches are increasingly being used to explore Palestinian refugee issues, and to formulate policy. The Civitas project adopted an entirely different approach to the matter. Indeed, civic participation is different even than consultation exercises - participation gives space for the young woman from Egypt (in the quote above) to articulate the complex sentiments, ideology, and political understandings that she possesses. It highlights many of the understandings Palestinians have for Palestine, but crucially it gives a more sophisticated understanding to those reading it about its importance and relevance. Read more about The Role of Participatory Methods for Mobilizing Change
As I entered the powerful new museum of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in early November, I was confronted by these words: “A country should be judged not only by what it does, but also by what it tolerates.” Kurt Tucholsky, WW1 veteran and pacifist, journalist and social critic whose books were burned by the same Nazi regime that stripped him of his citizenship, wrote the statement after Germany adopted the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws. His sobering contention was brought vividly to mind during my visit to Gaza, Palestine ten days later. Read more about Language and the crimes we permit in Gaza
