In a hospital room in Nablus’ Specialty Hospital, two gunshot victims share a room. The young men are both awake and alert, and their room is filled with relatives and colleagues. They look fine, though one only speaks with some difficulty and the other has to lie on his side because of his injuries. The scene is not an unusual one in a Palestinian hospital after four years of the Intifada, but the circumstances of their shooting have rocked Nablus. The two are policemen and were wounded when clashes broke out between the police and members of an armed group, the Fateh-affiliated Al Awda Brigades, on March 4. Their colleagues are not only there to wish them well but to protect them from possible further attacks. A policeman is stationed at the entrance to the hospital. Read more about Nablus rocked by clashes
On the 3rd of March 2005, I left my home in the United States for Israel. I was expecting trouble upon arriving at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, as I had been forcibly expelled by the Israeli Authorities one year before due to this same work against the occupation. My expulsion at that time was based on false charges brought against me by the Israeli Ministry of Interior stating that I had resided illegally in Israel. When I arrived to Ben Gurion on the 4th of March, I was pulled aside at passport control, as I had expected. Read more about Beating Israel's activist deportation system, this time
You won’t hear about the story of my Palestinian friend Ali Zbeidat and the threatened demolition of his “illegal” home, either from the hundreds of international correspondents in Jerusalem or from the Hebrew media. None of them will tell you about the story of Ali’s family and the imminent physical and financial ruin of their lives by Israel, even though Ali’s plight is far from unique. There are tens of thousands of other Palestinians in the same desperate situation as Ali, living in homes Israel defines as illegal. The problem for Ali is not just that he is Palestinian; if he were, you might learn of his story. Ali’s problem is that he is also a citizen of Israel. Read more about Apartheid targets Palestinian home-owners inside Israel
GAZA — Two members of the management board of the Palestine Investment Fund have submitted their resignations from the management board, an informed Palestinian source has confirmed to al-Quds (newspaper). The source added that businessman Samir Said Khouri and businessman Engineer Jawdat al-Khudari submitted their resignations effective this month from the Fund’s management board due to disagreements within the board over the mechanism for managing the Fund’s investments in Arab countries. Read more about Two members of the Management Board of the Palestine Investment Fund resign
“Our Western culture is radically ethnocentric. This makes it difficult to widen one’s view. To use a phrase from Juan Rulfo, ‘The world is wide and belongs to no one.’ We have think tanks full of experts who tell us that the economy requires this or that, all of these things that are just assumed. This is a very narrow vision of reality. The problem is that if this reality doesn’t count — that is, if it doesn’t matter what people of color think, what Africans think, what Asians think — then we can just go on living in ignorance of them, constructing our everyday world and believing that we are the only thing that matters in the world.” Part 2 of an interview with award-winning Spanish journalist Teresa Aranguren. Read more about Spanish perspectives II: an interview with Teresa Aranguren (Part 2)
“I’m very conscious of the fact that everything having to do with the Arab world, viewed from the West, is shrouded in stereotypes. And virtually all of the stereotypes the West has of the Arab world are negative, because it’s our neighbor. The Chinese are far away, but the Arabs, we Europeans talk about them as if we knew them perfectly. We have this perception of a violent, intolerant, fanatic world, and we project all of this onto the Arab world. So I think it’s important for people who have been there, who have lived other experiences, to try to make clear that stereotypes can kill, that they end up killing, or justifying the killing.” John Collins asks award-winning Spanish journalist Teresa Aranguren about the meaning of solidarity in an age of fear. (Part 1) Read more about Spanish perspectives II: an interview with Teresa Aranguren (Part 1)
Amani Al-Hissi, a 25-year-old Palestinian blind woman from the poor refugee camp of Al-Shati (“The Beach”) in Gaza, studies Arabic literature, plays music, works as a radio presenter and depends on “help your self” as her strategy for managing the details of her own life. Ms. Al-Hissi, was shot by an Israeli soldier while she was six years old. One week after the shooting, she lost sight in one eye. Four years later, she completely lost her eyesight. WAFA reporter Sami Abu Salem writes from Gaza on the occasion of International Women’s Day. Read more about The Vision of a Blind Woman
The French Ministry of Health, the French State Secretariat for Victims and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs are co-sponsoring an international congress entitled ‘The Place of Children in the Space of Conflict’, to be held in Toulouse, France on the 21-23 of March 2005. The primary purpose of the conference is to draw attention to the suffering of Israeli children, to the exclusion of serious and needed attention to other children living in war and conflict, the context within which these children suffer, and the reason for their suffering. Read more about Protesting 'The Place of Children in the Space of Conflict' conference
Sixty-two-year-old Shafiqa Massoud is, for all intents and purposes, the head of the household. Hers is a typical peasant family that lives in the Qalqilya area directly up against the Green Line. Her husband, 66-year-old Amin Hindi is unemployed due to chronic illness and her four children are all married. In all, her extended family comprises 27 members. The rainy season should have been the best time of the year for farmers like Shafiqa’s family. But in Qalqilya, the season brought more hardship than joy this time around. Israel’s separation barrier, in this area an eight-meter high wall, formed a concrete dam, trapping the water and preventing it from flowing out west. Read more about "Damming" West Bank farmers
UNESCO’s recent support for establishing a joint Palestinian-Israeli scientific organization placies the organization at odds with the decision of the Palestinian Council for Higher Education which has repeatedly rejected “technical and scientific cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli universities.” This move also conflicts with the Palestinian call for boycotting Israeli academic institutions which was endorsed by tens of the most important unions, associations and organizations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, including the Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities’ Professors and Employees. This open letter to UNESCO challenges the move. Read more about Between South Africa and Israel: UNESCO's Double-Standards
