Palestinian nationalist and Islamic leaders have strongly denounced efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and affiliated foreign aide bodies to recruit Palestinian journalists, politicians and certain political groups to work against the Islamic group Hamas. Western news agencies last Friday reported that the US was quietly starting a campaign projected to cost up to $42 million to bolster Hamas’s political opponents ahead of possible early elections. The plan includes funding the Fatah group, providing training as well as offering “strategic advice” to politicians and some liberal secular parties opposed to Hamas. Read more about Palestinians apprehensive about CIA money
With the coming of Eid al Fiter and in spite of the depressed economy and Israel’s chokehold on Palestinian revenues and customs, traders and vendors in Ramallah are hoping to make some money. Some of them are children, since government schools have yet to open in the West Bank because of the strike by government employees. The vendors’ merchandise is all cheap, but it is colorful and maybe affordable. Popular items appear to be plastic weapons — plastic guns and swords. To Palestinian children, the scene in downtown Ramallah is as exciting as any Christmas season is in downtown New York to American children. Read more about Photostory: Ramadan in Ramallah
The good news that Condoleezza Rice “wants the Israeli government to explain restrictions on Palestinian-Americans traveling on U.S. passports in Israel and the Palestinian territories” spread like wildfire in the occupied Palestinian territories. Rice has apparently listened to something from the Palestinian side! Maybe she saw the ads that the Palestinian grassroots Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry into the oPt had placed in all the local papers during her most recent visit - a photograph of her and Abbas with the caption “Wish we could be there to help you!”, meaning that Americans, and Palestinian-Americans especially, are being denied entry to the oPt, and so are also denied the opportunity to play a role in the peacemaking she was seeking. Read more about Denial of Entry: Rice's Probe and the Israeli Administration
Less than a month after the guns fell silent - despite the ear-splitting roar of Israeli jet fighters regularly searing through Lebanese air space in violation of a UN brokered “ceasefire” - my recent trip to Beirut and the war-ravaged southern Lebanon brought home the brutal reality of Israeli savagery. In scores of places where we stood knee-high deep in debris and rubble of towns and villages, the signs of life are steadily becoming more and more visible. Noises emanating from the engines of front-end loaders, tipper trucks and bulldozers clearly signal the intent of the million plus displaced Lebanese not to allow Israel to succeed in turning their homes in picturesque southern landscape into no-go “ghost” areas. Read more about Can War Be Over When Battles Remain?
Education plays a big part in Barbara Lubin’s life. In fact it was a broad-based education that made her realize that she was getting a distorted view of what went on in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Lubin was born into a conservative Zionist family. She had been taught that the Jews needed to establish a state of their own; that what had happened to her relatives during WWII; when their land was occupied, and family members murdered in camps, should never happen again. For much of her life Barbara Lubin felt that the Zionist ideal was the right thing. However, in 1982 her eyes were open to a new horror. Read more about "You never know what's next": An interview with activist Barbara Lubin
Normally, the holy month of Ramadan is a festive season of heightened spirituality and good will. It is also an occasion where family members share the usually exquisite Iftar meals immediately after sunset at the end of the day-long fast. However, for many Palestinian families, hard-hit by extremely harsh Israeli-western sanctions, this Ramadan has the smell of real penury. Abject poverty is also becoming increasingly apparent among the traditionally weak sectors of society, such as day-laborers. Yousuf M. Suleiman is a school teacher of 30 years from the southern West Bank town of Hebron. He has a family of eight but can hardly get things “under control” when it comes to securing the basic needs such as flour, sugar and rice. Read more about Bleak Ramadan in Palestine
Now is the time for a serious international push to launch an Arab-Israeli peace initiative. Catastrophic as the recent series of developments in the Middle East have been, they can give new impetus to the search for a comprehensive settlement. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: To Reach a Lasting Peace,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, is a realistic analysis of all the obstacles to peace in the current climate. But it also charts a way forward that could succeed. “The Lebanon war must serve as a wake-up call”, says Robert Malley, Crisis Group’s Middle East Program Director. Read more about ICG: "Now is the time to launch an Arab-Israeli peace initiative"
Two leading human rights organizations registered serious concerns over Israel’s recent actions in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip as well as Hizballah’s action against northern Israel. However, Curt Goering of Amnesty International and Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch pointed out at this recent Palestine Center event that the nature of the weapons used by Israel indicates that the principles of international humanitarian law had been disregarded and that the consequences to civilians was not considered. Read the transcript of this event held at the Palestine Center last month. Read more about Destruction and Violations: Gaza, Lebanon and Israel
The situation of Laura and Ibrahim is just one of many created by the latest Israeli policy to cleanse Palestine of Palestinians. As their lawyers told them, “The Israeli government wants the least number of Palestinians in the Palestinian territories.” In mid-August, they left Ramallah for Amman, thinking it would be for just a few days, in order to renew their three-month visas to stay legally in Israeli-occupied Ramallah. Their daughter was visiting them in Palestine from the US, and she stayed behind, waiting for them to come back so she could spend the last two weeks of her summer vacation with them. But when they arrived at Tel Aviv Airport, they were detained for a night. Read more about Waiting to return to where "the air is different"
On Thursday September 21, 2006, I returned to Bint Jbeil, guiding members of the Netherlands delegation from D4. We walked again through the streets and I searched for our friend from the scarves store. It was 3:30 and I remember her saying that she goes home at 3:00. I was sad to miss her. But I was glad to see more signs of life in the town on the main road and in parts of the old town. We walked through the old town and I searched more carefully with my eyes for the remains of family life in the neighborhood. I remembered the destruction in Jenin and I could see that here the destruction was more complete, more thorough. It was as though the neighborhood was put in its entirety into a monstrous machine which ground it to dust. We stepped in many inches of fine beige dust, dust as fine as talcum powder. Read more about Signs of life in Bint Jbeil
