This was the third and final day of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday concluding Ramadan. I awoke at the home of a family where twin sons had been killed on separate occasions in the last two months. The rest of the children make the home boisterous. I heard the cries of Allahu Akbar, the funeral parade for a boy from the neighbouring village of Sili who had been killed the night before. Annie Higgins writes from Jenin Refugee Camp. Read more about A Day in the Life of Jenin Refugee Camp
This summer, a little-known Manchester academic caused an international storm when she sacked two Israeli scholars from the editorial board of her journal. But was it an isolated freelance protest - or the first skirmish in a wider academic boycott? The Guardian’s Andy Beckett investigates. Read more about Is an academic boycott of Israel taking hold and spreading?
Benjamin J Doherty and Ali Abunimah10 December 2002
Above: Elia Suleiman in the director’s chair.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences operates a double standard that may have kept Elia Suleiman’s award-winning feature film “Divine Intervention” out of the competition for the Oscars, EI has learned. The film, a dark comedy about a love affair between two people on opposite sides of an Israeli military checkpoint, won a prestigious jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and the European Film Award. EI’s Ali Abunimah and Benjamin Doherty investigate. Read more about Oscars' double standard turns Palestinian film into refugee
Rita Giacaman, Anita Abdullah, Rula Abu Safieh and Luna ShamiehRamallah6 December 2002
By the end of the 2001-2002 school year, the Palestinian Ministry of Education reported that: 216 students were killed, 2514 injured, and 164 arrested; 17 teachers and staff in the education sector were killed and 71 were arrested; 1289 schools were closed for at least 3 consecutive weeks during the Israeli invasion between March 29 and up till the end of the school year; and approximately 50% of school children and 35,000 employees in the education sector were prevented from reaching their schools. Read more about Schooling at Gunpoint: Palestinian Children's Learning Environment in War Like Conditions (part 1 of 2)
I am home now, sitting comfortably in the quiet of my office, but the deafening machine gun fire, explosions, and anxious faces of the inhabitants of Block O in the southern Gazan city of Rafah are still with me. Now I feel compelled to keep my promises to people and tell the world what I saw. Darren Ell reports. Read more about The background music in Rafah
On this, the final day of Ramadan 2002, Israel continues its decades old illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians in the West Bank city of Khalil (Hebron), under effective curfew for years. Apache helicopter missiles fired into Gaza City. Israeli bulldozers continued to raze houses in the Gaza Strip and thousands of Palestinians were held under another day of curfew throughout the occupied West Bank and parts of the Gaza Strip. Kristen Ess writes from Occupied Gaza. Read more about The end of Ramadan
The tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have spilled into the aisles of a San Francisco supermarket, where certain departments of the co-op Rainbow Grocery have removed Israeli-made products from their shelves. Although Israeli products remain on the shelves of other Rainbow departments, which are run independently, some workers are pushing for a storewide boycott, an employee of the Mission District store said Tuesday. Jenny Strasburg reports in The San Francisco Chronicle.Read more about Middle East unrest hits grocery store
While walking up into the main Madbasseh street, Mary saw a toshe (quarrel) at a falafel place; about nothing she later heard, but the atmosphere and people’s faces were so threatening that she decided not to do shopping and return home. The tension is also palpable in the refugee camps which are crowded and bear a large share of the arrests. Toine van Teeffelen writes from Bethlehem. Read more about Curfew tensions in Bethlehem
