The Israeli government is planning to leave the Gaza Strip. Its refusal to coordinate the pullout with the Palestinians has left the Palestinian leadership confused and helpless. Instead of watching helplessly and waiting for Israel to grant it permission to do this or that, why doesn’t the leadership seize the initiative and declare that if the settlers want to remain in Gaza and live in the territory as Palestinian citizens or even with dual Israeli-Palestinian citizenship, they are welcome to do so. By accepting the Jewish settlers of Gaza as equal citizens, the Palestinians can prove to themselves, to the Israelis, and to the world that they can treat their people as equal citizens before the law regardless of religion and ethnicity, something Israel has failed to do since its establishment. Read more about Seizing the initiative 

The world’s attention is focussed on the “plight” of settler-colonists from the Gaza Strip and some in the West Bank, who have to leave their homes. However, we have to remember that the settlements were illegally-constructed in the first place and that the settlers will receive substantial compensation. But without exception settlers knew that they were moving to an area that was conquered in war. In contracts for the sale or rental of land in the occupied territories there was a clause that explicitly stated their temporary nature. Jeff Handmaker and Adri Nieuwhof comment that, while US-taxpayers foot the bill for the so-called pull-out, virtually no attention is being paid to Palestinians whose property has been demolished over the years, not to mention those who were deprived of their homeland since 1948. Read more about Compensation if you are displaced, unless you are Palestinian 

As we waited at the Modi’in junction for the traffic light to turn green, Jewish settlement youth were distributing ribbons in two colors, orange and blue/white. The orange ribbons represent those ‘against’ the Gaza disengagement plan. The white/blue on the other hand represent those ‘with’ the Gaza disengagement plan. As these dedicated youth approached our car I contemplated for a moment which ribbon I would choose. I decided not to disappoint either team and took one of each. However, the main question is, which of these ribbons would I display on my car antenna to publicly reflect my political opinion? Read more about 'With' or 'Against' the Gaza Disengagement Plan 

Until this weekend Israel’s one million Palestinian citizens had stayed out of the debate about the country’s imminent disengagement from Gaza. “It’s not our story,” they said when pressed, “this is an entirely Jewish conversation.” Although Israeli Jews have been flying blue and orange ribbons from their cars for months - showing respectively support for and opposition to the disengagement - car aerials in Israel’s Arab towns and villages have remained resolutely bare. That is no longer the case. At the weekend the Arab drivers in the Galilee could be seen flying black ribbons to commemorate the killings of four Arab citizens by a young Jewish extremist with his Israeli army-issued rifle. Now Israel’s Palestinian citizens find themselves part of the conversation, whether they like it or not. Read more about Palestinians in Israel Find Themselves Part of The Disengagement Debate 

The world has suddenly noticed the renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians, but not because Israel stepped-up extrajudicial executions and other attacks on Palestinians in recent weeks. Only when several Palestinian resistance groups responded did the matter rise to the top of the international agenda. Surprisingly there is little or no talk that the truce must be over with fighting erupting at this scale. Rather, we are in a very strange situation in which a truce and its opposite — open fighting — are said to exist at exactly the same time. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah explains this strange phenomenon. Read more about A truce or a fig leaf? 

Last year the International Court of Justice issued its opinion on the Wall Israel is constructing in the West Bank. The opinion, argues Andrew Rubin, should open up other arenas of resistance. Whatever the wall signifies for the precarious political and existential future of Palestinians, one thing is certain: it is part of Israel’s wilful repudiation of Palestinian existence. It is an attempt to make Palestinians physically invisible from the experience of Israeli daily life. New political and legal strategies of resistance may take the forms of various instruments of financial, political and diplomatic pressure, including boycotts, embargoes, human rights taxes, sanctions, and other restrictions on the flow of Israeli capital. Read more about One year on: We are No Longer Able to see the Sun Set 

One year ago on 9 July 2004, at the request of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. But, the Court did not stop at Israel’s obligations. An overwhelming majority of the Court concluded that all states were obliged not to recognize the illegal situation Israel has created and to refrain from any financial support to Israel in maintaining the illegally constructed wall. Much remains to be done before States can be said to be in compliance with international law. Read more about One year on: Governments have obligations to hold Israel to account 

In occupied Palestine, the more things change, the more they stay the same. In the last several months, we have seen the death of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, the election of Mahmoud Abbas, and preparations for the planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a few small settlements in the north of the West Bank. But what we haven’t seen is a change to the status-quo, a change that is desperately needed to prevent the situation from collapsing into something far worse than the first and second intifadas. While the world’s attention is diverted to the Gaza disengagement - where some 8,000 or so settlers are to be removed, a drop in the bucket of the total 415,300 illegal settlers - Israel is busily eating away at the land it prizes the most, and prejudicing final status issues. Read more about A very combustible status-quo 

While rock stars made poverty the central issue in the world’s biggest concert at the weekend, the world’s most powerful leaders are under increasing pressure to do something concrete about it. This week the leaders of the G8 — the US, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia — meet in Gleneagles (Scotland), hosted by Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair. But while African poverty may feature in the G8 debate, poverty in Palestine is man-made. The expansion of Israeli settlements and the completion of the Wall render a two-state solution as wished for by the G8 impossible. Palestinians are not asking for charity but justice. Read more about G8 and Disengagement: Palestine needs justice not charity