The conventional wisdom quickly developed among peace process industry analysts that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s departure would be a “setback” for ongoing negotiations with the Ramallah Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, endangering the much-touted goal announced at last November’s Annapolis summit of reaching a final agreement by the end of this year. However, Hasan Abu Nimah comments, there is not a peace process to mourn. Read more about Olmert's departure: The perfect alibi
BEERSHEBA/JAFFA (IRIN) - Some 15,000 Palestinians who married Israeli citizens in the past decade are illegal or temporary residents. Their lives and those of their families have become “unstable,” according to non-governmental organizations. “Many families are being forced to live underground,” said Orna Cohen, an attorney from Adalah, an Israeli rights group fighting the ban on “family unifications” (mixed marriages involving Palestinians or some other Arabs) in Israel. Read more about In Israel, married but without rights
HERZELIYA (IRIN) - Environmental groups have expressed concern about plans to build a canal between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea — transferring water from the former to save the latter. They say not enough research has been done and alternative options have not been checked. “We are concerned about what will happen to the Dead Sea when this amount of marine water is pumped into it,” said Gidon Bromberg of Friends of the Earth Middle East, at a 30 July public hearing organized by the World Bank in Herziliya, which followed two others in Ramallah and Amman. Read more about Environmentalists concerned over Dead Sea canal plans
The following slideshow is a selection of images from the month of July 2008. The month in pictures is an ongoing feature of The Electronic Intifada. If you have images documenting Palestine, Palestinian life, politics and culture, or of solidarity with Palestine, please email images and captions to photos A T electronicintifada D O T net. Read more about Photostory: The month in pictures, July 2008
Abdelwahab Elmessiri passed away on Thursday, 3 July, in the Palestine Hospital in Cairo at the age of 70. There is a befittingly poetic resonance about the name of this hospital — the place of his final struggle — when one considers that Elmessiri had devoted almost his entire intellectual career to the defense of the Palestinian cause. Aslam Farouk-Alli remembers the life of the Egyptian writer and political thinker. Read more about On life, literature and Palestine, a tribute to Abdelwahab Elmessiri
In the first hours of dawn, Nader Elayan was woken by a call from a neighbor warning him to hurry to the house he had almost finished building. By the time he arrived, it was too late: a bulldozer was tearing down the walls. Jonathan Cook reports from Jerusalem. Read more about The struggle against Jerusalem's quiet ethnic cleansing
WASHINGTON (IPS) - A mushrooming media controversy pitting neoconservatives against a prominent Jewish-American political commentator could mark a new stage in the growing battle over who speaks for the US Jewish community on foreign policy issues, particularly regarding the Middle East. Read more about Neocon flap highlights Jewish divide
My journey began, unexpectedly, in a Nazi concentration camp, Majdenek, outside what was once a Jewish town called Lublin. During my last visit, I was moved by a group of visitors who had probably lost relatives there. They planted small Israeli flags on the ground outside. I was confused by this image, pondering how that blue and white flag has become so blood-drenched since its creation. I began to wonder about the next stage in the tragic history of that period — the creation of Israel and its consequences. Jane Frere writes about the motivation behind her exhibition Return of the Soul. Read more about The Nakbah Project: A nightmare of shattered lives
Students and striking local government workers united to picket a London School of Economics (LSE) event in Starbucks on Kingsway, Holborn last week, in opposition to their support for the state of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The LSE Annual Fund and Alumni Relations departments had teamed up with Starbucks to offer an “afternoon of free coffee and cake tasting for Postgraduates,” in a clear attempt by the global coffee chain to undermine the role of the LSE Students’ Union as the primary supplier of refreshments on LSE’s campus. Read more about Palestine student society and striking workers picket Starbucks
I did not do it because I was a hero, but only because I was compelled. This is how I made my three documentaries. I say compelled because I am an actor, not a director. Nevertheless I loved my three films as a father loves his children. Mohammad Bakri comments on his persecution in the Israeli court system. Read more about My crime was to tell the truth
