Activists in Beirut launched a week-long protest at Martyrs Square Wednesday in solidarity with the people of Palestine, hours after Israeli forces entered South Lebanon. More than 100 people gathered to express solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who in recent weeks have experienced an unprecedented Israeli military assault. As the sit-in commenced in Beirut, Israeli continued to escalate its military action in the Gaza Strip killing 18 Palestinians including 9 members of one family who died in an air strike on a home in Gaza. Read more about Beirut in solidarity with besieged Gazans
As the Israeli military continues its siege in the Gaza Strip, a coalition of Palestinian and Lebanese groups in Beirut is organizing a week-long protest at Martyrs Square to begin on Wednesday. Mohammad Shublaq, a Palestinian activist involved in organizing the protest, said the event was meant to send a message of solidarity. “Palestinian people have been isolated from peoples in the region, so we are attempting to bring the Palestinian cause back to the streets of Lebanon,” he said. “We want to send a message to the people of Gaza and the West Bank and let them know that they are not alone.” Read more about Beirut: Protest aims to show support for Palestinians
In July of 2006, Tadamon! [Solidarity! in Arabic], a Montreal-based collective of social justice organizers and media activists, will be sending a delegation to Lebanon. In the context of historic political change taking place in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East region, this delegation will be producing independent media reports concerning the current political, social and economic situation in Lebanon, for dissemination through alternative media networks in the Middle East, North America and internationally including the Electronic Intifada. Read more about Tadamon delegation to Lebanon in Summer 2006
Listen to an interview with Ayed Abu Eqtaish, a child rights activist from Defense for Children International-Palestine Section and Adam Hanieh of Sumoud, a political prisoner solidarity group based in Toronto. This interview was recorded during the April/May 2006 second annual Free Palestinian Political Prisoners speaking tour organized by Sumoud, which focused on the realities facing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, specifically child prisoners. Read more about Audio Interview: Palestinian Children in Israeli Jails
Listen to an interview with Ahmed Abdel Majeed, a stateless Palestinian born and raised in Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon, who was deported from Montreal Canada in November 2003. In Montreal Ahmed was an active member of the Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees, a group of Palestinians in Montreal organizing against deportation by Canadian immigration authorities. Read more about Audio Interview: From Montreal to Ein el-Hilweh
Listen to an interview with Mohammad Jaradat, coordinator of political campaigns at BADIL, a Palestinian NGO based in the West Bank. BADIL’s work is primarily focused on the ongoing Palestinian struggle for the right of return and acts as a coordination point for the international struggle on this issue in the occupied West Bank. In the midst of the withdrawal of illegal Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and a handful in the West Bank, the issue of the right of return for Palestinian refugees has been seldom addressed by major media and political leaders throughout the world. Read more about Gaza Withdrawal and the Right of Return
Listen to an interview with Leila Hatoum, staff writer at Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper, the largest English daily in the Middle East. This interview focuses on the economic policies of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in downtown Beirut in February 2005. Hariri’s public image in Lebanon and throughout the world is directly associated with the Lebanese “opposition” movement, sparked by his assassination and defined by large-scale street demonstrations in downtown Beirut demanding Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. Read more about Podcast/Interview: Hariri - Reconstruction, Poverty and Unrest
An interview with Samah Idriss, co-founder of the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel and editor-in-chief of al-Adab, a Lebanese arts and culture magazine based in Beirut. This interview was conducted in August 2005 in Beirut Lebanon and addresses various issues relating to the present day politics of Lebanon, while providing regional context to the major political changes taking place in Lebanon…. “The late Rafik al-Hariri had excellent relations with some Syrian elites, both politically and financially. Hariri rarely uttered a word against their interference in Lebanese public life, and their political and economic corruption in the country.” Read more about Interview with Samah Idriss: Lebanon: Assassinations, Elections and Palestine
A 30-minute radio documentary/podcast produced by the Independent Media Center of Beirut examining the current conditions and political situation facing the hundreds of thousands of stateless Palestinian refugees residing in Lebanon. Refugees in Lebanon are scattered in impoverished refugee camps throughout the country, originally displaced during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Without the right to work in over 70 professions, barred from owning property and legally defined as foreigners, Palestinians live in Lebanon as second-class citizens without basic social or political rights. Read more about Podcast/Documentary: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon
Burj el-Shemali is a Palestinian refugee camp, located in Southern Lebanon on the outskirts of the city of Tyre. Upwards of 20 000 refugees reside in Burj el-Shemali, which is one of Lebanon’s most impoverished camps. Similar to other refugee camps in the south of Lebanon, Burj el-Shemali is home to cases of extreme poverty, thousands of camp residents are essentially homeless, residing in make-shift shelters with zinc roofing, without basic plumbing, water supply and little income. Read more about Photostory: Burj el-Shemali Refugee Camp - Lebanon
