EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah examines the Israeli plan for “disengagement” from Gaza. While American, European and Arab diplomats pretend the Gaza plan is an achievement of the “peace process” and a step in fulfilling the Road Map, Abu Nimah argues that it is nothing of the sort. Israel is being forced to withdraw only because of stiff Palestinian resistance. At the same time, Israel is trying to extract a price for leaving Gaza and impose additional costs, burdens and conditions on the Palestinians. Will Israel be allowed to turn defeat into victory? Read more about Dancing to Sharon's tune 

On Monday 27 June 2005 a military court convicted Israeli Sergeant Taysir Wahid of the “manslaughter” of British peace activist and photographer Tom Hurndall. On April 11, 2003, Hurndall was shot in the head and suffered irreversible brain damage, dying from his wound a year later. Wahid was convicted of a total of six charges, including obstructing justice and providing false testimony as well as conduct unbecoming a soldier. A sentencing hearing is to be held on July 5. The court found that Taysir shot Hurndall with a sniper rifle using a telescopic sight, adding that the soldier gave a “confused and even pathetic” version of events. Read more about Israeli soldier convicted for killing Tom Hurndall 

The realities that Palestinians experience in West Bank villages contradict hopes for peace and instead signal a deepening of Israel’s occupation. The Israeli army recently delivered a seizure order to Wadi Foquin and three neighboring villages about 12 miles southwest of Bethlehem for 189 acres of our land. The army justifies this seizure as necessary to prevent terrorist attacks and to build a security wall. The order has left our small village in crisis, its very existence threatened. Wadi Foquin lost 80 percent of its original land when Israel was established in 1948. Later, the creation of the Israeli settlement of Betar Illit consumed about 175 acres of village land. The army now wants to seize the remaining property. Read more about Israeli land seizures undercut hopes for peace 

For some time the Palestinians have been divided on how to pursue their cause. Their choice, it seems, is between winning the support and favour of the international community and actually pursuing their rights, but not both, writes EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah. The Palestinian Authority, and its leader Mahmoud Abbas, seem to have accepted the false choices placed before them, allowing others to define the struggle for Palestinian rights as illegitimate and “terrorist.” As the PA is increasingly impotent and irrelevant, a passive international community sits idly by, while Israel continues to create facts on the ground. Read more about Palestinians placed between false choices 

Haifa has attracted many Palestinians from the North, in addition to the residents that remained in Haifa after 1948. But, a considerable number of Haifa’s Palestinian residents had lived in Haifa for decades without having been defined as legal residents of Haifa in the population registry. The unofficial estimation of the Palestinian population in Haifa is around 30,000, leaving around 6,000 Palestinians officially unrecognised. Around 121,000 Palestinians were dispossessed from Haifa and from 58 surrounding villages. Adri Nieuwhof and Jeff Handmaker visited Haifa and give voice to those who remained and those dispossessed. Read more about Haifa, peaceful town with a silent pain 

In Gaza and north of the West Bank, the Israelis are taking down what should never have been put up in the first place (their illegal settlements), all the while muttering, “they haven’t made us do it; we are doing it on our own”. On the West Bank, the Israelis are busy constructing what must in future be taken down and the US taxpayer is footing the bill! Day by day, what will have to be dismantled grows, concrete slab by concrete slab, what has to be “withdrawn” proliferates, and there is no one to stop it or even to protest against it. Read more about History's Greatest Reoccuring Hoax: Colonization "For Security Reasons" 

The Case for Israel lacks objectivity, to say the least. Dershowitz treats evidence in much the same way Joan Peters does in From Time Immemorial, and the results are similar. Like Peters, Dershowitz selects facts to suit his theses. He employs distortion and fabrication while contending elsewhere that he knows the evidence he presents is distorted and falsified. He misconstrues sources in a tendentious manner. He draws hard conclusions from tenuous evidence. He adduces evidence that in no way supports his claims, even omitting “inconvenient” portions of quotations without inserting ellipses. He quotes sources completely out of context. Read more about The Case for Israel, a Critical Review 

In Palestinian-Israeli politics, Israel remembers that there are certain mutual understandings used to manage the troubled relationship only when Palestinians take actions that anger the Israelis. Only in such circumstances does Israel complain of threats to the roadmap, the Sharm El Sheikh understandings, or even the entire peace process. When the Palestinians do whatever they are asked, however, such understandings and frameworks suddenly cease to exist. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah looks at current Palestinian Authority strategy and considers alternatives. Read more about A better strategy for the Palestinian Authority