According to experts the reality is that in both a practical and legal sense Netanyahu’s “open city” is a fiction, extended only to the settlers and not to Khurd or to the 250,000 other Palestinians of East Jerusalem. Khurd, for example, has been forced to live in a tent after settlers ousted her from her East Jerusalem home of five decades in November. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Israel's "open" Jerusalem closed to Palestinians
In pondering “a different kind of future,” author Ben White in his new book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide stresses that there is no point in “trying to ‘undo’ things that cannot be undone.” He castigates rhetoric about a “two-state solution” or demands that Palestinians should “compromise,” as if the solution could bypass the dissolution of Israeli apartheid. Raymond Deane reviews for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Book review: "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide"
Rolling into Gaza I had a feeling of homecoming. There is a flavor to the ghetto. To the Bantustan. To the “rez.” Last March, poet and novelist Alice Walker traveled to the Gaza Strip just weeks after the 22-day Israeli assault. The Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, now recounts the stories of people she met in Gaza, and offers a lyrical analysis that ties their struggle to what she and her community experienced in the segregated American South. Read more about "The best place one could be on Earth"
Ziad Deeb, a young artist, lost his entire family and both his legs in the Israeli attack on Gaza six months ago. In his grief, Deeb has found solace in his work. Memories of the massacre inspire him “to keep painting more and more, I believe this is the only thing that can’t be taken away from me and my disability can’t be an obstacle.” Eman Mohammed reports for The Electronic Intifada from Gaza. Read more about Gaza artist, survivor finds power in paint
Maryam Monalisa Gharavi and Anat Matar22 July 2009
On 9 July Harvard University’s Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research invited Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, former Israeli military legal adviser, to their online Humanitarian Law and Policy Forum. The stated aim was to bring “objective” discussion to the principle of distinction in international humanitarian law. Maryam Monalisa Gharavi and Dr. Anat Matar report for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Israeli officer promotes war crimes at Harvard
The passionate support for Israel expressed on talkback and comment sections of websites, internet chat forums, blogs, Twitter and Facebook may not be all that it seems. Israel’s foreign ministry is reported to be establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Internet users paid to spread Israeli propaganda
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - A little village nestled in a valley between several hills in the Bethlehem governorate is today fighting for survival. All around Wadi Fuqin village on the outskirts of Bethlehem in the southern West Bank is the expanding and illegal Israeli settlement Beitar Illit, home to 35,000 settlers. The settlement is situated on a hill overlooking the little Palestinian village of 2,500. Read more about Settlers expand in West Bank
I had expected to encounter difficulty from Egyptian and Israeli authorities upon attempting to enter Gaza. But neither had interfered. After traveling thousands of kilometers, and now literally standing a few hundred meters away from Gaza, the sad irony was that it was my own government that was preventing me from entering. I couldn’t understand why South Africa, which claims to be sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle, had adopted this policy. Sayed Dhansay comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Why is South Africa still helping apartheid Israel?
For the first time since the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for BDS against institutions supporting Israeli apartheid, students from North America and Palestine came together in Ramallah to share their ideas and experiences. Consisting of eight days of travel and a four-day workshop, the student delegation spent their two weeks getting connected with the struggle in Palestine in order to better articulate the BDS movement in their respective cities. Doug Smith writes for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Boycott apartheid: student delegation to Palestine
Thousands of road signs are the latest front in Israel’s battle to erase Arab heritage from much of the Holy Land. Israel Katz, the transport minister, announced this week that signs on all major roads in Israel, East Jerusalem and possibly parts of the West Bank would be “standardized,” converting English and Arabic place names into straight transliterations of the Hebrew name. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Israel's plan to wipe Arabic names off the map
