The tears have not yet left the innocent face of one astonished girl, Huda Ghalia, 12, who lost 7 members of her family yesterday, while they enjoyed their weekend at the shore in the town of Beit Lahia, north of Gaza. Huda and her sisters and brothers were happily enjoying their first weekend together without thinking of homework, as they recently completed their school exams. The Ghalia family went to a less populated area at the northern part of the beach, where white sand dunes and little wild plants were scattered. Read more about Black Weekend, Bloody Mud, and White Sand
Israel kills with purpose. Following the rise to government of the hard line Hamas movement to the Palestinian government, Israel is optimizing on the US led campaign to bring a full collapse of the democratically-elected Palestinian government, by killing on a daily basis of what the world’s media has sadly accepted as “targeted assassinations.” There is a clear political agenda in the latest round of Israeli attacks. Israel is begging for Hamas to react in kind by breaking its one sided truce that Hamas has held for over a year, despite Israel’s continued provocations. Sam Bahour writes from El-Bireh. Read more about Begging for a Response: Israel's ongoing air strikes on Gaza are politically motivated
I think that poetry tries to make a connection between the absences and the losses that I feel in my person, and make the connection to the body feeling detached or feeling displaced, and the reality of land and shelter and the idea of the continuity of citizenship and the idea of ancestry. I think reclaiming is an ambitious agenda - if you’re beginning to write a poem, will you actually be reclaiming the rights to a land or a nation and other rights to citizenship? So I think the work succeeds more when it’s about illuminating this detachment. Read more about Interview with Suheir Hammad
Lost in the discussion of peace processes, military raids, Qassam rocket fire and unilateralism carried out by the Israeli government for ‘security purposes,’ is the climate of fear that is the defining feature of Israeli and Palestinian life. It does more damage than anything else. The threat of coercion, of bureaucratic reprimand, the hold up of paperwork, the threat of home demolitions and a myriad of other policies force normal people in to silence even when their rights are violated. Read more about The Right to Live Without Fear
The referendum called by Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is supposedly meant to gain public endorsement for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in all the territories occupied in 1967, as set out in a plan agreed by senior Hamas and Fatah leaders held in Israeli prisons. But Abbas’ ploy has nothing to do with hastening the creation of such a state, and everything to do with Fatah’s inability to come to terms with its defeat in last January’s legislative elections. It is, says EI co-founder Ali Abunimah, another sordid attempt to use “democracy” not to reveal the will of the people, but to frustrate it. Read more about Dangerous dirty tricks in Palestine
My family and I live in Rafah. On January 21, 2004, our neighbor, Abu Jamil, woke us at 2:00 AM. He asked for help because the Israeli military came to bulldoze his home. My mother and I helped his family to empty their house. By 6:00 AM it was demolished. Since 1967 Israel has demolished 12,000 Palestinian homes. During this uprising, Israel has demolished 2000 homes in Rafah, mostly near the border with Egypt, and 3,000 houses in the Gaza Strip. In Rafah 3,000 people remain homeless. Read more about We Need Justice
What Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is attempting to pull off through unilateralism is historically unprecedented – to take a disputed territory and mark its own borders without taking in to account historical aspirations or negotiations. Convergence is a public relations term rather than something to be taken as seriously as diplomacy. It will more than likely perpetuate the vicious circle which has gone on since 1993 and could stoke the fires of a third intifada. Read more about The Myth of Unilateralism and Convergence
Israelis have a word for it: “hasbara”. It is often misleadingly translated as “advocacy for Israel”. But what the word signifies more deeply for Israel’s supporters is the duty, when the truth would be damaging, to dissemble or to disseminate misinformation to protect the interests of Israel as a Jewish state — that is, a state with an unassailable Jewish majority. If hasbara is expected of the lowliest members of Israel’s international fan club, it is a duty of the first order for the country’s prime minister. Read more about How Olmert conned Washington over convergence
The U.S. and Europe decided, despite Israel’s opposition, to permit the Palestinian people to hold democratic elections. According to Jimmy Carter’s report in the “Herald Tribune”, the elections were “honest, fair, strongly contested, without violence and with the results accepted by winners and losers. Among the 62 elections that have been monitored by… the Carter Center, these are among the best in portraying the will of the people.” In a just and well-ordered world, it would be unthinkable for a government that was elected in this way to be disqualified because Israel does not like the choice of the electorate in question. Read more about The Hamas Government Should be Recognized
Three Arab Painters in New York is an art exhibition that features the work of three leading New York-based Arab painters. Samia Halaby, Sumayyah Samaha and Athir Shayota have been contributing to contemporary American art for decades and have exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States. Varied in style, technique, medium, scale and artistic influence, the three present a glimpse into the diverse and complex nature of the Arab World’s art and visual culture. Read more about "Three Arab Painters in New York" to open in New York City
