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
Only a few of the 420 Palestinian prisoners recently released numbered among the nearly 700 prisoners currently serving administrative detention orders. Adnan Na’im ‘Abdallah, age 31, is married without children and has been held in detention without charge or trial by the Israeli army for two and a half years. Nina Mayorek started a campaign to release Adnan. Adnan lives between 9m cement walls in the Negev desert. The detention camp is divided into cages with 120 prisoners living in tents inside each cage. Adnan’s cage separates him from the world. Read more about Free Adnan Abdallah!
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 Day by day, what will have to be dismantled grows, concrete slab by concrete slab, what has to be “withdrawn” proliferates, and there is no one to stop it or even to protest against it.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
On June 7, 2005, the United States Institute for Peace held a conference entitled “How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process” that attempted to enunciate to the public a more in-depth understanding of the failure of the negotiations that took place at Camp David in the year 2000 and, more broadly, the Oslo peace process. Rather than simply reflecting on the issues that proved to be sticking points in the negotiations, the speakers attempted to evaluate the flaws that typified the negotiation styles of both Palestinians and Israelis, differences that dramatically flared up when they came together in at Camp David. Read more about Conference Critiques Negotiation Tactics of Palestinians and Israelis
Surrounded by Israel’s Wall on two sides and with many restricted roads and roadblocks, Bethlehem has become a prison. The illegal barrier cuts through several kilometers of Bethlehem. The Wall has already disrupted the lives of thousands of Palestinians who have been cut off from their lands and have been prevented from reaching other villages and population centers. To a visitor the Wall erected at the entrance of the city is the most visible manifestation of its physical separation from other towns and villages. For Palestinian residents of Bethlehem, the Wall is the latest of a series of restrictions that have been implemented over the past decade and which cut the historical road that connects Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Hebron in the south. Read more about Photostory: Gate Bethlehem
On 4th June, the day of the Ireland-Israel qualifying match for the 2006 World Cup, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) and Movement against Israeli Apartheid organized protests against the Israeli occupation, which began its 39th year this week. The demonstration started with speakers outside the Central Bank on Dame Street, including Caoimhe Butterly, an Irish human rights activist shot in the thigh by Israeli troops in Jenin on 22 November 2002, the same day as they killed UNRWA’s Jenin project manager, British citizen Iain Hook. Read more about Dublin protests mark Ireland-Israel World Cup qualifying match
Nora Barrows-FriedmanDheisheh refugee camp4 June 2005
Shadi sucks on two cigarettes at a time, the twin smoke curling up the side of his right arm like conjoined snakes. The Bethlehem air is crisp and wet; the main street hums with traffic. “Life has a beginning and an end, just like these cigarettes,” he says, pinching them between his calloused fingers. Shadi arches his eyebrow at me, squinting in the muted sunlight streaked across his face. He offers me his L&M pack. I take the last one, and we sit on the curb, silently smoking, watching the three bluish-gray plumes wind themselves up over our heads, dissipating across the concrete rooftops of Dheisheh camp, joining with the hazy fog cover, and settling, invisibly, into the atmosphere, to mingle with the ghosts. Read more about Portraits of Dheisheh
