In approving an effective ban on marriages between Israelis and Palestinians this week, Israel’s Supreme Court has shut tighter the gates of the Jewish fortress the state of Israel is rapidly becoming. The judges’ decision, in the words of the country’s normally restrained Haaretz daily, was “shameful”. By a wafer-thin majority, the highest court in the land ruled that an amendment passed in 2003 to the Nationality Law barring Palestinians from living with an Israeli spouse inside Israel — what in legal parlance is termed “family unification” — did not violate rights enshrined in the country’s Basic Laws. Read more about Israel’s marriage ban closes the gates to Palestinians
There is no money to pay the 150,000 public servants within the “West Bank” and Gaza Strip, including doctors, nurses and other health workers. Most have not been paid for two months. There is very little money in circulation. High quality fruit that has been grown for export has been allowed in only small amounts through Karnai, the commercial checkpoint. No other exports are passing through, and little is coming in. That includes drugs, spare parts for dialysis machines and other necessary medical equipment and supplies. There are no drugs and anaesthetic agents left in the hospitals. Shafa hospital, the main public hospital, was threatened with closure last week. Read more about Siege of 1.4 Million Souls in Gaza vs. International Law
Bethlehem Bandolero is a quirky six-minute short by Palestinian filmmaker Larissa Sansour. In the role of a “Mexican gunslinger” that could be straight out of a Spaghetti Western, Sansour’s performance captures the irrationality of Israel’s building of a twenty-five foot “security” wall as means of seeking “peace” with Palestinians. Sansour confronts the illogic of the situation with her own demonstration of absurdity in a witty but bizarre journey in her native Palestine where she takes on the wall in a High Noon-like duel, dressed in a pistol-toting getup that includes a large red sombrero and a black and white polka-dot bandana that covers her face. Read more about Film Review: "Bethlehem Bandolero"
Issa Freij and Nicolas Wadimoff’s documentary Last Supper (Abu Dis) examines a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem that is slowly being enclosed by the Israeli apartheid wall. The twenty-six minute film exposes the violations of human rights that are resulting from the supposed “security” measurements the Israeli government has taken over the past six years. As the wall expands, Palestinians continue to be cut off from their communities, land, farms, families and social infrastructures. Read more about Film Review: "Last Supper (Abu Dis)"
The Israelis call it a war, but it is really a contemptible and cruel cat and mouse game, with the mouse firmly held under the cat’s paw or locked up in a cage to which the cat has free and easy access. A case in point is Israel’s death squad murder of six Palestinians in Jenin and Qabatiya last week. Yet despite the odds stacked against them, writes EI contributor Rima Merriman, Palestinians know they have no option but to hold fast and continue to demand their rights under international law, and to figure out a way to make Israel pay a moral and material price for the destruction and suffering it is wreaking on them. Read more about A cruel cat and mouse game
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
Today marks the 58th anniversary of the expulsion of Palestinians from their land, also known as the Nakba. With millions still living under occupation or in exile, the Nakba or the Palestinian catastrophe remains at the heart of their national identity, argues Karma Nabulsi. The predicament of life under military occupation is usually recognised in principle, but life in exile has its own characteristics, and continues to create its own bitter experience for Palestinians. Read more about From Generation to Generation
Since its inception, Israel has arrogantly refused to address the most crucial prerequisite of its establishment as a conventional State — accepting the Palestinians — those people that just happened to be living in that ‘empty’ land of Israel. The Palestinians, those that were forcefully expelled from their homes in 1948, 1967, and more recently in 2001, have been living in squalid refugee camps throughout the region. The Palestinians, those that did not flee Israel-proper in 1948 are today fourth class Israeli citizens. The Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem that have lived under Israeli military occupation for 40 years, to the day, will continue to haunt the international community until justice is served and the Israeli occupation is ended, in its entirety. Read more about Israel at 58: A Failing Experiment
With his coalition partners on board, Israel’s prime minister Ehud Olmert is plotting his next move: a partial withdrawal from the West Bank over the next few years which he and his government will declare as the end of the occupation and therefore also any legitimate grounds for Palestinian grievance. From here on in, Israel will portray itself as the benevolent provider of a Palestinian state — on whatever is left after most of Israel’s West Bank colonies have been saved and the Palestinian land on which they stand annexed to Israel. Read more about Israel’s road to ‘convergence’ began with Rabin
Rina Khoury’s West…East, is a nine minute narrative film about the Palestinian catastrophe that is told through the journey of a blind woman and her son, amidst an ambiguous landscape. Enas Muthaffar’s East…West is a sixteen minute documentary film that chronicles her family’s expulsion from their home as the apartheid wall encroaches nearby and threatens to segregate them from their community. Both films were shown in conjunction with two short films by Annemarie Jacir, Some Crumbs for the Birds and An Explanation (and then burn the ashes). Read more about Film Review: The Chicago Palestine Film Festival's Evening of Shorts
