BEQAA, WEST BANK, 19 February (IRIN) - A small, overcrowded Palestinian village in the southern West Bank, under threat from Israeli-conducted house demolitions and land confiscations, is rapidly becoming poorer. “Every house here has one child at least who left because we can’t build new homes. Some went to Hebron, but others left for Amman [Jordan] and places abroad” said Ghassan, a young man from Beqaa village, who is a refugee registered with the UN. Read more about House demolitions force Palestinians from village 

GAZA CITY, 16 February (IPS) - Human remains mix with debris following the latest Israeli assault Friday on Bureij camp in Gaza Strip. Early reports listed nine dead and more than 50 injured. A targeted leader was killed, but many others were killed too. “It’s very hard for us to rescue, or even locate bodies beneath the building,” said a medical relief worker from the local Bureij hospital. Israel has not confirmed responsibility for the missile attack by F-16 aircraft. Read more about Gaza civilians die along with assassinated leader 

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, 14 February (IPS) - After generations of occupation, Valentine’s Day has meant little in the Gaza Strip. But the flowers that lovers presented in Europe has. Majed Hadaeid, 43, knows that better than most, as he watches livestock make a meal of the flowers he had hoped to export to Europe. “I have 130 dunams [32 acres],” he says. “All carnations, in 30 different colors, and varieties yielding 16-17 million blossoms per year.” Read more about No Valentine break for Gaza flower producers 

How is Israel able to strangle the Gaza Strip when there is supposed to be an international crossing between Gaza and Egypt not controlled by Israelis? David Morrison looks at how the Agreement on Movement and Access, signed more than two years by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, allowed Israel to control the border without being physically present through the the agreement’s European Union third party mechanism. Read more about How the EU helps Israel to strangle Gaza 

JERUSALEM, 11 February (IRIN) - A UN special appeal for the Gaza Strip has managed to bring in only a small percentage of the US$9.8 million needed for urgent food aid and cash assistance for the enclave’s most vulnerable refugees. On 6 February, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, began to distribute food aid in Gaza funded by a $100,000 donation from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Red Crescent Society. The money came in response to the special appeal issued by UNWRA in late January. Read more about UNRWA Gaza appeal making very slow progress 

Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was reported to have suggested that the question of Jerusalem would be “left to last” in negotiations with the Palestinians. This was apparently on account of the issue being “too sensitive and complex,” as well as fears that talks on Jerusalem would cause the departure of religious right-wingers from Olmert’s ruling coalition. Domestic political considerations will certainly have played a part in the prime minister’s thinking, but there is another possible motivation for leaving this “final status issue” for further down the road. Ben White analyzes for EI. Read more about Jerusalem off the radar 

Ishmael Khaldi has been all the rage amongst Israel advocacy groups in the United States, especially in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area. An Arab Bedouin who embraces his Israeli citizenship and has worked for the Israeli police as well as Israel’s occupying army, he was a dream come true for the Israeli consulate, which decided to hire him as Deputy Consul to San Francisco in December 2006. Yaman Salahi reports on Khaldi’s private talk to a group of University of California, Berkeley students organizing “Israeli Apartheid Week.” Read more about Israeli foreign ministry's token Arab 

HEBRON, WEST BANK, 10 February (IRIN) - A recent cold snap with sub-zero temperatures has caused farmers in the West Bank to incur losses of nearly US$14.5 million, according to initial estimates by the Palestinian ministry of agriculture (MoA) set out in a 6 February joint “fact sheet” with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The winter cash crop is the most profitable and “[as] a direct result of the frost, thousands of farmers have lost their main source of income for the next [few] months,” the “fact sheet,” which was emailed to IRIN, said. Read more about Damaging frost compounds farmers' woes 

“The next logical step” for the Israeli government “will have to be a decision whether to target the top political leadership” of Hamas. So said an Israeli official quoted in The Jerusalem Post. Tzahi Hanegbi, a senior member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima party and chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, echoed the call, arguing that “There’s no difference between those who wear a suicide suit and a diplomat’s suit.” Ali Abunimah comments. Read more about Israel's "next logical step"