When I got home from Bili’in, I dumped some pictures onto the computer. Going through them, I was surprised to find just how many showed the same man. I remembered him, but had not been aware that I was singling him out for portraits. Of course there were times when the demonstrators were shouting and angry, particularly when the Israeli occupation forces were manhandling people. But until the truncheons were wielded, there was no violence in the olive groves. When this soldier was in sight, my lens, as if it was independently motorised, must have swivelled towards him. If things were quiet, he would quickly ensure that they did not remain so. One could virtually taste his hate, aggression and viciousness. Read more about Photostory: The face of occupation
“Maybe I should learn to be less sensitive but when director Eran Riklis arrived in Nazareth last month for the screening of his much-garlanded film ‘The Syrian Bride’, he got off on the wrong footing the moment he walked through the door,” writes EI contributor Jonathan Cook. The film, produced with Israeli, Palestinian and Syrian actors is set in a tiny Druze community in the Golan Heights, part of Syria occupied by Israel since 1967. The only contact the Israeli and Syrian authorities allow is the occasional passage of brides across the ceasefire line. While the film tries to break boundaries, Cook says, it also reveals others that the director failed to see. Read more about Film review: "The Syrian Bride" makes for a difficult marriage
Two new Israeli films that premiered at this month’s Jerusalem Film Festival explore the moral failure that is inherent in Zionism. In the biographical documentary The Diaries of Yossef Nachmany, the Zionist leader largely responsible for the Judaization of the Galilee in the years leading up to the State of Israel is portrayed as conflicted by the ultimate consequence of Zionism — the expulsion and suffering of the indigenous Palestinian population. And in the important documentary Dear Father, Quiet, We’re Shooting … , we see that the Zionist enterprise is spiralling so far out of control that Israeli citizens are being made to collectively pay for the ideology of the extreme minority. Read more about Two new Israeli documentaries explore the moral failure of Zionism
The world has suddenly noticed the renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians, but not because Israel stepped-up extrajudicial executions and other attacks on Palestinians in recent weeks. Only when several Palestinian resistance groups responded did the matter rise to the top of the international agenda. Surprisingly there is little or no talk that the truce must be over with fighting erupting at this scale. Rather, we are in a very strange situation in which a truce and its opposite — open fighting — are said to exist at exactly the same time. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah explains this strange phenomenon. Read more about A truce or a fig leaf?
As Israel’s apartheid wall colonizes 30-40 percent more of the 22 percent of Palestine that remains, an increasing number of analysts, activists, and academics have begun to challenge the two-state solution designed to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Palestinians eventually ending up with only 12-15 percent of their land, made up of disjointed ghettoes over which they will have no sovereignty- a single, secular polity that would encompass both Israel and the Occupied Territories is looking increasingly attractive. The One-State Solution written by Virginia Tilley, associate professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, lucidly demonstrates why the two-state model “is an idea whose time has passed”. Read more about Book review: "The One-State Solution"
In November 2003 Ahmed Abdel Majeed, a stateless Palestinian born and raised in Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon, was deported from Canada. The distance between Montreal and Lebanon stretches thousands of kilometers over oceans and continents, but is only a short distance in Ahmed’s eyes and living memory of an existence shaped by the daily struggle of statelessness. Today Ahmed resides in Ein el-Hilweh, with an estimated 80 000 other stateless Palestinians in the country’s largest refugee camp located on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese city of Saida. Read more about From Montreal to Ein el-Hilweh: Deportation, Destitution & Dignity
One year after the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in which it made clear that the construction of the Wall and the settlements were illegal, the Israeli cabinet called for “the immediate completion of the security fence [sic] in the Jerusalem area”. With this decision, Israel, once again, defies international law and the advisory of opinion of the ICJ, backed by the General Assembly of the United Nations, which ruled that Israel should not only immediately stop with its construction, but also begin dismantling them and to pay reparations to those who had lost their property as the result of the Wall’s construction. Read more about One year after ICJ ruling, Israel OKs Wall in Jerusalem
Last year the International Court of Justice issued its opinion on the Wall Israel is constructing in the West Bank. The opinion, argues Andrew Rubin, should open up other arenas of resistance. Whatever the wall signifies for the precarious political and existential future of Palestinians, one thing is certain: it is part of Israel’s wilful repudiation of Palestinian existence. It is an attempt to make Palestinians physically invisible from the experience of Israeli daily life. New political and legal strategies of resistance may take the forms of various instruments of financial, political and diplomatic pressure, including boycotts, embargoes, human rights taxes, sanctions, and other restrictions on the flow of Israeli capital. Read more about One year on: We are No Longer Able to see the Sun Set
Imagine that you live in the North End, but your grandparents live in the West End of Boise. Imagine that in order to visit them you must confront a 26-foot concrete wall that surrounds each neighborhood and separates you. Imagine that to cross a small break in this wall along Broadway you will be met by soldiers, who will ask to see your passport and who will interrogate you about why you want to visit your family while pointing guns in your face. Imagine that to go to work every day you must pass similar checkpoints, all of which are a cross between airport security and a military zone. This is what life is like for me right now living in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Read more about Tearing down illegal wall only way to achieve peace
The trip to Tulkarem is not easy for our driver. He complains that the roads in the West Bank are changing fast. The Israeli regime is working full speed on the construction of the network of highways cutting right through the occupied Palestinian territories and incorporating parts of traditional Palestinian roads. Adri Nieuwhof and Bangani Ngeleza recently visited the occupied Palestinian territories. On a hot summer day, they travelled with a Palestinian guide from Ramallah to Jarushya, north of Tulkarem. The aim of the trip was to visit families that are affected by the Wall. The guide had contacted a leader of the community in Tulkarem and arranged for a meeting. Read more about Israel does not want peace
