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Scores of Israeli right wing extremists storm the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem
The Aqsa mosque, the third holist site for Moslems all over the world, was attacked today by the group of Jewish extremists who stormed the outer yards of the mosque them conducted their prairies in side the yards, Israeli police and troops were with the extremists.
Demolition campaign halted in Um Al Hayran village
Rafay'a stated that a massive force of Israeli policemen and jeeps from the Israeli Lands Department, backed by Israeli bulldozers, began to carry out a forcible evacuation and demolition of homes in Um Al Hayran village. Rafay'a called the Ministry of Housing and other ministries related to the operation. Fortunately, after a week of protest, he received a call from the leaders responsible that Israeli forces would not carry out the demolition. The Regional Committee for Unrecognized Villages sent its staff to the area and found that the Israeli force had left the area without taking any action.
Israeli settlers set fire to Olive fields in Dier Al Hattab and Salem villages, near Nablus
Local residents reported to the Palestinian News Agency "WAFA" that the huge fire extended over an area of 150 dunums of Olive fields, with fire trucks being unable to reach the area after the Israeli army closed the area.
Hamas investigates "honour" killing of 3 sisters
GAZA, July 23 (Reuters) - A Hamas security force said on Monday the brother and cousin of three sisters who were stabbed to death last weekend were suspects of what was likely to have been an "honour killing" and ordered the men jailed
Hamas willing to negotiate with Blair
Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri indicated that the Hamas movement was willing to open talks with the Quartet's new envoy, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, but reiterated their refusal to negotiate with the Israeli state.
Israeli Raid in Gaza
Two activists from Islamic Jihad's military wing, the Al Quds Brigades, were killed in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun in an Israeli air raid on Sunday.
Israeli textbook states Arab view--will only be in Arab schoolbooks
The book, to be used only in Israeli Arab schools, notes that Palestinians describe the event as a "catastrophe".
Likud, NRP leaders call for the dismissal of education minister
The leaders of Likud and the National Religious Party Sunday called for the dismissal of Education Minister Yuli Tamir, shortly after Tamir announced that her ministry had approved a textbook for Israeli Arab schools that says the Arabs refer to the 1948 War of Independence as "Nakba," meaning "catastrophe" or "disaster."
Sharp surge in Israeli applicants seeking German citizenship
Last year saw a sharp, 50 percent surge in the number of Israelis who obtained German citizenship, federal statisticians said Monday as they released naturalization figures. Out of 124,830 people who renounced their old citizenship in 2006 and became Germans, 4,313 were from Israel, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said.
Hamas Calls on Iran's Official News Agency to Open Gaza Branch
Hamas' envoy to Tehran, Abu Osama 'Abd Al-M'uti, called on Iran's official news agency, IRNA, to open a branch in Gaza. 'Abd Al-M'uti delivered his request during a meeting with IRNA's chief editor Jalal Fayyazi, when he thanked IRNA for "reflecting the heroic resistance of the oppressed Palestinian nation and informing the world of its innocence."
PCHR calls for saving the civilian judicial system in the Gaza strip before Its collapse
PCHR is extremely concerned over the deterioration in the Judicial Authority in the Gaza Strip as a result of pushing the judiciary in the power struggle between Fatah and Hamas. The Centre renews its calls to all concerned parties to refrain from dragging the judiciary into this struggle, to refrain from infringing upon the judiciary, and to take serious steps to ensure the immediate resumption of the functioning of the civilian judicial system. The Centre strongly rejects any action towards establishing alternative judicial bodies in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas Replacing Defunct Gaza Courts
The legal system in Gaza stopped functioning after Hamas took over the area last month. Moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered judges, prosecutors and police to stop cooperating with Gaza's new rulers.
East J'lem drivers accuse city of 'discriminatory' transit tender
The municipality stated initially that only Israeli citizens with weapons licenses or eligible for such licenses would be considered as drivers. The complainants said the municipality removed the citizenship requirement after the matter was brought to its attention, but the weapons requirement remained in place, making it difficult, if not impossible, for Arab drivers from East Jerusalem to get the job.
Blair is wasting his time, says ex-Gaza envoy
Tony Blair arrives for his first visit to the Holy Land as an international envoy today with his predecessor already warning that his mandate is so weak that he will have little chance of significantly aiding the peace process. Speaking from his home in New York, James Wolfensohn, a former World Bank president who resigned after only 13 months as envoy, said the job was doomed because Israel and America had undermined him. Unless this situation changed, Mr Wolfensohn said Mr Blair would effectively be wasting his time.
A tribute to my grandparents' home
I first learned of my grandparents' home being demolished a few months after it actually happened in October 2003. Rafah was besieged by the Israeli army at that time and phone calls to Gaza were nearly impossible. Al-Brazil housing project was hit especially hard because it was alongside the Gaza-Egypt border. I remember I was driving to school in Pennsylvania when my mother called to tell me. She was very calm, and reported it to me like she reported every other piece of news that came out of Gaza. I could not comprehend what she was saying. The shock did not allow me to make sense of anything she was telling me. It didn't make sense that the house my grandfather built was no longer a house but just rubble. And when I asked her how she felt, she replied like she did with everything else: "We're no different than the other Palestinians." My grandfather died in that same house a year before it was destroyed. Since that time my uncle and his 10 family members had been living there.
Gaza life reduced to handouts and Hamas
Gaza is just a tiny strip of land on the edge of the Mediterranean on the south-west border with Israel. The people of Gaza rely on goods brought across several border crossings controlled by Israel, and around 85 per cent of them get the basics of life from international aid agencies.
Lebanon: Interview - No swift return for Palestinians to battered camp
Many of the 32,000 Palestinian refugees who have fled fighting between the Lebanese army and Islamist militants will need temporary homes while their devastated camp is rebuilt, a U.N. official said on Friday.
UNWRA struggles to provide full diabetes treatment service to refugees
Despite the fact that a quarter of the health supplies budget of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) is spent on diabetes and cardiovascular drugs, the cost of a secondary drug used to treat complications, called statin, is too high. Any refugee requiring this drug is obliged to try and purchase it privately.
Israelis kill 4 Palestinians in Gaza
An Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian militants in the northern Gaza Strip Sunday after they fired rockets at a nearby Israeli town, the Israeli military and hospital officials said.
Hamas members foil attack on IDF forces
Palestinian sources report members of Hamas' security force arrested Islamic Jihad member as he attempted to plant explosive device near border fence.
A witness to Palestinian history from behind bars
When Mohannad Jaradat was jailed by Israel in 1989, the Palestinian Authority did not exist, Hamas was nascent and he dreamed of creating a separate state. Eighteen years later, after being released from prison on Friday, Jaradat is bitter about what has happened to the Palestinians, accusing the Islamists of Hamas of behaving like emirs ruling over their own emirate in the Gaza Strip.
Boycott leader claims he has been subjected to "sustained vilification"
Hickey, who called on British professors to "consider the moral implications of links with Israeli academic institutions," claimed on Saturday that he had been subjected to sustained vilification by "eminent American professors and supporters of Israel," who had threatened to "bankrupt and destroy the careers of any union members who support a boycott."
Audio: Crossing the Line interviews Osamah Khalil
This week on Crossing The Line: no time in the recent history of the Palestinian people has been so devoid of hope. As in the case of the dark days of the South African apartheid regime, Palestinians are faced with the decision to continue along factional lines or begin to form an umbrella body that has legitimacy both with the country and the international community. Host Chris Brown talks with Osamah Khalil, a doctoral candidate in US and Middle Eastern History at the University of California Berkeley about the need to rebuild the PLO and to rid the country of despotic leaders.
A Racist Jewish State
Every day the Knesset has the option of passing laws that will advance Israel as a democratic Jewish state or turn it into a racist Jewish state. There is a very thin line between the two. This week, the line was crossed.
The Palestinians' good ol' boy
"During his years at the University of Texas, Fayad picked up the language of America's South, the lingo spoken in President Bush's immediate surroundings. Fayad knows the names of the local football teams and he knows how to give the neo-conservatives the feeling that they are talking to a good ol' boy. His service at World Bank headquarters in Washington during the presidency of Bush senior was a preparatory course in southern-Republican psychology. In an interview to Haaretz last Sunday, the day before Bush's speech (about whose main points the Palestinian prime minister had been informed of in advance), Fayad proved to the Americans that he is someone they can trust. Every attempt to extract from him a word of criticism of the American helplessness, or even the slightest reservation, was met with a forgiving smile that seemed to say "really now, do you think I'm a fool and a sucker?"
Israeli amnesty offer divides militants
Sitting with a heavily bandaged right hand at his office in Nablus, Faiz Tirawi says the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade is as committed as ever to pushing Israel out of all the land it seized in 1967 – by force if necessary. And he seethes at the "treachery" of the Islamist group Hamas, which he describes as the tool of a "dangerous Iranian agenda for Palestine."
Growing Up Under Occupation
U pon reaching the age of 16 Palestinians are issued an identity card, and with this card, Israel overwhelmingly restricts the movement and life of Palestinians to and from the Occupied Territories. And though Palestinian children are allowed to travel into 'Israel', they still face the travails of restriction, as they can only travel while accompanied by a person holding a foreign passport.
An Interview with Jonathan Cook-- The Future of Palestine
This Q&A email exchange with Jonathan Cook, a British journalist and CounterPunch contributor who lives in Nazareth, was first published on the Vineyard of the Saker website on 15 July 2007. Cook's recent book, entitled "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State", was published by Pluto Press.
Israeli Arabs smash world record for largest 'Debke' folk dance
Israeli Arabs from across Israel danced their way hand in hand into the Guiness Book of World Records on Sunday after they held the largest and longest group performance of the "Debke" dance inside the walls of the Old City of Acre.
Uri Avnery: A Trap for Fools
In a classical American western, the difference is as glaring as the midday sun in Colorado: there are Good Guys and Bad Guys. The good ones are the settlers, who are making the prairie bloom. The bad ones are the Indians, who are blood-thirsty savages. The ultimate hero is the cowboy, tough, humane, with a big revolver or two, ready to defend himself at all times.
Who Are We Forgetting?
I thought about the irony as I walked the grounds of the old Orthodox Church, surveying the church and the new wall being constructed around it. We were visiting with members of the al-Mujaydal Heritage Committee who were working to construct this wall in what was the village of al-Mujaydal. Al-Mujaydal was one of the over 500 Palestinian villages destroyed between 1947 and 1949, and its residents among the 750,000 to 900,000 refugees expelled from their homes in what Palestinians remember as the Nakba or "Catastrophe." Today the refugees from al-Mujaydal live abroad in places like Syria, still unable to return to their lands. But there are also refugees from al-Mujaydal that live in the neighboring city of Nazareth in the Galilee in northern Israel. The reason why this protective wall was built was because of ongoing vandalism against the church from the surrounding Jewish settlement.
Tony Karon: Yes, Bush Is Naked, What of It?
President Bush's announcement of a new Middle East summit is being dutifully reported as a move to "revive" the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, designed to culminate in a two-state solution. But the meeting, if it ever comes about, will be nothing of the sort. U.S. officials have already made clear that the gathering's purpose will be "to review progress toward building Palestinian institutions, look for ways to support further reforms and support the effort going on right now between the parties together."
Israel's mob wars: Hit men, drugs and recycling
When an explosion goes off on a busy Israeli street these days, it seems as likely to be a mob hit as a Palestinian attack.
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