Tuesday, August 21

Today in Palestine! ~ Headlines August 21, 2007 ~

 Brought to you by Shadi Fadda
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Gazans face the progressive collapse of their economy
Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory, has warned of a progressive collapse of the Gazan economy as a result of border restrictions and a breakdown of services. Kirstie Campbell reports.


Israeli missile kills 2 Gaza boys-ministry official
Two Palestinian boys were killed in an Israeli missile strike in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a Palestinian ministry of health official said.


Video: Israeli Soldiers Beating Palestinian Children at a Checkpoint


Kiryat Arba Settlers Throw Party on Privately Owned Palestinian Land
At 1:40pm a group of international human rights workers received a call from a Palestinian man, Anan Jabouri, who lives on land he owns directly next to Kiryat Arba settlement. Jabouri told a local Palestinian resident, and member of ISM, that a large group of Israeli settlers had set up a tent on his land and were gathering underneath it. He requested that internationals come to his home in order to ensure the settlers would not become violent, and also to potentially make them leave his land since they had no permission to be there.


Sarra Residents Fight Settlements Through Non-Violent Roadblock
Today at 8:30 in the morning, 16 ISM human rights workers joined over a hundred local Palestinian villagers and activists in an attempt to remove a roadblock.
 

Two Palestinian prisoners launch appeal to save lives
Amjad Abbadi and Mohammad Samara, two Palestinian prisoners from the northern West Bank city of Jenin, launched an appeal on Wednesday to International Human Rights organization to intervene with the Israeli authorities to help save their lives.

An Israeli air strike kills six Hamas-linked people in central Gaza
At least six Hamas-linked executive force members have been reportedly killed and several others including passersby wounded in a new fresh Israeli air strike on a force's vehicle in central Gaza.


Electricity Is Latest Gaza Battleground
Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents were forced to make do without electricity Monday as the coastal strip's power supply became the latest victim of feuding between Gaza's Hamas rulers and their Fatah rivals.  
European donors stopped paying key electricity aid over the weekend, concerned that Hamas is siphoning off revenues. As Fatah and Hamas traded charges of corruption, at least half of Gaza's 1.4 million people were plunged into darkness.


Electricity cuts exacerbate dire situation in Gaza
Gaza's only power plant has completely ceased providing power after Israel's four-day closure of the border crossing through which fuel supplies enter the Strip and the European Union's freezing of funds. Gazans' already hard living conditions are expected to rapidly aggravate without proper power supplies.


Bedouins demand improved access to health care
A new legal petition to Israel's High Court demands the state connect 11 primary health care clinics in the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev desert to the main power grid in order to provide better health services. The clinics, which were established as a result of previous petitions, use generators, but only during opening hours. Afterwards, the electricity shuts off.

OPT: Power shortages threaten sewage treatment
If power and fuel shortages continue, a major sewage treatment plant in the Gaza Strip will be unable to operate, causing public health risks, a water and sanitation official said. Power shortages worsened when Israel closed the Nahal Oz crossing for fuel supplies on 16 August over "security concerns".


Hebron before and after
Naif Hashalmon, a Palestinian photographer, documented the busy streets of his hometown, Hebron, during the '90s. This year, Activestills photographers returned to the city and documented the deserted streets. Hebron as 'a microcosm of the occupation'.


2007: The Year of the Lion
A very interesting article about the strange 30 year jump from one major event to the next in the Zionist narrative. It is a rather lengthy piece, but I believe it is a must read.


Policewoman suspended for hitting Palestinians
Border Police suspended a policewoman filmed last week hitting two Palestinians, a spokesman said Sunday. The policewoman was filmed at an IDF checkpoint along the West Bank security barrier by the Palestinian organization Palestine Monitor, which sent the footage to reporters. The brief film shows three Palestinians on a donkey cart approach the checkpoint. After an inaudible verbal exchange, the policewoman is seen hitting two of the Palestinians. Neither appeared to have been injured.


FACTBOX-'Hamas-related' charities blacklisted by U.S.
More  Aug 20 (Reuters) - A U.S.-backed campaign against Hamas is being expanded to include Islamic charities that helped the group win the hearts and minds of Palestinians.


FEATURE-US-backed campaign against Hamas expands to charities
DEIR EL-BALAH, Gaza Strip, Aug 20 (Reuters) - A U.S.-backed campaign against Hamas is being expanded to include Islamic charities that helped propel it to power, Palestinian, Israeli and Western officials said.


West Bank 'could soon fall to Hamas'
The lawlessness that led the moderate Fatah faction to lose control of Gaza is repeating itself in the West Bank, a senior Palestinian official has claimed.   Unless something is done to neutralise unofficial armed militias, part of the region could fall to Hamas, the hardline Islamic faction, dooming any chance of an independent state in the near future.


Hamas loyalist kidnapped from West Bank municipal building
NABLUS, West Bank: Fatah gunmen broke into a West Bank city hall on Saturday and kidnapped an employee loyal to the rival Hamas movement, Palestinian security officials said. It was the first such abduction since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered a security clampdown in the West Bank in June.


Hamas security force makes presence felt in Gaza
Need a policeman in Gaza these days? Dial 109 for Hamas's Executive Force.  Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with a picture of an eagle spreading its wings, the 6,000-member security contingent is making its mark in the chaotic territory.


Starving Gaza
Gaza has become the Sarajevo of the Middle East. Israel, in an action similar to that of the Serbs in Bosnia, has surrounded and cut off nearly a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the Islamic militant group Hamas took control in June. Electric fences and watch towers manned by Israeli soldiers keep the Palestinians trapped inside the strip. The land and sea blockade, the halting of all but minimal humanitarian aid and the refusal to allow Gaza to receive financial support are crushing Gaza's industry, farming and infrastructure.


Return to Gaza
They wanted to reassure me and my Panorama colleagues Darren Kemp and Jonathan Young that the fate of our colleague Alan Johnston was not in store for us. A lan had been released a few weeks before after being kidnapped by a local clan.


Watching Gaza collapse
Today I went with my cousin's wife and her children to Gaza's social welfare office to pick up her monthly paycheck from the government. My cousin was killed last September by an Israeli sniper while he stood in front of his house. Overnight his children and wife became eligible to receive 375 NIS (a little less than $100) a month from the Palestinian government because their father was now a martyr. Yassmin Moor in Gaza writes that this is their third time coming to the office in the last month, because every time they go it's closed.


Palestine national youth football team refused visas to enter UK
The British Government has refused to issue visas for the Palestine National Youth Football Team to travel to England. The team was due to arrive on 21st August for a 3-week tour of the UK.


US survey raises eyebrows in Jerusalem
A survey by a respected journal showing that 15 of 108 foreign policy elites in the US believe Israel does not serve US national security interests has raised eyebrows in Jerusalem. It precedes the publication in early September of a book by two US professors slamming the Israel-US alliance.
 

Israeli Soldier: "All Arab women Want to Kill Jews"
On Sunday afternoon August 19th a Palestinian woman in her early thirties from the outskirts of Hebron was detained for 1 hour before being arrested at Tel Rumeida st. in the H2 district of the West Bank's largest city. International human rights workers immediately intervened to prevent an aggressive colonial Jewish settler female from taking photographs of the woman. Settler children had quickly started to throw stones at the woman when she attempted to visit her friend in the area adjoining the illegal settlement.


The story of Sima - Female Political Prisoner
Sima is a 35 year old Palestinian lady who was released approximately four months ago following two and a half years in an underground Israeli jail. She has four young children who were left without any parents during her stay in prison, as the Israeli army had assassinated her husband a little while prior to her incarceration.


Border Control / Ramallah fiddles, Gaza burns
RAMALLAH - Four armed policemen in pressed blue and green camouflage uniforms sat in a command car, looking down the main street from the Beit El checkpoint to the center of town. It was 6 P.M. The last construction workers came down from the scaffolding around the high-rise buildings popping up on every corner in downtown Ramallah. There was not a single living soul in the lobby of the shiny stone building housing the Foreign Ministry, which Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has placed in the hands of his prime minister, Salam Fayad. Traffic in the commercial district was light, only a few horns honked, and the drivers, as usual, passed each other wildly, ignoring traffic lights.

Israelis airdrop an occupation :
BEIRUT, 17 August (IPS) - With an estimated one million unexploded land ordnances meaning lack of access to their lands, many farmers in southern Lebanon see cluster bombs as an Israeli "occupation." An estimated 25 percent of cultivated land is now inaccessible in the south. Last summer, Israel pounded Lebanon with over four million cluster bombs and artillery shells that destroyed villages, displaced thousands and wrecked more than 70 percent of the southern economy. Financial losses to the livestock sector alone were estimated at nearly 22 million dollars.

Meanwhile in Iraq

Meanwhile in the U.S.

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