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Israeli occupation policy pushes Palestinians from their land to make room for Israeli settlers
JERUSALEM - Palestinians in the Jordan Valley , in the northeastern part of the West Bank, had their worst fears confirmed over the past week when Israeli forces demolished homes and wells in small villages in the area, following through on previously issued orders. "The Israelis seem to want to push out the Palestinians, to make room for the settlers. I am very worried," said Fathi Khrdeirat, from Save the Jordan Valley, a local organisation.
Dr. Bernard Sabella: Mourning and the morning after
The Qalqilya elder too, like the farmer from Jayyus, had tears in his eyes. His whole essence of living, personal and collective narrative with the land of Qalqilya is being taken away from him. I left Qalqilya around nine in the evening with a heavy heart. The visit has confirmed that the problems of occupation are not simply political issues of how Palestinians and Israelis can overcome their historic enmity but concrete problems that result from a power relationship that is heartless and oblivious to individual and collective histories and narratives and to attachments of Palestinians to land and to its meaning. Some would argue that lifting of the checkpoints in the West Bank would give a boost to peace efforts and would make Palestinians more comfortable with accommodationist policies with Israel. But the lifting of these Israeli military checkpoints if done without willingness to change the structure of domination and land grabbing and annexation would mean nothing in the long run.
Israel allows Gaza fuel delivery
The Israeli military has said it will open a border crossing with the Gaza Strip for a few hours on Sunday to allow fuel deliveries to the territory. The announcement comes a day after parts of Gaza were plunged into darkness because of fuel shortages. The territory relies on Israel for fuel but Israel says it stopped regular deliveries for security reasons. Israel began cutting off fuel supplies to Gaza after the Islamist group Hamas took over the territory in June.
Palestinian power company says outage will end Sunday
A Palestinian power company announced Saturday it will resume the supply of electricity to thousands of homes in the Gaza Strip after Israel opens a key crossing to allow fuel shipments into the coastal territory. The Israeli army said that Sunday it will open the Nahal Oz crossing, three days after closing the passage for security reasons it would not detail. About 1.4 million Palestinians living in the fenced Gaza Strip depend on Israel and its crossings for everything from milk to cement to paper. Israel has kept the passages largely closed since the Islamic Hamas took the strip by force in June, refusing to coordinate the flow of goods with the militant group.
Israel denies that it is to pardon more West Bank militants
The PM's office denied reports by Palestinian officials Saturday that Israel plans to take 110 Palestinian militants in the West Bank off its wanted list as part of another move to boost PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Akram Rajoub, head of the Preventive Security Forces in the West Bank city of Nablus, had said Israeli officials had passed to him a list of 110 Palestinian militants set to receive amnesty. He did not elaborate on which group they were loyal to.
Talks between Olmert and Abbas stuck on issue of Palestinian refugees
Abbas is refusing to make significant concessions, government sources in Jerusalem said. They said Abbas and Olmert have in recent weeks been negotiating a new document on the core issues of forming a Palestinian state. The one-page document has five general clauses on central issues such as the permanent borders of the future Palestinian state, the question of jurisdiction over holy sites in Jerusalem, and the Palestinian refugee problem.
Hamas rejects PA's right to make concessions to Israel
"No one has a mandate to infringe the rights of Palestinians, especially concerning the right of return of the refugees" from the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Haniya said. He reiterated that he favoured a lengthy truce with Israel if it withdrew from "all (Arab) territories occupied since 1967" and from all settlements established there "so a sovereign Palestinian state can be created" with east Jerusalem as its capital.
One killed, another wounded as Israeli army opens fire in eastern Gaza
Palestinian medical sources said that three Palestinians seen collecting antiquities near a garbage collection plant in Johr Eldik village were fired on by Israeli army forces, just close to the Gaza-border line. The sources identified the dead man as Nezar Raji, 20, of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip.
Two killed in Israeli military invasion of Jenin area
Eyewitnesses reported that troops invaded the eastern neighborhood of Kufur Dan village west of Jenin on Friday approximately at 6 p.m, and exchanged fire with resistance fighters of Abu Ammar Brigades, and Al Quds Brigades – the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad.. Mahmoud Saleh Ashour Darweesh, 25, leader of Abu Ammar Brigades, was hit by several rounds of live ammunition and when one youth identified as Nour Mer'ey, 18, rushed to save him and move him to a different location soldiers shot him dead by several rounds of live ammunition.
Domination: traveling through the West Bank
After all, it was I who had angered the young soldier. It was his inability to humiliate me, abuse me or exert power over me that sent him in a rage toward the first innocent victims he could find. . . This story is meant to highlight an under-reported element of occupation. Amongst the various NGOs and monitoring groups there are plentiful resources concerning the crippling effects that closures, checkpoints, the colonial wall and targeted killings have on the economic and political outlook of Palestine, but there is little concerning their effects on the psyche of Palestinians themselves. Humiliation, though the least tangible and measurable, is perhaps the greatest weapon of the occupier. It reinforces Israeli military racism and Palestinian acceptance of their "lot" in the Occupied Territories . The results are devastating and the choices are clear: violence, acceptance or emigration.
CPT Hebron: Reflection – Evictions and closures: Good news and bad news
Excellent map of Hebron showing the situation with closures, checkpoints,settlements, mosques, etc.:
Click Here
The bad news is that the Israeli army evicted Abu Hatem from his shop at the entrance to the Old City and welded his shop door closed, as well as the shops of three of his neighbors. The good news is that he can take his case to the Israeli High Court, and if he wins he can reopen his shop. The bad news is that court cases are expensive and take years. The bad news is that, even if he wins, the Israeli commander can issue another order immediately closing the shop again, as they did last January re the opening of Shuhada Street to Palestinians. The good news, according to the Israeli army, is that the Palestinian shop closures have placated the settlers after the eviction of the two families, and so they may stop terrorizing the Palestinian population.
Saving the children
Palestinian society, like many developing societies is mainly comprised of young people. According to Save the Children, 53 percent of the population is under the age of 18, that is, approximately 1.2 million Palestinians. While the Israeli occupation has been a ubiquitous presence in the lives of all Palestinians for the past 40 years, Palestinian infighting has not. Unlike the ramifications, however dire, of a belligerent occupying force, the backlash from internal fighting may have such deep rooted consequences that years of rehabilitation cannot heal. The unfortunate polarization of Palestinian society has inadvertently been passed down to the next generation.
Israeli army invades Nablus and El Ein camp, injures a woman
Witnesses said that soldiers searched homes and forced families out during the search soldiers shot randomly at residents homes and injured one civilian. Medical sources in the city identified the injured woman as Ni'mah Nasser, from El Ein refugee camp. Sources in the city said that the Israeli forces left the city shortly after searching homes; no kidnappings were reported. In related news Israeli soldiers stationed at the Howara military checkpoint on the main entrance to Nablus city on Saturday midday closed the checkpoint and did not allow residents to enter or leave the city for several hours,
PA security forces arrest five Hamas members in West Bank
According to the sources the security forces attacked Hamas members' homes near Jenin and Qalqilia. Palestinian security sources told IMEMC that no arrests have been made as Hamas clamed; the sources said that the five were called for questioning only.
Palestinian turns Israeli teen into sex slave
18-year-old girl moves in with man she meets on the internet, is later forced by him to grant sexual favors to Palestinian Authority officials in lavish Ramallah villa - A few months ago Tal (not her real name) met who she thought was her prince charming in an internet chat room. But shortly after the two began living together the man approached Tal and asked that she "comfort" a friend of his. She agreed to sleep with the friend as a one-time gesture for her beloved boyfriend . . . A volunteer in an organization that offers help to Israeli teenagers who have experienced similar traumas told Ynet that Arab girls from Jaffa have also been lured to the territories under false pretenses.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3438698,00.html http://www.imemc.org/article/49957
West Bank poverty spawns child beggars
Children as young as 3 stand at traffic lights for hours, in rain or baking sun. They beg for change or sell cigarette lighters and batteries. At night, they sleep in fields, cemeteries, mosques, drainage canals or on streets. Their earnings are often taken by thieves or shady middlemen, and some are sexually abused or forced to sell drugs.
Hasan Afif El-Hasan: If not insanity, it must be treason
Abbas and his aides have no conscience or shame joining the government of the settlers in the fight against the Palestinian resistance and starving and killing the people he claims to be their president. By releasing $120 million of frozen Palestinian tax revenues to Abbas and Fayyad government, Israel had the best deal money can buy. As part of the payoff to the Israelis, Abbas security forces have been cooperating with the occupation agencies in pursuing the Palestinian resistance cells in the West Bank, while the Israeli military unleashed daily air strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip killing activists and civilians and destroying property.
Steven Erlanger: Alliance of fear makes progress possible toward solution to Mideast problem
After seven years of violence, terrorism, stagnation and unilateralism, the US has finally decided to re-engage, pushing Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to talk about peace. . . The Bush administration finally seems to understand that there is no sustainable status quo, said one US official. Even more to the point, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice now seems to understand that "if there was an Archimedean point to the Middle East problem, it was to be found in the Palestinian issue, not the 'war on terror', Iraq or the need for Arab democracy", as former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami put it.
Sheikh Ra'ad Salah: Israel wants to forcibly divide Al-Aqsa between Jews, Muslims
Speaking at a convention in East Jerusalem, Salah also said that the Israeli establishment is systematically attempting to Judaize the city, and disconnect it from its Palestinian surroundings in order to easily transfer its Arab population.
Nazir Majali: Arabs in distress
Dichter, in his appearance at a Kadima rally in Shfaram, complained of the separatism that the Arabs of Israel are nurturing and wanted the Arab population of Israel to be "Israeli Arabs and not Palestinian Arabs." Being Arabs is fine and dandy, but being Palestinians is forbidden - this is separatism. This is astounding. Does the learned minister not know that our belonging to the Palestinian people is an historical and even genetic fact? After all, there isn't an Arab-Israeli family that doesn't have relatives of the first or second degree in the territories or the Palestinian diaspora. . . In the long term, the Arabs of Israel, being Israelis, can contribute to the reinforcement of the state's national strength. But the primary condition for this is the recognition of them and their status, giving them the feeling that they are part of the state, and that they are desired and permanent, not temporary.
Princeton in the West Bank – the huge Ariel settlement and its college
A wide highway less than 20 kilometers long separates Ariel from the Green Line (the pre-1967 border). Despite its proximity to the center of Israel and its high governmental budgets, however, the biggest settlement in the depths of the northern West Bank is not taking off. The town has for years suffered from negative migration (more people moving out than moving in) and from the aging of the population. The rate of population growth in 2005 as compared with the previous year stood at 0.6 percent, a third of the rate in Israel overall. Mayor Nachman blames Yitzhak Rabin, who declared Ariel a "political settlement" (as opposed to what he called "security settlements"), thus bringing about the annulment of tax benefits, grants for home purchasers and enlarged mortgages.
Line of hope links Palestinians, Israelis
"Most Israelis have never met a Palestinian and most Palestinians have never met an Israeli - apart, that is, from soldiers and settlers," Robi Damelin says. That barrier to communication - which has now been given physical reality in the form of the West Bank barrier - is the reason why the Parents' Circle set up Hello Peace, a phone line which allows any Israeli or Palestinian to pick up the phone and speak directly to somebody from the other side. Since its inception Hello Peace has logged over a million calls.They may begin as screaming matches between the two sides but many calls have led to lasting friendships.
Amira Hass: High Court has been wrongly besmirched
on the really important issues, Supreme Court justices demonstrate national responsibility and are synchronized with the prevailing mood. They proved this once again last week when they accepted the state`s position that 10 students from the Gaza Strip should not be permitted to travel to the West Bank for two months in order to complete a clinical internship, without which they will not be able to work as occupational therapists in Gaza. There is currently only one certified occupational therapist working in the strip. With respect to their age, the petitioning students `belong to the risk group of those who seek to destroy Israel` . . .
Israeli witness falters in Holy Land Foundation trial
An Israeli intelligence agent whose earlier testimony linked a U.S.-based Islamic charity to Hamas acknowledged Thursday that none of the overseas charities it supported has appeared among hundreds of names on U.S. government terrorist lists.
'Excruciatingly slow' testimony results in additional discovery
After Yaron and Efrat Unagar were killed in a 1996 terrorist attack in Israel, their families sued Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization under the 1991 Antiterrorism Act, which permits U.S. citizens to sue terrorist groups and seize their U.S. assets. The plaintiffs were awarded a $116 million default judgment in 2004 and have sought to enforce the judgment in New York against an insurance and pension fund for Palestinian municipal employees.
Arizona family reunited as Congresswoman Giffords helps four get back from Gaza
A Tucson family is grateful to be back in its adopted country after surviving a civil war and fearing that it would never be able to leave its troubled homeland. Husain Gharbia and his wife, Fatina, planned to make 2007 the year they returned to the Middle East and introduced their families to their daughters, Ayah, 3, and Tala, 1. The parents are permanent legal residents of the U.S., and their daughters are U.S. citizens. Little did they know that a civil war would break out on the Gaza Strip, even in his family's neighborhood.
New Hampshire Democratic Congressman Hodes on trip to Israel with 17 other congressmen
He is in the second week of a privately funded trip to Israel with 17 other Democratic House members. The trip is being paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that regularly sponsors what it calls education trips to Israel for members of Congress. The group is affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a major pro-Israel lobbying group, and hosted 19 Republican House members on a similar trip earlier this month.
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