Peace Now: Israel continue to expanding West Bank settlements
The report shows that the Israeli government continued to build homes inside Israeli settlements in the West Bank and demolished at least eight Palestinian homes after the Annapolis conference held in Moreland city USA in late November.
Israeli official: "We don't need American approval" to expand settlements
An Israeli official announced Monday that Israel will allow construction within settlements that have already been established on Palestinian land in the West Bank, rebuffing a U.S. critique of one planned settlement expansion.
Officials: Israel to allow construction in existing W. Bank settlements
Israel will allow construction within built up areas of existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, but will not expand beyond those areas, Israeli officials said on Monday.
Israeli neighborhood in Arab east Jerusalem haunts peace talks for second time in a decade
The Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, with its small supermarket and barbershop, white stone buildings and billboards hawking new real estate projects, has now managed to disrupt Israeli-Palestinian peace talks for the second time in a decade. Israel's announcement this month that it plans to build 307 new homes in this east Jerusalem neighborhood, on land Palestinians want for the capital of their future state, drew international condemnation and was the first wrench thrown into peace negotiations relaunched last week after a violent seven-year hiatus.
Quartet for Middle East Peace 'concerned' over Israeli settlement expansion
In a concurrent meeting with the Paris donor's conference Monday, representatives from the four bodies that make up the Quartet for Mideast Peace: the U.S., Russia, the U.N. and the E.U. issued a statement condemning Israel's plan to expand a West Bank settlement.
Apartheid Masked: Settlements being built and Palestinian homes demolished under the shadow of "peace" talks
Peace Now Settlement Watch says: "Although Olmert declared a settlement freeze, we see that on the ground there is construction in settlements all over the West Bank, in all kinds of settlements, and as long as the Government does not stop settlement activity on the ground, the negotiations cannot succeed." A group of activists documented this continued construction in several settlements. They also documented the demolition of Palestinian houses which has continued after the peace conference, eight homes having been destroyed since Annapolis. They filmed construction in Nof Zion and Har Homa last week, and also took pictures of construction going on in Modi'in Illit, Ma'ale Adumim, Karnei Shomron, Alfei Menashe, and the Barkan industrial area.
12 Killed in Gaza Airstrikes
Israeli aircraft launched an assault on the radical Islamic Jihad organization in Gaza, killing the group's overall commander and nine other militants in three fiery strikes ending early Tuesday. A fourth attack on a security post in southern Gaza killed two Hamas militants.
A leader of al Quds brigade killed in Qabatiya by Israeli gunfire
In a pre-dawn military operation by Israeli Special forces, a leader of the al Quds brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad was killed by military gunfire and another two were injured in the northern West town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin city.
Undercover Israeli unit kills Islamic Jihad leader in West Bank
Ramallah - An undercover Israeli military unit Tuesday shot and killed an Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank town of Qabatia, according to official Palestinian sources.
Israeli air strike kills four Gaza militants
An Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip killed at least four Islamic Jihad gunmen on Tuesday, Palestinian medical workers and militants said, a day after Israel stepped up attacks against the militant group. Islamic Jihad said four of its militants were killed by the air strike as they walked out of a mosque in the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza. An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed there had been an air strike.
Three Palestinians killed, seven wounded in an Israeli air strike on Gaza
Three Palestinians have been reportedly killed and seven others wounded in a new Israeli air strike on Gaza city. Medical sources reported that corpses of the killed reached the hospital dismembered as some children were among those injured in the air strike.
Report: Three killed in Israeli attack on Gaza
Palestinian officials said that at least three people were killed in Israeli airstrike south of Gaza City Monday night.
Gaza Strip at risk from sewage lake
The vast, foul-smelling lake lies just above the Palestinian village of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. It covers a surface of more than 280,000 square metres and is up to six metres deep, filled to the brim with the barely treated overflow of the local sewage plant. For years, the plant has been struggling - and failing - to recycle the waste water from households across the northern Gaza Strip. Stretched to the limit, the dam of a separate sewage basin at the site broke in March this year; the flooding killed five people.
Income drops in Gaza since Hamas takeover
Hundreds of thousands of households in Gaza have suffered a sharp drop in income since June when Hamas seized the Gaza Strip and Israel tightened sanctions, the U.N . food agency said on Monday. The World Food Program said the deterioration was particularly alarming for the more than 460,000 non-refugees who live in Gaza, home to 1.5 million people.
Gaza blockade worsens health care
In the halls of al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip, patients queue outside the dialysis centre for treatment and medication. However, they know there is a good chance they may get neither. An Israeli economic blockade of the Gaza Strip has meant that medical supplies are scarce.
Sealed off, Gazans struggle daily
The batteries are the size of a button on a man's shirt, small silvery dots that power hearing aids for several hundred Palestinian students taught by the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City. Now the batteries are all but used up. The few that are left are losing power, turning voices into unintelligible echoes in the ears of 20 1st-grade students.
Barriers erode life for Palestinians
TO understand something of the frustration of Palestinian life in the West Bank, it is only necessary to negotiate one of the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints that impede movement there. These checkpoints are a huge barrier to the resumption of routine economic life, much less development, which all analysts agree is essential to normalising life on the West Bank - and any peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Hamas-ruled Gaza will likely see little of the unprecedented $7.4 billion in aid promised to the Palestinians by the international community on Monday. While donor countries say they won't ignore the growing suffering in that isolated territory, they don't seem eager to channel large sums there that could inadvertently help prolong Hamas rule.
Gazans pay the price of Israeli sanctions
B'Tselem: Israeli army is doing nothing to combat violence on the checkpoints
B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in The Occupied Territories, indicated that results of the military poll made about the violence carried out against Palestinians on the Israeli checkpoints are appalling but come as no surprise.
'IDF doesn't prosecute civilian deaths'
In the past seven years, the IDF has indicted just 10 percent of soldiers suspected of criminal offenses against Palestinians, an Israeli human rights group reported Tuesday, saying the figures raise questions about Israel's willingness to prosecute. The Yesh Din group said just 9% of investigations led to convictions. The conviction rate was less than 7%when the investigations focused on the killing and injury of civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it said.
Israel's closure of its border with the Gaza Strip has caused a shortage of livestock for sacrifice at the annual Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday
beginning Wednesday, according to merchants in the coastal territory. Ibrahim al-Kedra, a senior agriculture ministry official in Gaza said the average demand for the feast among Gaza's overwhelmingly Muslim population of 1.5 million is around 10,000 cows and 50,000 goats.
Hamas support shows scant faith in peace talk-poll
Hamas Islamists have maintained their popularity in the Palestinian Territories, reflecting an "almost total lack of confidence" in relaunched peace talks with Israel, a Palestinian survey said on Monday.
Poll: Support for Hamas stable despite worsening conditions in Gaza
A lack of confidence in recently renewed peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians has kept Palestinian support for Hamas stable despite worsening conditions in the Gaza Strip, according to a poll released Monday.
Report: Palestinian NGOs pull plug on Madrid forum
A major meeting of non-governmental organizations and activists fell into disarray when the Palestinian delegation announced its withdrawal just days before the event.
Donors pledge $7bn to Palestinians
Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said on Monday that the Palestinians would receive the pledges over the next three years.
The long road from Paris to Palestine
An international donors' conference that was convened in order to secure pledges of financial support for the Palestinian Authority closed in Paris yesterday. Eighty-seven countries and international organisations were in attendance, including the host, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, Quartet special envoy Tony Blair and representatives of many Arab states. According to initial reports, pledges of $7.4bn were secured, exceeding the target set for the conference. On the face of it, this is impressive stuff and builds on the momentum of the peace summit held in Annapolis three weeks ago. This is the first pledging conference for the Palestinians of its kind since 1996. And the Palestinian economy is certainly in dire need of help, with per capita GDP falling 40% since 1999, unemployment standing at 23% and the PA expecting a fiscal gap for current and capital expenditures of around $1.8bn in 2008 according to the World Bank. This is also an international vote of confidence in prime minister Fayyad, his Palestinian reform and development plan and the sincere efforts he is making to produce a workable program to improve Palestinians' economic prospects. But the journey from Paris to Palestine is a long one, the obstacle course is daunting and the lessons from previous failed and similar journeys are in danger of not being learned.
Int'l aid to PA no guarantee for bolstering moderates
Since its establishment in 1994, the Palestinian Authority has received billions of dollars in international aid. The money was supposed to help the Palestinians build a strong economy and government institutions. The assumption back then was that economic prosperity would weaken radicals and boost the moderates among the Palestinians.
An international donors' conference in Paris on Monday pledged $7.4 billion in aid to the Palestinians over the next three years. The Palestinian government had asked for $5.6 billion over the 2008-2010 period, including $3.9 billion for budget support. Below are details on some of the pledges announced, by country and organisation...
Arab postage stamp launched to support Palestinians
The league of the Arab States has decided to release a joint stamp of the Arab nations as an indication of support for the Palestinians.
Newly appointed U.S. Mideast envoy to visit Israel Tuesday
The Unites States' most recently appointed envoy to the Middle East, retired General Jim Jones, is expected to arrive in Israel Monday night in order to take part in a number of meetings with both the defense establishment and political officials Tuesday.
Barenboim criticizes Israel after musician blocked from Gaza
BERLIN - Conductor Daniel Barenboim criticized Israel Monday for preventing a Palestinian musician in an ensemble that was to perform at a music festival from entering the Gaza Strip for a concert. Barenboim said his group of about 20 musicians from England, the United States, France and Germany, as well the Palestinian musician, had been authorized by Israeli authorities to travel to Gaza for a baroque music festival, where they were to play on Sunday.
Israel bars violinist from Gaza peace concert
Famed conductor Daniel Barenboim spoke out against Israel Monday, following the refusal of the Israeli authorities one day earlier to allow a prominent Palestinian violinist to pass through the Erez border crossing and perform in a peace concert in the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip.
Building hope from rubble
In the dirty streets of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the sparse fruit stands carry only rotten fruit, because it is all the market's vendors can afford to sell, and all the refugees can afford to buy. "It will still be gone in an hour," says Dr. Mona El-Farra, "because they have to eat something." Of Gaza's 1.5 million residents more than 60 percent are under 18. The effects of malnutrition are seen not only in the kids' hunger, but also in their brain function. They are unable to focus in school, and have become violent. Sarah Price reports from Gaza.
To Die With the Philistines
The most famous words ever spoken in Gaza were the last words of Samson (Judges 16:30): "Let me die with the Philistines!" According to the Biblical story, Samson took hold of the central pillars of the Philistine temple and brought down the whole building upon the lords of the Philistines, the people of Gaza, and himself. The teller of the story sums it all up: "So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life."
"Follow Us Not Them" - The Ramallah Model: Washington's Palestinian Failure
A Conflicts Forum Monograph, by Geoffrey Aronson, November, 2007
(Geoffrey Aronson is on the Conflicts Forum Advisory Board. He is Executive Director of the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Middle East Peace) "George Bush's "vision" of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based on the supremacy of the "Ramallah model" over the "Gaza model." U.S. policy intends that the advantages championed by Ramallah in negotiations with Israel and the economic revival enabled by international assistance will "strengthen Abu Mazen" and undermine the Palestininian majority for Hamas. In this contest, however, Hamas, from its base in Gaza, retains significant advantages. As long as the limitations of U.S. policy prevent an end to occupation, the Ramallah model will be compromised and the process of "strengthening Abu Mazen" will continue the process of Fateh's marginalization and Hamas's empowerment that has been the legacy of the Oslo era....."
Racism in Israel
Racism is no laughing matter, but for many people living in Israel and under the Israeli occupation, humour might help to ease the tensions. Arab Labour is an award winning comedy series poking fun at the stigmas and stereotypes of everyday reality in Israel. Al Jazeera's David Chater spoke to the show's writer regarding his personal take on the ongoing conflict.
Students hired to promote Israel
An advocacy group is hiring students as on-campus promoters of Israel. StandWithUs is offering up to $1,000 a year this semester to 38 Emerson fellows, Jewish student leaders at key colleges and universities targeted by the organization. Their duties will include bringing in speakers and films that show Israel in a positive light. Officials from StandWithUs told reporters that they gave particular consideration to applicants from "problem campuses" such as Columbia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan, which the organization identifies as hotbeds of anti-Israel sentiment. More than 100 students applied for the fellowships, funded by California-based philanthropists Rita and Steven Emerson. StandWithUs is an international pro-Israel education organization founded in 2001.
Israel will never be recognized as a 'Jewish state'
Israel, with US support, is seeking to replace the traditional understanding of the conflict as one that can be resolved by upholding Palestinian rights with one where Israeli rights take center stage. This has serious consequences for the Palestinian people in general and the Palestinian minority in Israel in particular. Israel is not only trying to replace Palestinians on their land, but replace them as the victims of the conflict.
With IsraelI have for some time now publicly articulated my sympathy and support for the state of Israel, even while criticizing those cases that I believed constituted poor judgment and bad policy. My stance was based upon my past experiences with Israel, which began indirectly in 1990-1991 when I was involved in counter-SCUD activities during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and continued in a much more direct fashion as a weapons inspector with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), charged with disarming Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
American Jews on War and Peace:What Do the Polls Tell Us and Not Tell Us?
Once again, a poll recently released by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) (1) has confirmed that on some questions of major significance there are vast differences between the opinion of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations and the mass of American Jews. On questions of the Iraq war, the escalation of US military forces in Iraq (the 'Surge') and military action against Iran, most Jewish Americans differ from the leaders of the major American Jewish organizations.
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