When charity ends at home, By Gideon Levy
The ovens have been brought downstairs, into hiding.
The two bagel and cake bakeries have already been
closed by army order. The Israel Defense Forces
confiscated the ovens in one of them, but the employees
in the other bakery managed to rescue and hide theirs.
The popular clothing shop Pretty Woman, in the heart
of the bustling mall in Hebron, and its neighbor, Mama
Care, the high-end shop for baby clothes, are about to
close. The same is true of the new and spacious supermarket,
the modern physical-therapy institute, the beauty salon, the
barbershop and the library: Everything will be closed by
order of the GOC Central Command. Local food and
clothing warehouses were also emptied out by the IDF
last week, with an inventory worth about NIS 750,000,
designated for the impressive orphanages of the Islamic
Charity Movement. The goods were loaded onto trucks
and confiscated.
Palestinian children 'in crisis'
Alarmed by the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza and
the continuing socio-economic deterioration of the
occupied territories, several NGOs have launched
crisis intervention programmes for traumatised
Palestinian children. Marwan Diab, a psychologist
from the Gaza Community Health Programme
(GCHP), says the youngest generation of Palestinians
is in need of immediate assistance.
PLO: Israel killed 274 residents, including 50
children, 18 women, since the beginning of 2008
The National and International Department of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) reported
that the Israeli army killed 274 Palestinians, including
50 children and 18 women since the beginning of 2008.
PCHR Weekly Report: 9 Palestinians killed,
17 wounded by Israeli forces
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights
(PCHR)'s Weekly Report, during the week of 6 - 12
Mar. 2008, 9 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces.
4 of the victims were extra-judicially executed by
Israeli forces in Bethlehem. 3 of the victims bled to
death, and another Palestinian died from a previous
wound. 17 Palestinians, including 7 children and a
woman, were wounded by Israeli forces.
Palestinians killed in West Bank
Israeli soldiers have killed at least five Palestinians,
mostly members of the armed group Islamic Jihad, in
the occupied West Bank. Witnesses said that on
Wednesday a team of Israeli commandos disguised as
local Palestinians and riding in a Bethlehem taxi drove
up to a car and sprayed it with bullets, killing
four men inside.
Israel jets strike northern Gaza
Israeli aircraft have attacked the northern
Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants fired rockets into
Israel. The violence follows several days of relative calm
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli air force
said it was targeting a rocket-firing team. There is no
word on casualties. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
has condemned Israel's attacks on Palestinian civilians,
calling them inappropriate and disproportionate.
50,000 Palestinians mourn four
slain fighters in Bethlehem
Bethlehem – Ma'an – About 50,000 Palestinians
converged on Manger Square in the center of the
West Bank city of Bethlehem on Thursday for the
funeral of four Palestinian fighters who were
assassinated by undercover Israeli forces on
Wednesday night. Mourners carried the bodies
of the four men, Mohammad Shahada, Issa Marzouq,
Imad Al-Kamel, and Ahmad Bilboul on their shoulders
to the homes families of the dead to the central square,
and then into the adjacent Omar Bin Al Khattab mosque.
Violent arrest of cameraman
in Jaffa by Israeli police
A Palestinian citizen of Israel was filming another
Palestinian receive a parking ticket in Jaffa. The police
then focus on the cameraman, assaulting him and
arresting them both. The assault and arrest is
captured on film.
Police arrest rabbi for 'inciting
Palestinians' in East Jerusalem
Israel Police on Thursday arrested Arik Ascherman,
the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, for
"inciting Palestinians to oppose the police" in East
Jerusalem. Heated tensions between residents of the
Silwan village in East Jerusalem and the Israel Police
erupted over excavation works that have recently
began in the village. The excavations are being carried
out by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and are
sponsored by Elad association, which promotes the
"Judaization" of East Jerusalem.
Rightist rabbis call on Jews
to avenge yeshiva killings
A group of rabbis identified with the extreme right called
on Jews Wednesday to avenge their enemies "measure
for measure." An anti-Zionist rabbi, meanwhile, called
the massacre "divine punishment." Notices in the
Kiryat Moshe neighborhood, the location of the
Mercaz Harav yeshiva where a Palestinian gunman
shot to death eight students last week, said:
"Each and everyone is required to imagine what the
enemy is plotting to do to us, and to match it measure
for measure.
Israel arrests 12 Palestinians in West Bank
Israeli forces arrested 12 Palestinians in the West Bank,
Israeli radio reported on Thursday. The detentions
occurred in West Bank towns of Hebron, Ramallah
and Nablus and the detainees were taken to
interrogation facilities, the radio said, adding that
they were arrested because they were wanted
by Israel.
Barrage comes after West Bank killing
of Islamic Jihad figure
Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza fired more than a dozen
rockets at southern Israel Thursday after Israeli
undercover forces killed one of its West Bank leaders,
shattering a recent lull in Gaza fighting. The new
violence highlighted the fragility of efforts to move
Israel and Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers toward an
informal truce.
Two Kiryat Ata men arrested
for attacking Arab workers
Two Kiryat Ata residents were arrested on Thursday on
suspicion of attacking two Arab construction workers,
aged 20 and 25.
Wave of Demolitions in the West Bank
leave 75 people homeless
Occupation forces carried out a widespread demolition
operation across the West Bank. Communities in the
Jordan Valley were the hardest hit, although people
in the Qalqilya district were also affected.
Demonstration takes place on playground near
Qalqiliya, two days before it is due to be demolished
A large protest took place today in the West Bank
town of Azzoun against the planned demolition of
the children's playground in the town. 450 protesters
came from the local area, the village womens
development association and the Palestinian
Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC), who
celebrated their 25 year anniversary at the demonstration.
Abbas: Israel is conducting ethnic
cleansing in Jerusalem
Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel
on Thursday of carrying ethnic cleansing acts against
the Palestinian people in East Jerusalem by barring
them from building houses and isolating the city and
its residents from the rest of the occupied West Bank.
Fateh spokesperson slams the
Assassination of four fighters in Bethlehem
Fahmi Zaareer, spokesperson of Fateh movement,
slammed the assassination of four fighters on
Wednesday in the West Bank city of Bethlehem
and held the Israeli government responsible for any
further deterioration in the situation.
Ban: Israel must halt 'excessive force'
against Palestinians
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called
on Israel on Thursday to halt attacks using
"disproportionate and excessive force" against
Palestinians. "Israel's disproportionate and excessive
use of force has killed and injured many civilians
including children ... I condemn these actions and call
on Israel to cease such acts," Ban told an Islamic
summit in Senegal's capital Dakar.
Al Khader village near Bethlehem
holds it weekly anti-wall protest
Around 100 Palestinians from the village of Al Khader
located near the southern West Bank city of
Bethlehem, joined by Israeli and international peace
activists staged a protest on Friday midday against
the illegal Wall Israel is building on the village land.
The army attack Bil'in non-violent protest:
six injured, one kidnapped
Dozens of residents of Bilin, a village near Ramallah,
took to the streets on Friday in their weekly
demonstration protesting against the illegal
confiscation of village land through Israel's continued
expansion of the wall.
New U.S. Middle East envoy will
find peace initiative stalled
JERUSALEM — When President Bush kicked off
renewed Middle East peace talks last fall, he made
it clear that any lasting deal would depend upon the
ability of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make
daily life better.
At least 25 Qassam rockets fired into
Israel from Gaza since Wed.
At least 25 Qassam rockets were fired from the Gaza
Strip into Sderot and other Gaza-area communities
since Wednesday night, shattering a recent lull in Gaza
fighting and highlighting the fragility of efforts to move
Israel and Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers toward a truce.
Israel defence chief to skip
key peace plan meeting
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak will not attend the
first meeting called by a U.S. general to assess
implementation of a long-stalled peace "road map",
and will send a top aide instead, a spokeswoman said.
Shas chair demands that PM
unfreeze E. J'lem construction plan
Shas Chairman Eli Yishai has posed Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert with a demand to immediately unfreeze
the construction of the Kidmat Zion neighborhood in
East Jerusalem, near the Arab village of Abu Dis. The
Jewish neighborhood, not yet built, is planned to house
300 apartments.
Hezbollah becoming more visible in
West Bank after Mughniyah death
"Hezbollah is coming," mourners chanted at Thursday's
funeral of a Palestinian militant killed by Israel, his body
wrapped in the flag of the Lebanese-based guerrilla group.
A Hezbollah flag, along with Hamas banners, also adorned
the home of an Israeli Arab man who gunned down
students at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem last week,
killing eight. A shadowy group Palestinian security officials
say is a front for Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the rampage.
Chile to receive Palestinian refugees
Chile has agreed to receive 117 Palestine refugees from
Iraq who have spent months living in tents along the
desert border with Syria, the government reported
Thursday. The refugees — from 29 families who fled
violence in Iraq — will begin to arrive on April 6,
Deputy Interior Minister Felipe Harboe told a news
conference. He urged Chileans to support the refugees,
who will be settled in four municipalities in the center
of the country.
The PA's hollow protests, by Amira Hass
Senior Palestinian Authority officials can justifiably say
that settlement construction continues despite everyone's
protests and condemnations - not only theirs. Europe is
protesting, Peace Now is protesting, the United Nations
is protesting and even Condoleezza Rice protests
occasionally, not to mention Israel's literary elite.
The settlements continue to expand, along with the
number of roads closed to Palestinians.
Shifting Attitudes Towards Hamas
Since Hamas won the legislative elections in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories in January 2006,
the United States has attempted to isolate the
Islamist resistance movement in Gaza while propping
up the leadership of Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas and his defeated Fatah faction in
Ramallah in the hope of reversing the election result
and restoring Fatah to power. This fit the U.S.
strategy of fostering so-called "moderate" regimes in
the region, allied with the United States and dependent
on it to a greater or less extent, and confronting
indigenous forces such as Hamas in Palestine and
Hizballah in Lebanon, which the United States portrays
as being mere extensions of regional rival Iran.
Bay of Pigs in Gaza
One day in the fall of 2006, the U.S. consul general
in Jerusalem, Jake Walles, went to Ramallah to
meet with Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). As
diplomats do, he took with him a document known
as "talking points" - a prepared memo listing the
main elements of what he was going to tell the
Palestinian leader. For some reason, perhaps by accident,
Walles left the document behind when he left, with the
result that the American monthly Vanity Fair is able to
publish a first draft of a chapter in the history of the rise
of Hamas and its takeover of the Gaza Strip
. (The article can be accessed at www.vanityfair.com
under "The Gaza Bombshell" in the April 2008 issue.)
Food company, co-owner indicted
for trading with Gaza terrorists
An Israeli man indicted on Thursday for selling
food to Gaza militants. The Tel Aviv District
Court heard that Shalom Hatuka, 59, of Rishon
Letzion, and Shintraco Ltd., a food company he
co-owns, imported and delivered food supplies
to a Gaza company that had been declared a
terrorist organization.
Zionists' atrocity in Gaza is a sign of
their weakness: Rafsanjani
TEHRAN (IRNA) -- Expediency Council Chairman
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said here on Tuesday that
the latest Israeli atrocity in the occupied Palestine, the
Gaza Strip in particular, is an indication of the weakness
and vulnerability of the Zionist regime.
Islamic body wants Israelis tried for war crimes
The head of the world's biggest Muslim body,
the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC),
called on Thursday for Israelis to be tried by an
international war crimes court for "heinous" attacks
against Palestinians. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-
general of the 57-nation body -- the second largest
inter-governmental bloc after the United Nations --
told an OIC summit in Senegal that Israel was
repeatedly seeking to undermine
foreign-brokered peace plans.
Hebron photo pictorial
The 40 year anniversary of the IDF occupation of
Hebron could have passed by quietly if it wasn't for a
photo exhibition to be put on display in Tel Aviv.
Forbidden fruit
Every year, at exactly this time, in the brief month
between the last rains and the beginning of spring,
Samia and her girlfriends in the northern Galilee
village used to rent a minivan and leave in the
middle of the night for the uncultivated fields in
search of the young thistles of the aqub (gundelia).
Ten women crowded onto the benches of the special
taxi at 3 A.M., made their way to the fields in the
south, the north or in the direction of the territories,
following a tradition that began at the time of their
mothers' mothers and will end, they always assumed,
in eternity.
"One-State or Two-State?" -
A Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
In a review article a few years ago, Daniel Lazare argued
that an honest discussion of Zionism is no longer off limits.
Lazare wrote, "a longstanding taboo has finally begun to
fall. ... Where before it was all but impossible to have an
honest conversation about Zionism, it is now becoming
impossible not to" (The Nation, November 3, 2003).
This was perhaps a little too optimistic, or at least
overlooked the many occasions when a little opening
of the debate was blocked by a massive counter-attack.
US Consulate and PA Ministry of
culture open Art Exhibit in Ramallah
The US Consulate General in Jerusalem, and the
Palestinian Ministry of Culture in Ramallah opened a
week-long art exhibit at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural
Center in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Two-state Dreamers: If one state is impossible,
why is Olmert so afraid of it?
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world's
most intractable, much the same can be said of the
parallel debate about whether its resolution can best
be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples
living there or by a division of the land into two separate
states, one for Jews and the other for Palestinans. The
central argument of the two-staters is that the
one-state idea is impractical and therefore worthless of
consideration. Their rallying cry is that it is at least
possible to imagine a consensus emerging behind two
states, whereas Israelis will never accept a single
state. The one-state crowd are painted as inveterate
dreamers and time-wasters.
Jewish settlements and the question of peace
Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, paid her 13th visit to our region. The purpose of her
visit was and still is unclear, from what emerged so far,
her 13th apparently was not much different from the
previous twelve. In the early 1990's, whenever U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker arrived in Tel Aviv,
he was greeted in Israel by the announcement of
construction of a new Jewish settlement. Now it is
slightly different, every time the Secretary of State
leaves Tel Aviv, Israel announces the construction
of a new Jewish settlement, thus the difference
between Shamir and Olmert.
American activist and feminist Starhawk
denied entry and deported from Israel
Starhawk, author of many works celebrating the Goddess
movement and Earth-based, feminist spirituality arrived
in Tel Aviv Wednesday, 12 March. She was here to help
teach a permaculture course in the northern West Bank
as well as working with earth activists to develop a
project in the Bethlehem area.
A letter from a mother in Gaza
to a mother in Sderot
Will Israel honour a truce?
Top Israeli television commentators competed last
Friday night to justify reneging on positions they had
held until three days earlier when they had believed
that the only way of countering resistance
operations in the Gaza Strip was through the use of
violence. There is a consensus among Israeli
commentators that Israel can only wait for the worst
if Palestinians continue to fall victims to the fire of the
Israeli occupation. This consensus was reached after
a chain of operations conducted by Palestinian
resistance movements in the Gaza Strip and
Jerusalem and the popular outcry in the West Bank
following massacres Israel committed in the Gaza
Strip at the beginning of this month that resulted in
the deaths of 144 Palestinians with hundreds of
others injured.
A recipe for Israel's security
Time after time, Israel has failed to provide its
citizens with either actual security or even a sense
of security, whether inside or outside the country.
This is so despite the fact that it possesses all means
of military power and superiority including the
nuclear weapons making it the strongest regional
power in the Middle East. In fact, despite all its power,
Israel lives in a continuous security crisis. Despite its
power, Israel has been unable to prevent even
Palestinian children from picking up stones and
throwing them at Israeli tanks and forces. Faris Odeh,
a 13 year old Palestinian boy from Gaza, was doing just
that when he was killed by Israeli bullets in the autumn
of 2000. Moreover, despite Israel's continuous shelling
and bombardment of most of the iron workshops in
Gaza, home-made rockets still keep falling on the
Israeli town of Sderot. And, despite all the security
measures taken by Israel, Palestinian suicide bombers
have repeatedly entered Israeli areas and blown
themselves up on buses and in markets.
Al Jazeera 'surprised' at ban
Al Jazeera yesterday issued a statement expressing
surprise at the Israeli government's decision to
boycott the channel. "Al Jazeera wants to state
that we have not received any formal communication
from the Israeli government on this issue. We would
like to further state that Al Jazeera has always
endeavoured to cover the news in a fair and balanced
professional manner from its inception and we will
continue to report the news from across all parts of
the world in keeping with the highest journalistic
standards," a release issued by the network said.
Anti-War Protesters Chant
"War Criminal" at Rice
Chanting "war criminal," anti-war protesters waved
blood-colored hands at U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, but police held
them back as she left a Capitol Hill hearing room.
Earlier, Republicans had complained about the distraction
from the group as they held up signs saying "Condi Kills
Kids" during the hearing on the State Department budget.
But the chairman of the House of Representatives
committee, a New York Democrat, declined to eject
the protesters.
U.S. Troops Kill Iraqi Girl On Roadside
U.S. soldiers shot and killed a young Iraqi girl after
firing a warning shot at a woman who "appeared to
be signaling to someone" along a stretch of road where
several roadside bombs had recently been found, a
military official said early Thursday.
Iraq: teachers told to rewrite history
Britain's biggest teachers' union has accused the
Ministry of Defence of breaking the law over a lesson
plan drawn up to teach pupils about the Iraq war. The
National Union of Teachers claims it breaches the 1996
Education Act, which aims to ensure all political issues
are treated in a balanced way.
Robert Fisk: The cult of the suicide bomber
Few players in the 'war on terror' are more chilling,
or misunderstood, than suicide bombers. Yet the true
scale of their grisly activities has never been properly
calculated. Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Robert
Fisk details the shocking extent of the most widespread
campaign of self-liquidation in human history.
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