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U.S. chides Israel for curbing Palestinian security forces
The United States has complained to Israel that it is undercutting the ability of Palestinian forces to expand their security control of the West Bank before a U.S.-sponsored peace conference. Western officials said Washington was unhappy at Israel for seizing body armor belonging to the Palestinian Presidential Guard and conducting early-morning raids in the city of Nablus, despite the deployment of Palestinian forces there. The officials said Washington had asked the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Richard Jones, to deliver a complaint about the raids, which took place on Wednesday and earlier this week in the city's restive Balata refugee camp.
Israeli gunfire injures a Palestinian youth in Jenin
A Palestinian youth has been reportedly shot and wounded by the Israeli army in the Kufer Dan village, to the west of Jenin city in the West Bank, IMEMC sources reported.
Mezan Report: "Army Attacks Middle Gaza; Kills Four Palestinians and Injures Four The Israeli army has escalated its military operations in the Gaza Strip and killed four Palestinians, including a father and his son, and injured four others; including a child, since Sunday 4 November 2007.
Beit Omer village attacked by Israeli troops; 19 civilians kidnapped
Israeli forces on Thursday morning invaded the village of Beit Omer, located near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, kidnapping at least 19 civilians.
Hamas convenes Palestine parliament
Politicians from the Islamic group Hamas have convened a session of the Palestinian parliament for the first time since the group violently seized Gaza from the rival Fatah movement last June.
Hamas lawmakers recommend firing Palestinian PM from PLC
Lawmakers of Islamic Hamas movement recommended on Wednesday in a session held in Gaza to fire Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the caretaker government in the West Bank, from the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
Hamas accuses P.A Forces of arresting 15 supporters in one day
Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, issued a press release on Wednesday accusing Palestinian Security devices, loyal to Fateh movement, of arresting fifteen members and supporters on Hamas in the several West Bank areas on Tuesday.
Hamas to consider joining Annapolis summit if invited
An aide of deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haneya said on Wednesday that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) would consider joining an international conference on Mideast peace to be held Annapolis, the United States later this year, if the movement was invited.
FEATURE-Hamas preachers pushed out of West Bank mosques
The green bulletin board outside the Fatima az-Zahra mosque in Nablus was once plastered with notices. Now it stands tattered and empty. The board is a symbol of a Palestinian power struggle in the West Bank, where the long-dominant Fatah movement is cracking down on preachers linked to its Islamist rivals from Hamas -- clerics who until recently papered the mosque noticeboard with news of Hamas events and charities have been effectively purged.
Report: Palestinian agricultural losses since 2000 exceed $56 million
The Governor of Khan Younis, Usama al-Farra, released a report on Wednesday stating that Palestinian farmers have lost over $56 million due to Israeli attacks, closures and seizures of land since the current uprising began in 2000.
UNRWA chief: Blockade on Gaza is fueling support for extremists
The head of the U.N. agency responsible for aiding Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that Israel's near economic blockade of the Gaza Strip is fueling support for extremists and shattering hopes for a peaceful future. "They're trying to punish those who've taken control of Gaza but in fact they're punishing everybody inside Gaza, a very small percentage of whom support the people who are controlling Gaza right now," Karen Koning AbuZayd of the United Nations Works and Relief Agency said.
West Bankers get some medical care
After packing the ambulance with medical equipment and bags full of medicine, Dr. Jameel Mashny, Dr. Rami Habash and their nurse, Maysa Youseff, all from the Palestine Medical Relief Society (PMRS), prepare themselves for the long day ahead. If it is business as usual, it will be a day of organized chaos. Screaming children will hide behind their mothers, elderly men will complain that they do not like the taste of their medicine -- and a poor village will get desperately needed medical relief.
Court demands State explain how it will prevent Gaza crisis
The High Court has instructed the State Prosecution to explain within a week how planned cuts to the Gaza Strip's power supply will not a cause a humanitarian crisis to the residents of the coastal territory. The court decided to issue the instruction after justices reviewed petitions presented by several human rights organizations seeking to stop the government's plans to scale back the supply of fuel and electricity to the Strip.
Khudari: More than 1,000 patients in Gaza require urgent treatment abroad
MP Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular anti-sanctions committee, said that there are more than 1,000 Palestinian patients awaiting urgent treatment abroad but cannot because of the imposed siege on the Gaza Strip, which, he asserted, is contrary to all international norms and human rights, and called for the immediate opening of the Rafah border crossing before the situation in Gaza explodes.
European municipalities to launch a media campaign to protest Gaza siege
A number of European municipalities are set to launch a media campaign to protest the siege being imposed on the Gaza Strip, in a time the siege has endangered all facets of the population's life.
Nothing less than our freedom
For the people of our small village of Bil'in, which lies west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the planned negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Annapolis, Maryland evoke mixed feelings. Like all Palestinians, we pray that our children will not spend their lives as we did, under Israeli military occupation.
Israeli municipality of Jerusalem provides seats in its schools for 33 Palestinian students
In the wake of a petition submitted by the lawyer Tali Ner, of the Israeli Association of Citizen's Rights, to the administrative court in Jerusalem on Wednesday, 33 student residents of East Jerusalem, who the municipality had previously refused to provide school places for, will be admitted to the school system.
Gaza's hard place between Israeli and Palestinian violence
Since the Hamas-led government seized control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, severe Israeli pressure has been imposed on the coastal region's 1.4-million-strong population. Gaza has been sustaining the effects of such pressure at the same time as it has been absorbing the impact of the seemingly unending inter-Palestinian violence, which has claimed the lives of at least 400 Palestinians and continues to disrupt everyday life inthe already impoverished society. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari writes from Gaza.
Lieberman tells Barak to outlaw major Arab leadership council
Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman demanded Wednesday that Defense Minister Ehud Barak outlaw the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, the senior leadership body of Israel's Arab citizens.
Israel reports jump in Jerusalem Arabs seeking Israeli citizenship
The number of East Jerusalem residents seeking Israeli citizenship has risen sharply in recent months, an Israeli official said Wednesday, as talk of a possible re-division of the city gains momentum. The Interior Ministry has received hundreds of applications for citizenship from Arab residents of East Jerusalem over the past few months, instead of the average of several dozen, said ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad.
Public poll: Olmert most corrupt member of government
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was judged the most corrupt member of government by the public for the second year in a row according to the Sderot Conference, an annual gathering of experts which published its yearly report Wednesday.
James Petras: Deadly Embrace: Zion-power and War (Part I)
James Petras: Deadly Embrace: Zion-power and War (Part II)
Arab rappers vs. national service
National service will take me backwards, put me on the bulldozer,' sing Israeli-Arab rappers in protest song.
Congress and the Israel Lobby, The Politics of Servility
Shakespeare's Caesar caustically commented, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once." Curious how our lawmakers huddle behind their sophistries, their voice votes, their parliamentary play acting to avoid the daring feat that would force them to confront the moral consequences of their obsequious pandering to the lobbyists who pad their pin striped suits with the means to stay in office, all the while selling their souls to their executioners. Every day they die another death; every day a new resurrection to fulfill their obligation to their puppeteers. How different from their forebears who understood the valiant feast on liberty, even in the face of death: "Americans! Liberty or Death" rang through the hills of Massachusetts and all the colonies as the Revolution loomed, a fervor marked by foreigners because they could see the Americans really meant it. But how can our representatives be free if they are at the mercy of a foreign lobby? (David Fisher, Liberty and Freedom, Oxford University Press, 2005).
Israel: perpetual criminal, perpetual liar
Just as the Nazis sought to concoct "reasons" to justify their criminality, the Zionist state of Israel and its fanatical supporters are doing the same thing to justify the slow-motion genocide the Jewish state is carrying out against the Gaza Strip's 1.4 million inhabitants. Israeli spokespersons and apologists, especially in North America, where Zionist Jews control the bulk of the mass media, routinely claim that Israel has no moral or legal obligation to feed and cater for the blockaded Gazans.
Hamas and al-Qaida: The Prospects for Radicalization in the Palestinian Occupied Territories
"The rise of the Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas — in the Palestinian Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza provided a challenge for Israel and the West. Israel, the United States and the European Union have responded to this challenge by failing to differentiate Hamas from other and more radical Islamist movements and networks. That policy, which includes economic and political sanctions, now threatens to radicalize Palestinian society, pushing supporters of Hamas into the arms of al-Qaida and other salafist organizations. What are the prospects that — should the Hamas political program fail as a result of these sanctions — the Palestinian population will turn to more radical Islamist groups?....."
Higher Arab Monitoring Committee tells gov't to dismiss Lieberman
The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee asked the government on Thursday to dismiss Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman over his demand to outlaw the senior Israeli Arab leadership council, Israel Radio reported.
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