Wednesday, December 19

Today in Palestine! ~ Headlines December 19, 2007 ~

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Min. pushes new E. J'lem neighborhood for Jews
Housing Minister Ze'ev Boim has given the green light for planning a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. But senior American officials say that Israel had promised not to move forward with the neighborhood. The neighborhood, near Atarot, is slated to contain more than 10,000 apartments, making it the largest Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Earlier this month, however, the United States objected to a plan to build a mere 300 apartments in another East Jerusalem neighborhood, Har Homa, with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying it did not contribute to the peace process.

Israeli air attaks kill 13 Palestinian resistance members in occupied Gaza
Thousands of people took to the streets in funeral processions for the dead militants, whose bodies and coffins were draped with black Islamic Jihad flags.

IDF raids Hamas post in Gaza
IAF strikes Hamas operatives in southern Gaza following rocket barrage on western Negev; Palestinians report of two fatalities. 'Israel must be ready for militants' retaliation,' says Defense Minister Barak.

Israeli Prime Minister: Airstrikes on Gaza will continue

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, stated Tuesday that the Israeli airforce will continue dropping bombs on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinian militants continue to fire homemade shells across the border into Israel.

Israel's Olmert: 'There is a war in Gaza'

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it's becoming better known that there is a war going on in the Gaza Strip with Palestinian militants. Olmert made the remarks Tuesday night to fellow Kadima Party members at his home in Jerusalem in reference to near-daily rocket attacks from Palestinian areas on the western Negev region, Ynetnews.com reported.

Palestinians Vow to Avenge Killings

The raids came just hours after a conference in Paris attended by 90 countries pledged $7.4bn in aid over three years to the Palestinian Authority.

Barak tells U.S. envoy Israel is bracing for militants' retaliation
Barak mapped out Israel's security priorities, voicing hope that the IDF would continue its "successful operations" in the Gaza Strip.

Israel: A daily exercise in humiliation
Under the supervision of an Israeli soldier clutching an M-16 assault rifle, Qassem Saleh begins his daily disrobing.

Israeli army crimes 'unpunished'
An Israeli human rights group says the overwhelming majority of Israeli troops suspected of criminal offences against Palestinians are never indicted.

Israel forms new committee to consider 'family reunification' requests

Palestinians holding West Bank or Gaza ID cards who are married to or have family members inside Israel have long been prevented from living with their families. But a new committee formed by the Israeli Interior Ministry will look into 'humanitarian cases'.

Israel-OPT: Palestinian shepherds forced to move on

"The best thing about Khirbet Qassa was the grazing land. We had open spaces. Now we've become dependent on other people and their land," said Abdel Halim Nattah, a shepherd in the southern West Bank. Several weeks earlier he and all his fellow villagers, 37 families numbering 272 people, were evacuated by the Israeli military from Qassa and told to find a new home somewhere else.

So what have we done to them

An old Jewish joke tells of a devoted mother who briefs her son before he sets out to battle: "Kill a Turk and rest," she advises. But the son asks: "And what happens if in fact the Turk tries to kill me?" She opens her eyes wide in surprise: "Why would he want to kill you? What have you done to him?" This is exactly the kind of self-righteousness that accompanies our attitude toward the Palestinians. It is evident in the reports on the television, radio and in the newspapers - which paint only a partial picture of the conflict. Because when considerations of ratings and just plain cowardice determine coverage, the information the public gets is biased. In this way an extremist public opinion is created, which believes that all of the justice is on our side only, because "what have we done to them?"

Study: Hamas maintaining its popularity in Gaza
New poll indicates lack of confidence in recent peacemaking efforts keeps Palestinian public firmly on Hamas' side, despite deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Analysis: Making them pay a price

In March 2004, an IAF-fired missile hit the wheelchair Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was sitting on as he left a mosque in Gaza City following early morning prayers. Three weeks later, his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, was killed in similar fashion. Israel went into a defensive mode, preparing for a Kassam rocket and suicide-bomb onslaught, which never came. Instead, Hamas asked for a cease-fire.

Divided and ruled in Paris

The current strategy of international involvement in Palestine has just entered its most dangerous, most shocking and most sordid phase. Hallucinatory scenes of apocalyptic profligacy were unfolding in Paris yesterday as French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner grabbed a mike to badger member states to give yet more millions in aid to the suffering Palestinians. Meanwhile, Gaza is declared to be on the brink on an economic collapse of catastrophic proportions by the UN, the ICRC, the World Bank, and Oxfam.

LEBANON: Palestinian refugees still adamant they must return home
Palestinian and Israeli leaders may have agreed at the US-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis on 27 November to work towards a full peace deal by the end of next year, but in the tinderbox refugee camp of Ain Al-Hilweh in Lebanon the lives of 75,000 Palestinians are defined by an intractable issue at the heart of the conflict: the right of Palestinian refugees to return home. "No-one can negotiate on our right to return to Palestine. There is only one country called Palestine and we will never return there except by resistance to Israel," said Abu Yousef, a fighter with the radical Palestinian Islamist faction Ansar Allah.

Palestinian laborers in South have little choice but to brave Israeli cluster bombs

TYRE: Kamal Mohammad was pruning lemon trees last winter when his red electric saw detonated an unexploded cluster bomb, blasting shrapnel all over his body. After an operation to remove the metal shards from his chest, Mohammad, 44, a father from the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh in South Lebanon, went straight back to work cultivating fields and chopping wood for coal.

Israeli police are investigating three Israeli journalists who traveled to Lebanon and Syria

Israeli citizens require permission from the Interior Ministry to travel to an "enemy state." The journalists being probed by the National Serious and International Crimes Unit are travel writer Tzur Shizaf, who traveled to Lebanon; Ynet reporter Ron Ben-Yishai, who traveled to Syria; and freelance Canadian-Israeli reporter Lisa Goldman, who visited Lebanon twice and reported from there for Israel's Channel 10.

Palestinian spray-paints recipe on Israel's West Bank barrier as protest

For the rest of the recipe, turn over the wall, reads a felafel recipe spray-painted on Israel's imposing West Bank separation barrier Tuesday, in a lighthearted but serious protest against the hardships it causes Palestinians. A Dutch group collects money over the Internet for the project _ painting messages on the barrier Israel is building along the West Bank. The barrier, made up of concrete walls, barbed wire, trenches and electronic sensors, is meant to keep Palestinian suicide bombers and other attackers out of Israel, but Palestinians charge it juts into their land and cuts many people off from their fields and services.

Christians and Muslims Weep Together, A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
As Christmas approaches this year, the thoughts of Christians all over the world will once again turn to Bethlehem, the holy town where Jesus was born over two millennia ago. Voices will be raised in joyful celebration and children everywhere will re-create the Christmas story to help us remember the circumstances in which the Christ child was born.

Jerusalem's Latin Patriarch rejects Israel's Jewish identity

Israel's identity as a Jewish state discriminates against non-Jews, the Holy Land's top Roman Catholic clergyman said in a pre-Christmas address on Wednesday. "If there's a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against," Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah told reporters at the annual press conference he holds in Jerusalem before the Christian holiday.

Mideast Catholic leader says peace depends on Israel
The Catholic leader in the Holy Land said on Wednesday in a Christmas message that peace depended on Israel and rejected the idea of a religious state on land revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims. "To attain peace, it is necessary to believe that Israelis and Palestinians are equal in all things, that they have the same rights and the same duties," Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah said in Jerusalem.

Bethlehem Christmas cancelled: The Wall must fall


Palestine's universities: partners or prisoners?
At a workshop conducted at Birzeit University (BZU) on December 13 by AMIDEAST (American-MidEast Educational and Training Services) for Palestinian universities through its Faculty Development Program, the talk turned from the announced topic of the workshop (Palestinian-American University Partnerships) to the question of Palestinian-Palestinian university partnerships or the lack thereof. The occasion had brought together important representatives (at the level of Deans and VPs) from every Palestinian West Bank University. Gaza was unrepresented, however. In spite of the availability of video conferencing technology at BZU in the very room where the workshop took place, there was no video hook-up with any university in Gaza for reasons better known to AMIDEAST.

Gordon and Tzfadia: Privatising Zionism
The use of teenagers to evict Bedouins from their homes is not only a reflection of this insidious process of privatisation, but also the unrelenting corrosion of moral accountability.

Mustafa Barghouthi: Prerequisites for Peace

Palestinians participated in Annapolis in good faith. But we cannot simply abandon the rights of our people, including refugees.

Struggle for equality
In recent months a small group of Palestinian and Israeli academics, mainly in the diaspora, have prepared an intellectual bombshell to challenge the Palestinian leadership on the almost 40-year basic premise of an independent Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. The division over the question of one state or two states is now as dramatic as the Hamas-Fatah fighting of the last year, which split the armed resistance.

The Arab linguistic crisis

Arab students face greater linguistic challenges than Jews but enjoy fewer funds.

Just one state
On the weekend of 17-18 November, a conference took place in London that I hope and believe will prove a historic event. The reason is that it discussed the one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Organised by the SOAS Palestine Society and the London One State Group, it was held in the largest hall at SOAS, and was sold out in advance -- an indicator of the thirst for discussion of this vision. For me it was the most inspiring event on Palestine I have ever attended.

The end of Israel?
I am feeling optimistic about Palestine. I know it sounds crazy. How can I use "optimistic" and "Palestine" in the same sentence when conditions on the ground only seem to get worse? Israeli settlements continue to expand on a daily basis, the checkpoints and segregated road system are becoming more and more institutionalized, more than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners are being held in Israeli jails, Gaza is under heavy attack and the borders are entirely controlled by Israel, preventing people from getting their most basic human needs met.

Gov't official: No 'smoking gun' on Iran
Israel does not have "smoking gun" intelligence that will force an American reassessment of its National Intelligence Estimate that Iran halted its nuclear weapons plan in 2003, a government official told The Jerusalem Post Monday. The official's comments came as a delegation from Military Intelligence is in the US for meetings with American officials about Iran.


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