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Israel plans new town on seized land
Israel defied international pressure to freeze construction of new Jewish homes in the occupied territories when it said yesterday that it was planning to build a dormitory town on the northern edge of Jerusalem.
Housing Minister backtracks, says no new E. J'lem housing plan
In an about-face from a day earlier, Israel's housing minister on Thursday said he never intended to pursue a massive construction plan for East Jerusalem, a plan that sparked Palestinian outrage and a chilly reception from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Palestinian refugees from Iraq stranded in desert camp
CAIRO, Egypt —Hundreds of Palestinian refugees who've been forced out of their homes in Iraq are stranded in a remote stretch of the Syrian desert, where they're living in tents that offer little shelter against blinding sandstorms and the biting cold of winter nights, according to humanitarian aid workers and refugees. Syrian authorities have barred the Palestinians from leaving the Tanaf refugee camp near the border with Iraq. Journalists aren't allowed to visit.
Palestinian child dies due to the Israeli siege on Gaza
Palestinian medical sources reported on Thursday that a Palestinian child died on Wednesday night because of the Israeli army siege on the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian Patient dies due to the Israeli siege on Gaza
Palestinian teen died on Wednesday due to the Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza strip reported.
43 Palestinian patients died so far as a result of the siege on Gaza
Two sick teen-age girls died on Wednesday, the first day of Eid, in Gaza after being barred from seeking medical treatment abroad by the Israeli occupation. Palestinian medical sources on Wednesday morning announced the death of Dua Imran, 18 years, after suffering from a chronic disease and being barred from seeking medical treatment abroad because of the hermetic siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, 15-year-old Rawan Nassar, who suffered kidney failure, died on Wednesday evening, according to medical sources in the Gaza Strip.
Sick Gazans beg for treatment on Israel's doorstep
Mustafa Hillu writhes underneath blankets, the pain pulsing outward from the cancer in his right leg, and he cries out for someone to persuade Israel to let him in for treatment. If the 36-year-old father of five is not granted entry soon doctors will have to amputate his leg at the groin to prevent the cancer in his femur from spreading, according to his family and an Israeli rights group. "The security services said they would not let him pass for security reasons. But he can't even walk. He has cancer... we have to carry him to the bathroom," his brother Marwan says. Mustafa clutches an official security permit that should allow him to have a femur transplant at an Israeli hospital, and he also has documents from a hospital in Tel Aviv confirming that he had an appointment on December 9. But like dozens of seriously ill Palestinians he is confined to the Gaza Strip, itself a sick and mangled limb of the decades-old Middle East conflict.
Collision course
From his home on the Upper Galilee road between Safed and Rosh Pina, as Brigadier General (res.) Zvika Fogel looks out over Lake Kinneret, the Gaza Strip seems a distant memory. But four years after Fogel retired from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Gaza continues to preoccupy him. He became chief of staff of Southern Command headquarters in February 2000, and in the past few years he has reflected a great deal on the actions he and his fellow officers carried out in the months that preceded the eruption of the second intifada, at the end of September 2000. His conclusion: the IDF created an irreversible situation that led to a confrontation with the Palestinians.
Israeli procedures on Huwara checkpoint disturb Muslim Eid holiday
At the end of the first day of the Muslim festival Eid of Al Adha, scores of Palestinian families were stuck at the Huwara checkpoint, south of Nablus on Wednesday night, waiting for the Israeli soldiers' permission to pass the checkpoint, after returning back from visiting their relatives.
Catholic leader: Israel discriminates against non-Jews
A top clergyman in the Catholic church challenged Israel's self-definition as a 'Jewish state', saying that it discriminates against non-Jews. Arab lawmakers inside Israel have long pointed to nineteen specific laws that favor Israeli Jews over Israeli non-Jews inside Israel. In addition, the Israeli military has maintained a military occupation over the two Palestinian territories, the West bank and the Gaza Strip, since 1967. Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, a Palestinian himself, made the statement in Jerusalem Wednesday during a pre-Christmas press conference. Sabbah stated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been perpetuated by Israel's "unwillingness to make peace". He added that all religions should be allowed to share the Holy Land. ''If there's a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against,'' said Sabbah.
Sanctions, military strikes rob Gaza of festival cheer
GAZA CITY: As Muslims across the world celebrated Eid al-Adha yesterday with the ritual slaughter of animals, charity, and joyous feasting, the weary residents of the Gaza Strip brace for more sacrifices. Six months after the Islamist movement Hamas seized power, the territory remains in the grip of Israeli and international sanctions, battered by near-daily military strikes aimed at Palestinian militants. "The Islamic world celebrates Eid al-Adha with joy and happiness, with family visits and travel... but we in Palestine celebrate the Eid with martyrs and blood," Hamas leader Ismail Haniya told a crowd of thousands yesterday. On Tuesday, 12 militants were killed across Gaza in a wave of Israeli air strikes, including a top leader of Islamic Jihad.
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.
Report: Israel continue to conduct human rights violations against Palestinians
The Adalah Human rights group that is based in Israel has recently issued a report presenting a selection of the cases it has worked on during the year in which it challenged some of Israel's most blatant violations of human rights against the Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
Politicising Gaza's Misery
Intense debate over Gaza is subsiding as the status quo is delineated -- predictably -- by those with the bigger guns. But to what extent can human suffering be politicised, turned into an intellectual polemic that fails to affect the simplest change in people's lives? Hamas's political advent in January 2006 as the first "opposition" movement in the Arab world to ascend to power using peaceful and democratic means was successfully thwarted in a brazen coup, engineered jointly by the United States, Israel and renegade Palestinians factionalists. Following this, history was rewritten, as is usual, by the victor. Thus Hamas, a party embodying democratic institutions in the occupied territories, became the party that "overthrew" Abbas's "legitimate" democracy. As strange a notion as that is (a government overthrowing itself), it went down in the annals of Western media as uncontested truth.
Hamas calls for truce with Israel
On Islam's most important holiday, the leader of Gaza's Hamas government appealed Wednesday for a cease-fire with Israel and said his people — battered by Israeli military strikes and international sanctions — are greeting this year's feast with "tears in our eyes."
Hamas offer for peace rejected by Israel
The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who just hours earlier declared "war on Gaza", refused to acknowledge an offer for peace made by the deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya. Haniyya conveyed the message through the Israeli media, claiming that he had both the will and ability to stop the Palestinian resistance groups from firing homemade shells across the Gaza border into Israel, but only if Israeli forces would stop their daily bombing of the Gaza Strip, and end the blockade that has kept the Palestinian population of Gaza imprisoned there since June. Sleman al-Shafhe, he reporter who conveyed the offer through Israel's Channel Two television, said that Haniyya told him he would have "no problem" with negotiating the terms of a truce with Israel. Hamas attempted a truce last year, and was able to get all Palestinian resistance factions to stop their...
Israel says it opposes Russian plans for Moscow peace summit
Using diplomatic backchannels, Israel urged participants of the Quartet's Paris donors conference earlier this week to omit any mention of a Moscow peace summit from the final statement.
ANALYSIS-Aid can't save Palestinian economy in Israeli grip
The world has promised to inject $7.4 billion into the decaying Palestinian economy, but money cannot stop the rot unless Israel lifts its chokehold on trade and travel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, relief groups say. The idea is to show Palestinians that a new peace effort brokered by Washington can improve their lives and reinforce a U.S. policy of strengthening "moderates" against "extremists".
Inside Gaza: The Challenge of Clans and Families
Gaza/Jerusalem/Brussels, 20 December 2007: As Hamas seeks to consolidate its rule and restore stability to Gaza, it must deal with powerful clans and families with which it has been at loggerheads since its June 2007 seizure of power.
For Israel's Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion
KARMIEL, Israel -- Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel, met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other modern grace notes. But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet, a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the town's admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of "social incompatibility."
(See also video here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/11/21/VI2007112101842.html )
Palestinian Census Back on Again
The Palestinian census, called off in Gaza last month, is back on track after assurances from international agencies, Hamas officials said Tuesday. Hamas initially agreed to cooperate with the census, the first in a decade, in parallel with a count by President Mahmoud Abbas' rival government in the West Bank. But after accusing the surveyors of violating an agreement to share the data, Hamas officials shut down the Gaza census office.
Adalah center says it may seek supranational regime in 'all historic Palestine'
The Arab minority rights center, Adalah, is considering a proposal calling for a "democratic constitution for a supranational regime in all of historic Palestine," including the territory of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This constitutes a shift from the proposed Democratic Constitution that Adalah offered as a constitution for Israel.
Banksy's Bethlehem mural erased by residents
Offended Bethlehem residents have painted over a satirical mural by graffiti artist Banksy that was meant to highlight their plight. The elusive British street artist painted six images around the town revered as the birthplace of Jesus to help drum up tourism ahead of Christmas and to illustrate the hardships faced by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. But the irony behind a painting of an Israeli soldier checking a donkey's identity papers -- a jab at the Jewish state's strict security measures -- was lost on some locals, who found it offensive and painted over it.
EU envoy: Gaza int'l force may be set up quickly
The mechanism for an international security presence in the Gaza Strip "could be devised quickly" if Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement on the matter, EU Middle East envoy Marc Otte told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. Otte said there is "definitely more interest than in the past" for the idea from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
Experts: Extreme rightists will use violence if settlements are evacuated
Extreme right-wing activists are expected to use severe violence to disrupt any move to evacuate outposts or settlements, even the destruction of a few homes, according to an evaluation recently presented to the government by the security establishment and law enforcement officials in the territories.
U.S.: We support Israel's right to defend itself against Qassams
The United States backs Israel's right to defend itself, but said incursions into Gaza could spark severe consequences, a senior U.S . official said Wednesday. Deputy spokesman at the U.S. State Department Tom Casey responded to a question about Israel's recent military operation in the Gaza Strip, during which 11 Palestinian militants were killed.
Israel defied international pressure to freeze construction of new Jewish homes in the occupied territories when it said yesterday that it was planning to build a dormitory town on the northern edge of Jerusalem.
Housing Minister backtracks, says no new E. J'lem housing plan
In an about-face from a day earlier, Israel's housing minister on Thursday said he never intended to pursue a massive construction plan for East Jerusalem, a plan that sparked Palestinian outrage and a chilly reception from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Palestinian refugees from Iraq stranded in desert camp
CAIRO, Egypt —Hundreds of Palestinian refugees who've been forced out of their homes in Iraq are stranded in a remote stretch of the Syrian desert, where they're living in tents that offer little shelter against blinding sandstorms and the biting cold of winter nights, according to humanitarian aid workers and refugees. Syrian authorities have barred the Palestinians from leaving the Tanaf refugee camp near the border with Iraq. Journalists aren't allowed to visit.
Palestinian child dies due to the Israeli siege on Gaza
Palestinian medical sources reported on Thursday that a Palestinian child died on Wednesday night because of the Israeli army siege on the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian Patient dies due to the Israeli siege on Gaza
Palestinian teen died on Wednesday due to the Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza strip reported.
43 Palestinian patients died so far as a result of the siege on Gaza
Two sick teen-age girls died on Wednesday, the first day of Eid, in Gaza after being barred from seeking medical treatment abroad by the Israeli occupation. Palestinian medical sources on Wednesday morning announced the death of Dua Imran, 18 years, after suffering from a chronic disease and being barred from seeking medical treatment abroad because of the hermetic siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, 15-year-old Rawan Nassar, who suffered kidney failure, died on Wednesday evening, according to medical sources in the Gaza Strip.
Sick Gazans beg for treatment on Israel's doorstep
Mustafa Hillu writhes underneath blankets, the pain pulsing outward from the cancer in his right leg, and he cries out for someone to persuade Israel to let him in for treatment. If the 36-year-old father of five is not granted entry soon doctors will have to amputate his leg at the groin to prevent the cancer in his femur from spreading, according to his family and an Israeli rights group. "The security services said they would not let him pass for security reasons. But he can't even walk. He has cancer... we have to carry him to the bathroom," his brother Marwan says. Mustafa clutches an official security permit that should allow him to have a femur transplant at an Israeli hospital, and he also has documents from a hospital in Tel Aviv confirming that he had an appointment on December 9. But like dozens of seriously ill Palestinians he is confined to the Gaza Strip, itself a sick and mangled limb of the decades-old Middle East conflict.
Collision course
From his home on the Upper Galilee road between Safed and Rosh Pina, as Brigadier General (res.) Zvika Fogel looks out over Lake Kinneret, the Gaza Strip seems a distant memory. But four years after Fogel retired from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Gaza continues to preoccupy him. He became chief of staff of Southern Command headquarters in February 2000, and in the past few years he has reflected a great deal on the actions he and his fellow officers carried out in the months that preceded the eruption of the second intifada, at the end of September 2000. His conclusion: the IDF created an irreversible situation that led to a confrontation with the Palestinians.
Israeli procedures on Huwara checkpoint disturb Muslim Eid holiday
At the end of the first day of the Muslim festival Eid of Al Adha, scores of Palestinian families were stuck at the Huwara checkpoint, south of Nablus on Wednesday night, waiting for the Israeli soldiers' permission to pass the checkpoint, after returning back from visiting their relatives.
Catholic leader: Israel discriminates against non-Jews
A top clergyman in the Catholic church challenged Israel's self-definition as a 'Jewish state', saying that it discriminates against non-Jews. Arab lawmakers inside Israel have long pointed to nineteen specific laws that favor Israeli Jews over Israeli non-Jews inside Israel. In addition, the Israeli military has maintained a military occupation over the two Palestinian territories, the West bank and the Gaza Strip, since 1967. Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, a Palestinian himself, made the statement in Jerusalem Wednesday during a pre-Christmas press conference. Sabbah stated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been perpetuated by Israel's "unwillingness to make peace". He added that all religions should be allowed to share the Holy Land. ''If there's a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against,'' said Sabbah.
Sanctions, military strikes rob Gaza of festival cheer
GAZA CITY: As Muslims across the world celebrated Eid al-Adha yesterday with the ritual slaughter of animals, charity, and joyous feasting, the weary residents of the Gaza Strip brace for more sacrifices. Six months after the Islamist movement Hamas seized power, the territory remains in the grip of Israeli and international sanctions, battered by near-daily military strikes aimed at Palestinian militants. "The Islamic world celebrates Eid al-Adha with joy and happiness, with family visits and travel... but we in Palestine celebrate the Eid with martyrs and blood," Hamas leader Ismail Haniya told a crowd of thousands yesterday. On Tuesday, 12 militants were killed across Gaza in a wave of Israeli air strikes, including a top leader of Islamic Jihad.
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.
Report: Israel continue to conduct human rights violations against Palestinians
The Adalah Human rights group that is based in Israel has recently issued a report presenting a selection of the cases it has worked on during the year in which it challenged some of Israel's most blatant violations of human rights against the Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
Politicising Gaza's Misery
Intense debate over Gaza is subsiding as the status quo is delineated -- predictably -- by those with the bigger guns. But to what extent can human suffering be politicised, turned into an intellectual polemic that fails to affect the simplest change in people's lives? Hamas's political advent in January 2006 as the first "opposition" movement in the Arab world to ascend to power using peaceful and democratic means was successfully thwarted in a brazen coup, engineered jointly by the United States, Israel and renegade Palestinians factionalists. Following this, history was rewritten, as is usual, by the victor. Thus Hamas, a party embodying democratic institutions in the occupied territories, became the party that "overthrew" Abbas's "legitimate" democracy. As strange a notion as that is (a government overthrowing itself), it went down in the annals of Western media as uncontested truth.
Hamas calls for truce with Israel
On Islam's most important holiday, the leader of Gaza's Hamas government appealed Wednesday for a cease-fire with Israel and said his people — battered by Israeli military strikes and international sanctions — are greeting this year's feast with "tears in our eyes."
Hamas offer for peace rejected by Israel
The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who just hours earlier declared "war on Gaza", refused to acknowledge an offer for peace made by the deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya. Haniyya conveyed the message through the Israeli media, claiming that he had both the will and ability to stop the Palestinian resistance groups from firing homemade shells across the Gaza border into Israel, but only if Israeli forces would stop their daily bombing of the Gaza Strip, and end the blockade that has kept the Palestinian population of Gaza imprisoned there since June. Sleman al-Shafhe, he reporter who conveyed the offer through Israel's Channel Two television, said that Haniyya told him he would have "no problem" with negotiating the terms of a truce with Israel. Hamas attempted a truce last year, and was able to get all Palestinian resistance factions to stop their...
Israel says it opposes Russian plans for Moscow peace summit
Using diplomatic backchannels, Israel urged participants of the Quartet's Paris donors conference earlier this week to omit any mention of a Moscow peace summit from the final statement.
ANALYSIS-Aid can't save Palestinian economy in Israeli grip
The world has promised to inject $7.4 billion into the decaying Palestinian economy, but money cannot stop the rot unless Israel lifts its chokehold on trade and travel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, relief groups say. The idea is to show Palestinians that a new peace effort brokered by Washington can improve their lives and reinforce a U.S. policy of strengthening "moderates" against "extremists".
Inside Gaza: The Challenge of Clans and Families
Gaza/Jerusalem/Brussels, 20 December 2007: As Hamas seeks to consolidate its rule and restore stability to Gaza, it must deal with powerful clans and families with which it has been at loggerheads since its June 2007 seizure of power.
For Israel's Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion
KARMIEL, Israel -- Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel, met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other modern grace notes. But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet, a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the town's admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of "social incompatibility."
(See also video here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/11/21/VI2007112101842.html )
Palestinian Census Back on Again
The Palestinian census, called off in Gaza last month, is back on track after assurances from international agencies, Hamas officials said Tuesday. Hamas initially agreed to cooperate with the census, the first in a decade, in parallel with a count by President Mahmoud Abbas' rival government in the West Bank. But after accusing the surveyors of violating an agreement to share the data, Hamas officials shut down the Gaza census office.
Adalah center says it may seek supranational regime in 'all historic Palestine'
The Arab minority rights center, Adalah, is considering a proposal calling for a "democratic constitution for a supranational regime in all of historic Palestine," including the territory of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This constitutes a shift from the proposed Democratic Constitution that Adalah offered as a constitution for Israel.
Banksy's Bethlehem mural erased by residents
Offended Bethlehem residents have painted over a satirical mural by graffiti artist Banksy that was meant to highlight their plight. The elusive British street artist painted six images around the town revered as the birthplace of Jesus to help drum up tourism ahead of Christmas and to illustrate the hardships faced by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. But the irony behind a painting of an Israeli soldier checking a donkey's identity papers -- a jab at the Jewish state's strict security measures -- was lost on some locals, who found it offensive and painted over it.
EU envoy: Gaza int'l force may be set up quickly
The mechanism for an international security presence in the Gaza Strip "could be devised quickly" if Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement on the matter, EU Middle East envoy Marc Otte told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. Otte said there is "definitely more interest than in the past" for the idea from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
Experts: Extreme rightists will use violence if settlements are evacuated
Extreme right-wing activists are expected to use severe violence to disrupt any move to evacuate outposts or settlements, even the destruction of a few homes, according to an evaluation recently presented to the government by the security establishment and law enforcement officials in the territories.
U.S.: We support Israel's right to defend itself against Qassams
The United States backs Israel's right to defend itself, but said incursions into Gaza could spark severe consequences, a senior U.S . official said Wednesday. Deputy spokesman at the U.S. State Department Tom Casey responded to a question about Israel's recent military operation in the Gaza Strip, during which 11 Palestinian militants were killed.
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