Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

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Israeli doctors ‘failing to report torture of Palestinian detainees’

5 November 2011

A report by two Israeli human rights organisations, the Public Committee Against Torture (PCAT) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), claims that medical staff are also failing to report suspicion of torture and ill-treatment, returning detainees to their interrogators and passing medical information to interrogators.

Abe Hayeem: Israel’s UNESCO fiasco

4 November 2011

Like thwarted spoiled bullies, both Israel and the US reacted with theatrical pique and fury. The US, never applying sanctions against Israel’s decades- long war crimes in Gaza and the OPT’s by suspending its steadfast cornucopia of billions in aid and arms, immediately withdrew its $80 million contribution to UNESCO as a collective punishment.

Moshé Machover: Israel’s fury explained

4 November 2011

Moshe Dayan: Fundamentally, a Palestinian state is an antithesis of the State of Israel… The basic and naked truth is that there is no fundamental difference between the relation of the Arabs of Nablus to Nablus and that of the Arabs of Jaffa to Jaffa… And if today we set out on this road and say that the Palestinians are entitled to their own state because they are natives of the same country and have the same rights, then it will not end with the West Bank. The West Bank together with the Gaza Strip do not amount to a state… The establishment of such a Palestinian state would lay a cornerstone to something else… Either the State of Israel — or a Palestinian state.

Gideon Levy: Israeli leaders’ price tag against the Palestinians

4 November 2011

A gang of thugs, the forum of eight senior [Israeli] ministers, decided on the steps to punish the man who dared to act contrary to the desires of the familia. They’re building another 2,000 housing units in the settlements, which are for the first time being characterized as punishment. And they’re stealing the Palestinians’ tax money and canceling some of their leaders’ VIP passes.

David Finkel: The UN and the future of Palestine

3 November 2011

The responsibility of the solidarity movement … is not to get caught up in wonkish or wishful “one-versus-two-state” disputations, but to do everything we can to advance the bottom-up struggle where we are. This is all the more important because, while gains can be won now to get the occupation’s foot a little bit off the Palestinians’ neck, no lasting solution seems possible in isolation from a broader democratic revolutionary transformation of the region.

Amira Hass: Palestinians must say no to negotiations with Israel

2 November 2011

Indeed, the Oslo Accords created false symmetry between the occupier/colonizer and the occupied/colonized. This symmetry denied the Palestinians an important asset in negotiations for their independence: recognition in principle of Israeli and international responsibility for having wronged the Palestinians and robbed them of their homeland and rights.

Zvi Barel: Israel’s ideal partners are in Gaza

2 November 2011

The beauty lies in the way Israel divides the conflict with the Palestinians into separate battlefields to avoid a comprehensive diplomatic solution… [T]he results of the January 2006 elections in the territories brought Hamas to power and gave Israel the excuse to deprive the PA of its representation. The two parts of the Palestinian state became independent entities and by their own doing fulfilled Israel’s desire to apply the principle of divide and rule.

US Jewish group appeals against placing ‘Jerusalem, Israel’ on passports

2 November 2011

Americans for Peace Now files amicus brief with US Supreme Court to oppose listing Israel as home country of Jerusalem-born Americans; US has never recognized any sovereignty over Jerusalem, be it Israel, Palestinian or Jordanian.

Noam Chomsky: America and Israel-Palestine

2 November 2011

Noam Chomsky delivers a rare lecture on the US and Israel-Palestine (video).

Yitzhak Laor: Israel’s blindness causing its decline

31 October 2011

The academic Orientalists experts who sold the defense establishment the Shi’ites, and Hamas thereafter, “in order to stop the PLO,” failed in their understanding of the simplest matter: Occupation gives birth to opposition; opposition gives birth to death; death leads to more conflict, etc.

Suspected right-wing extremists uproot 20 olive trees belonging to Jerusalem Arab family

27 October 2011

Twenty olive trees belonging to an Arab family in Jerusalem were uprooted on Thursday, and a sign saying “Price tag” was posted at the scene. The family, who lives near the grove in Beit Safafa, alerted the police who have launched an investigation.

Jonathan Cook: The Negev’s Hot Wind blowing

27 October 2011

Over the past 15 months the dusty plains of the northern Negev desert in Israel have been witness to a ritual of destruction, part of a police operation known as Hot Wind. On 29 occasions since June 2010, hundreds of Israeli paramilitary officers have made the pilgrimage over a dirt track near the city of Beersheva to the zinc sheds and hemp tents of al-‘Araqib. Within hours of their arrival, the 45 ramshackle structures — home to some 300 Bedouin villagers — are pulled down and al-‘Araqib is wiped off the map once again. All that remains to mark the area’s inhabitation by generations of the al-Turi tribe are the stone graves in the cemetery.

Jonathan Cook: ‘Hannibal’ policy – Israel’s plan to kill its own soldiers

27 October 2011

Israel has most explicitly devalued Arab life in the differentials it has been careful to maintain in the deaths and injuries its forces inflict and are prepared to sustain during conflict – Israel’s famous “deterrence”. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, nearly 6,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, compared with 506 Israeli fatalities. And Israel increased that imbalance more than tenfold during its attack on Gaza in winter 2008, when 1,400 Palestinians were killed as opposed to nine Israelis.

Israeli NGO: Elad group has ‘veto’ power over Jerusalem’s City of David

24 October 2011

Ir Amim, a nonprofit that seeks to make life in Jerusalem more equitable for Arab and Jewish residents, claims agreement is illegal and ostensibly privatizes one of Israel’s most important tourism and archaeological sites

APJP: The alternative plan for Al-Bustan (“King’s Garden” site), Jerusalem

24 October 2011

Both the City of David Archaeological Park and the proposed King’s Garden project, like all the Israeli settler’s neighbourhoods in annexed East Jerusalem and the West Bank, are illegal under international law and numerous UN Resolutions. Settlements constructed beyond the international border established in 1967 violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Mouin Rabbani: United States should step aside as Mideast broker

24 October 2011

Not all successful mediators are neutral, yet America’s seemingly limitless devotion to the colonizer against the colonized cries out for a counterweight. To the extent Washington succeeds in excluding other actors from the equation, it will increasingly be called to account by the region’s citizens.

Mouin Rabbani: Prisoner exchange levels Hamas, Fatah playing field

24 October 2011

News that Israel and Hamas had reached agreement on a prisoner exchange instantaneously displaced the PLO bid for full UN membership from the headlines in mid-October. Arguably, Hamas and Israel had a common interest in this regard. More importantly, the Palestinian Islamists, no longer relegated to the margins of the Palestinian UN initiative by the rival leadership in Ramallah, can now resume reconciliation talks from a position of relative equality.

John Bunzl: Reading Bibi Netanyahu

24 October 2011

Netanyahu’s UN speech includes a strange statement: “The settlements are a result of the conflict”. The blurring of cause and effect is a constant feature of dominant Israeli rhetoric… And when he says, correctly, that the conflict began before a single settlement was established in the West Bank, he implicitly refers to the fact that, all along, the conflict’ core was the clash between a settler movement (Zionism) and the original inhabitants.

Moshé Machover: Zionist ‘negotiating strategy’ sham

21 October 2011

For the Israeli leadership, the ‘peace process’ … is a perpetual ratchet mechanism for buying time, while colonisation of Palestinian lands is extended and expanded.

SJP organizes basis for national structure

21 October 2011

On a symbolic level, the national conference reads as a victory for Palestine solidarity work in the United States. Organizing a national structure will provide SJP chapters with resources that will enable students to continue to be effective in educating their campuses on Israel-Palestine, in spite of the forces that oppose them.

Chris Hedges: This one could take them all down

21 October 2011

What happens is in all of these movements … the foot soldiers of the elite — the blue uniformed police, the mechanisms of control — finally don’t want to impede the movement and at that point the power elite is left defenseless…

Oxfam: Settlers cost farmers over $500,000 this harvest

20 October 2011

Oxfam says over 2,500 olive trees were destroyed in September, and 7,500 this year. Since 1967, 800,000 olive trees have been uprooted resulting in a loss of around $55 million to the Palestinian economy, the international organization estimates.

Lia Tarachansky: Why was Shalit deal reached now?

20 October 2011

While hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and Gilad Shalit return home, hundreds others go into exile, and thousands remain jailed in Israel.

Bashir Abu-Manneh: A ‘Palestinian Spring’? Not Yet.

18 October 2011

What solidarity work is about is defending a democratic principle of self-government for an oppressed people, within the limits of international laws and universal norms. The right of self- determination basically means that ALL Palestinians (wherever they happen to reside) have a right to actively participate in shaping their political future.

Israeli soldiers should kill terrorists ‘in their beds’ following Shalit deal, former IDF rabbi says

17 October 2011

Former IDF Chief Rabbi: “When you arrive to arrest terrorists like the murderers of the Fogel family, they should just be shot, exterminated. They were terrorists that murdered people and should be killed in their beds.”

Hamas releases names of prisoners to be freed

13 October 2011

Some 203 prisoners from the West Bank will not return home: 40 will be exiled outside to other countries and the rest will be sent to Gaza, the official said.

Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike in third week

12 October 2011

Palestinian prisoners have entered their third week of hunger strike. After two weeks of hunger strike, physical symptoms become increasingly severe and prisoners’ lives and health are ever more at risk…As of October 9, 300 prisoners were participating in a complete open ended hunger strike and 3000 in a partial hunger strike. Additional prisoners have been joining the strike on a daily basis – on October 10 and 11, over 1500 prisoners at Nafha, Ramon, Eshel, Asqelan, and Gilboa prisons have joined in the open-ended strikes

Women’s Organization for Political Prisoners: Solidarity with Palestinians prisoners in the Israeli jails who went on a hunger strike

12 October 2011

On 9 October 2011, four women political prisoners have joined the open hunger strike…the prison authorities punished the women prisoners who joined the hunger strike and took many things from their cell, including television, radio, hot plate, kettle, notebooks, books, pens and all the food that was in the cell, including sugar and salt.

Picking Olives at al-Walaja: A Harvest of Resistance

12 October 2011

Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank struggle to harvest olives amid Israelis that steal their land and restrict their movement. Yet the inhabitants of al-Walaja villiage in Palestine continue to resist by carrying on the age-old tradition.

Jonathan Cook: The price of torching mosques

12 October 2011

With no hope of statehood, Palestinians will have to devise their own new strategy for coping with the reality of an apartheid system in which the Jewish settlers become their permanent neighbours. Trapped in a single state ruled over by their occupiers, Palestinians are likely to draw on the experience of their cousins inside Israel. Israel’s Arab community has been struggling with marginalisation and subordination within a Jewish state for decades. They have responded with a vocal campaign for equality that has antagonised the Jewish majority and resulted in a wave of anti-Arab legislation.

Hamas, Israel reach deal to exchange prisoners

11 October 2011

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said Israel will release 1,027 prisoners in two stages. Within a week, 450 will be swapped for Shalit and the rest will be freed two months later. Twenty-seven women are among those on the release roster.

Hamas prisoners slammed for ‘stalling’ over hunger strike

11 October 2011

The head of the Palestinian Detainees Center has criticized prisoners affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad for stalling on joining a hunger strike to protest Israel’s prison conditions…The prisoners’ rights group Addameer says Israel has detained over 650,000 Palestinians since it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, around 20 percent of the population.

Official: Israel demolishes mosque for third time

11 October 2011

From 2000 to 2007, the Civil Administration approved 5 percent of the applications for building permits submitted by Palestinians in Area C. The total number of building permits issued to Palestinians during these seven years was 91, an average of 13 building permits per annum, reports Bimkom, an Israeli organization for planning rights.

Daniel Machover and Raji Sourani: Changes to UK law didn’t protect Tzipi Livni

10 October 2011

Extensive evidence indicating Ms Livni’s individual criminal responsibility was presented to the DPP, and an effective dialogue was established with senior crown prosecutors that enabled relevant, admissible additional evidence to be supplied at their request. However, following the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s last-minute (apparently) retroactive attribution of diplomatic immunity to Ms Livni, on the basis of her visit constituting a “special mission”, the DPP issued a statement that he had been blocked from making any decision as to her arrest.

Minister: All 2011 USAID projects halted

8 October 2011

The PA, which exercises limited rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has often failed to pay its 150,000 employees on time and in full and remains reliant on foreign aid to fill a deficit projected at $900 million this year. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank say that financial problems threaten the state-building program overseen by Salam Fayyad, the prime minister in the West Bank.

Ameer Makhoul: A Palestinian political prisoner’s take on Israel’s protest movement

7 October 2011

The dynamics that guard these protests are that of a social movement. However, the content of the demonstrators’ demands should be subjected to a serious discussion and critique. One of the major contradictory aspects of this movement is the exclusive understanding of the value of social justice. Social justice is a universal value, but for the protesters in Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, it is limited only to the internal dynamics of Israeli society.