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20 November, 2009

Bantustans And The Unilateral Declaration Of
Statehood

By Virginia Tilley

The Ramallah PA's suddenly serious initiative to declare an independent Palestinian state in non-sovereign territory must surely force fresh collective realization that this is a terribly pragmatic question. It's time to bring closer attention to what "Bantustan" actually means. The Palestinian national movement can only hope someone in its ranks undertakes that project as seriously as Israel has undertaken it before it's too late

19 November, 2009

One Year Later…And The Doors To The World’s
Largest Prison Are Still Sealed Shut

By Pam Rasmussen

It’s time to show Israel that the world will no longer accept this wanton and cruel suffocation of human potential. Visit www.gazafreedommarch.org to find out how you can help, either actively on the ground in Gaza or here at home

17 November, 2009

The Latest Palestinian Strategy –
Clever Or Stupid Or Both?

By Alan Hart

There is a case for saying that those leaders of the discredited PNA (Palestine National Authority) who are proposing to unilaterally declare an independent state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and seek to get UN Security Council backing for it are being clever

Arab Teens Need ‘Protecting From Israeli Justice’
By Jonathan Cook

An Israeli judge made an historic ruling last week when he decided that an Arab teenager needed “protection” from the justice system and ordered that he not be convicted despite being found guilty of throwing stones at a police car during a protest against Israel’s attack last winter on Gaza

13 November, 2009

The Disastrous Presidency Of Mahmoud Abbas
By Rannie Amiri

Though it appears doubtful the quisling Abbas will actually resign, its mere suggestion should still be cause for celebration among Palestinians. Even if it ultimately does not come to pass – at least for now – let them rejoice

Edward Said And Barak Obama
By Prof. Haidar Eid

An Open letter from a Palestinian Resident of Gaza to the President of the United States of America, Mr. Barak Hussein Obama

11 November, 2009

Israeli Jews And The One-State Solution
By Ali Abunimah

Does solid Israeli Jewish opposition to a one-state solution mean that a peaceful one-state outcome is so unlikely that Palestinians should not pursue it, and should instead focus only on "pragmatic" solutions that would be less fiercely resisted by Israeli Jews?

10 November, 2009

How Israel Won The Settlement Battle Again
By Ramzy Baroud

When British Foreign Secretary David Miliband uttered a few words regarding the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, many wanted to believe that London was taking a sharp stance against Israel’s continued violations of international law. Alas, they were wrong

09 November, 2009

A Line In The Sand
By Uri Avnery

Mahmoud Abbdas is fed up. The day before yesterday he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in the Palestinian Authority. He feels betrayed. And the traitor is Barack Obama

07 November, 2009

U.N. Affirms Israeli-Hamas Goldstone Report
By Thalif Deen

The Goldstone report, which was favourably voted by the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, received overwhelming support Thursday in the 192-member General Assembly. The vote was 114 in favour and 18 against, with 44 abstentions

Goldstone And Gaza
By Jimmy Carter

Without ascribing blame to either of the disputing parties, it is imperative that the United States and the international community take steps to assure that the rebuilding of Gaza be commenced, and without delay. The cries of homeless and freezing people demand relief

Why I Am Not A Zionist
By Kevin Coval

I am a Jewish person who stands with Palestinian people relegated to second-class citizenship and Israeli soldiers who refuse to enact racist militarism. I am not a nationalist; therefore I am not a Zionist. I am against the oppression of any person and people. I am not a builder of walls. I believe in equity and democratic practice, therefore I am not pro-Israel. I am an advocate for truth, justice and reconciliation. I believe in this. I believe in this now. I believe in the work ahead

04 November, 2009

Israel's Right To Exist?
By Alan Hart

The truth of the time was that the Zionist state, which came into being mainly as a consequence of pre-planned ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist UNLESS … Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved

30 October, 2009

Harvesting In Death Zone, With A Song
By Eva Bartlett

Harvesting is a political act at the Gaza border with Israel

27 October, 2009

Israel Rations Palestinians To Trickle Of Water
By Amnesty International

Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies

Palestinian Election: Weapon Against The People
By Dr. Elias Akleh

Palestinian election under the Israeli occupation is a big joke. It is meant to give the illusion of Palestinian freedom and autonomy, and to keep the people busy with something other than their legitimate resistance to the occupation. Palestinians can regain their country and assert their rights only by resisting the Israeli occupation and not by fake elections

25 October, 2009

What's At Stake In The Deal For Gilad Shalit
By Jonathan Ben Efrat

Instead of discussing the price of Shalit’s release, we should be discussing the price of a peace agreement. Whoever is willing to dismantle the settlements, to give back the occupied territories up to the Green Line (the pre-1967 border), to come up with a fair solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees and to enable, finally, the establishment of a viable Palestinian state will ensure that there'll be no more Gilad Shalits. But as long as Israel refuses to do what everyone knows it must, the next kidnapping is merely a question of time

21 October, 2009

Israeli Police Don Arab Disguise
By Jonathan Cook

Civil rights groups in Israel have expressed outrage at the announcement last week that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel’s Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs

The First Step: Israel Into The Dock
By Dr. Alan Sabrosky

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution based on the Goldstone Report is a damning condemnation of Israel. The original meaning of being "caught red-handed" was literally being "caught bloody-handed," with the victim's blood on one's own hands. In Gaza, Israel has been caught red-handed in that literal sense, and for the first time in its history, is approaching the dock in the international court of opinion and, hopefully, of justice as well

19 October, 2009

Family Who Lost 29 Members In Gaza War
By Amira Hass

Richard Goldstone visited the Gaza City neighborhood of Zaytoun in late June to tour the compound of the extended Samouni family. Twenty-nine members of the family, all of them civilians, were killed in the Israel Defense Force's winter assault - 21 during the shelling of a house where IDF soldiers had gathered some 100 members of the family a day earlier

Challenging The Dahiya Doctrine
By Brenda Heard

The common denominator of the Haaretz article and the Goldstone Report and the UN Human Rights Council Report is the challenge to the Israeli military concept known as the “Dahiya doctrine.” The Goldstone Report states that “The Israeli military conception of what was necessary in a future war with Hamas seems to have been developed from at least the time of the 2006 conflict in southern Lebanon. It finds its origin in a military doctrine that views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals.”

16 October, 2009

Abbas And The Goldstone Report:
Our Shame Is Complete

By Ramzy Baroud

Palestinians who are now calling for change following the UN episode, must consider the Oslo culture in its entirety, its ‘revolutionary’ millionaires, its elites and contractors. A practical alternative to those corrupt must be quickly devised. The Israeli wall is encroaching on Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, and a new war might be awaiting besieged Gaza. Time is running out, and our collective shame is nearly complete

14 October, 2009

After The Bombing, Drug Addiction Strikes Gaza
By Donald Macintyre

Under siege and grappling with joblessness, factional violence and the aftermath of war, Gazans are turning to pills as they seek to escape reality

12 October, 2009

The Travails Of The Palestinian Authority
While Palestine Vanishes

By Sonja Karkar

The fallout from the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to endorse the Goldstone Report’s passage through the United Nations is not just painful for the Palestinians, but also for all those who support the Palestinian cause. This is yet another wound inflicted by the Authority on the Palestinian struggle for liberation from a long and brutal Israeli military occupation. And yet again, Israel gets a “get out of jail free” card as the Palestinians are forced to focus on their own inept and corrupt leadership

10 October, 2009

U.S. ‘Personality Assassination’ Of
A Palestinian Ally

By Nicola Nasser

Palestinian consensus on condemnation has created a volatile environment of insecurity for Abbas. An ongoing personality assassination process has put his personal safety in jeopardy. In the behind the scenes intrigues of the Middle East politics, he might pay with his life for rubber – stamping U.S. advice, to be the second potential victim after late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for “putting all their eggs in U.S. basket.”

08 October, 2009

After Goldstone, Hamas Faces Fateful Choice
By Ali Abunimah

The uproar over the Palestinian Authority's (PA) collaboration with Israel to bury the Goldstone report, calling for trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza, is a political earthquake. The whole political order in place since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed is crumbling. As the initial tremors begin to fade, the same old political structures may appear still to be in place, but they are hollowed out. This unprecedented crisis threatens to topple the US-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, but it also leaves Hamas, the main Palestinian resistance faction, struggling with fateful choices

A Poverty Of Leadership
By Osamah Khalil

Whether or not the clumsy attempt to shelve the Goldstone report on last winter's Gaza attacks is the tipping point for Mahmoud Abbas's rule, the succession process has been underway for several years. However, it is being coordinated by the US and Israel and is no reflection of the wishes and desires of the Palestinian people. Abbas's likely successor is Salam Fayyad, who somehow manages to be an even more uninspiring and unpopular character

Israel Mulls Banning Islamic Movement
By Jonathan Cook

The Israeli government announced yesterday it would consider banning Israel’s Islamic Movement at the next cabinet meeting, in a significant escalation of tensions that have fuelled a fortnight of bloody clashes in Jerusalem over access to the Haram al Sharif compound of mosques

07 October, 2009

Tensions Mount Again At Al-Aqsa
By Jonathan Cook

Tension over control of the Haram al Sharif compound of mosques in Jerusalem’s Old City has reached a pitch unseen since clashes at the site sparked the second intifada nine years ago

How Israel Bought Off UN’s War Crimes Probe
By Jonathan Cook

Goldstone report's fate sealed by threats to Palestinian economy

The Gaza War's Effect On Women
By Stephen Lendman

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights' (PCHR) new report, titled "Through Women's Eyes," highlights "the Gender-Specific Impact and Consequences of Operation Cast Lead" and the ongoing siege, including 12 case study examples "through the victims' words."

30 September, 2009

The Goldstone Report: Fierce But Toothless
By Yacov Ben Efrat

As things look now, the Goldstone Report will go to the shelf, the Occupation will continue, and so will Palestinian suffering. To cope with the present reality is more complex than putting people on the stand for war crimes. The reality is that Israel is ruled by the Right, which is nowadays attracting part of the Left. On the Palestinian side, the reality is a war between two rival factions that care more for power than for their people

Israel's Ofra Settlement On
Unauthorized Palestinian Land

By Stephen Lendman

Under international and local laws, Ofra's settlement is illegal. No jurisdictional area was set for it. It doesn't have a valid outline plan, and at least 58% of its land is lawfully registered under Palestinian names in the Land Registry

23 September, 2009

Goldstone Commission Gaza Conflict Findings
And Reactions

By Stephen Lendman

A UN September 15 press release stated that the Mission concluded that "there is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity."

18 September, 2009

Israel/America: A Rambling Poem
By Remi Kanazi

Remi Kanazi recently appeared on GRITtv with Laura Flanders to perform a spoken word poem entitled Israel/America: A Rambling Poem

17 September, 2009

Lebanon’s Palestinians 27 Years After
The Sabra Shatila Massacre

By Franklin Lamb

Pressure is building this hot summer and fall in Lebanon’s refugee camps with warnings coming from Palestinian, that 27 years after the Sabra Shatila massacre, explosive conditions exist in nearly all of Lebanon’s camps

10 September, 2009

Israel’s Arab Citizens Call General Strike
By Jonathan Cook

The increasingly harsh political climate in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has prompted the leadership of the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens to call the first general strike in several years

Israel Blocks Money To Gaza’s Disabled
By Jonathan Cook

Injured workers denied benefit payments

The Tangled Course To Middle East
Peace Crisis And Not Conflict

By Dan Lieberman

The Tangled Course to Middle East Peace A 180 degree rotation of the elements in the present peace process combined with Israel no longer being favored and no longer allowed to frame the process provides a direction for solving the Middle East crisis

08 September, 2009

Palestinians 'Seriously Considering' One-state
By Jimmy Carter

A more likely alternative to the present debacle is one state, which is obviously the goal of Israeli leaders who insist on colonizing the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbors and then demand equal rights within a democracy. In this nonviolent civil rights struggle, their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela

04 September, 2009

Prof Yehuda Hiss: The Missing Link
In Palestinian Organ Theft?

By Jonathan Cook

The hyperventilating by Israel’s leaders [1] over a story published in a Swedish newspaper last month [2] suggesting that the Israeli army assisted in organ theft from Palestinians has distracted attention from the disturbing allegations made by Palestinian families that were the basis of the article’s central claim

Fighting For The Right To Walk
By Ramzy Baroud

Since the conclusion of Israel’s war last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Health declared that 344 Gaza patients have reportedly been added to the swelling number of casualties

The Beginning Of The End Of The Middle East Crisis:
Resolving The Displaced Persons Problem

By Dan Lieberman

The solution of the Middle East crisis starts with those who have suffered the most, continue to suffer and should be relieved of their suffering. The solution of the Middle East crisis starts with the Palestinian displaced persons

A Palestinian State Within Two Years?
By Yacov Ben Efrat

On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad presented his plan to establish a Palestinian state within two years. He stressed the internal changes that must be made in order to build its legal, economic and social infrastructure

17 August, 2009

Fatah: A New Beginning Or An Imminent End?
By Ramzy Baroud

The long delayed Fatah Congress, held in Bethlehem on August 4 has underscored the obvious: the all-encompassing movement which was meant to exact and safeguard Palestinian national rights has grown into a liability that, if anything, will continue to derail the Palestinian national project. This comes at a time when the Palestinian people are in urgent need of a collective response that is strong enough to withstand Israeli military pressure and coercion at home

Israel Begins Sell-Off Of Refugees’ Land
By Jonathan Cook

Privatisation to subvert Palestinian hopes of restitution

People, Not Politicians, Working To End
The Israeli Occupation

By Michael Galvin

When the world looks at the future of Palestine these days, the principal question is unfortunately "What will Obama do?" How far will he go in putting pressure on the new right-wing Israeli government, and how will they react? Yet, our "messiah complex" which credits politicians with being able to solve everything single-handedly allows the world to forget about the action that is going on on the ground inside Israel/Palestine by both Israelis and Palestinians against the occupation, and the struggles they encounter

US Turns Blind Eye To Israel's
New Separation Policy

By Jonathan Cook

Israel welcomes American Jewish settlers, bars Palestinian-Americans

10 August, 2009

Gaza 's Kite Runners
By Ramzy Baroud

When seen from a distance, kites in Gaza may look quite ordinary. But while Gazan children, in many respects, are just children, their kites are hardly ordinary. Often adorned by the red, black, green and white of the Palestinian flag, Gazan children's kites are expressions of defiance, hope and the longing for freedom

 

 

 

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