Obama transferred $221 million to Palestinian Authority in his final hours in office
January 26th, 20170 WASHINGTON β In his last hours in office, the Obama administration transferred $221 million to the Palestinian Authority that despite opposition from GOP members of Congress, officials say. A State Department official and several congressional aides told the Associated Press that the outgoing administration and former Secretary of...Israel deliberately forgets its history
Every Israeli knows that he or she is the direct and exclusive descendant of a Jewish people which has existed since it received the Torah in Sinai. According to this myth, the Jews escaped from Egypt and settled in the Promised Land, where they built the glorious kingdom of David and Solomon, which subsequently split into the...Palestinian group considers end of two-state strategy
WASHINGTON An informal group of prominent Palestinian academics, politicians, entrepreneurs and activists has published a report that raises questions and offers solutions regarding Palestinian national strategy. It follows a growing sense of doubt that two decades of negotiations will culminate in an outcome fair to...
Israel pushes ahead with settlement expansion
September 6th, 20080 JERUSALEM (IPS) Israel has published tenders for the construction of 1,761 illegal housing units for Israeli settlers in occupied east Jerusalem alone, according to the Israeli rights group Peace Now. The expansion plans come despite promises by the Israeli government at last year's peace summit at Annapolis, Maryland (in the...
Free Gaza boats challenge Israel’s siege
August 29th, 20080 An international group of peace activists took on Israel's crushing siege of the Gaza Strip. After two years of organizing two ships to sail to Gaza's shores, the ships made their journey in defiance of Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. The ships left with several Palestinians in need of medical treatment and others...Illegal Israeli settlements get tax breaks
JERUSALEM (Reuters) The United States says Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank threaten any peace between Israel and the Palestinians yet it also encourages Americans to help support settlers by offering tax breaks on donations. As Condoleezza Rice flew in on Monday for another round of peace talks, Israeli and American...Israel clears soldiers in killing of Palestinian journalist, youths
The Israeli government has announced it won't prosecute soldiers involved in the death of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana and eight Palestinian youths. The twenty-four-year-old Palestinian died on April 16 in Gaza when an Israeli tank shelled his vehicle clearly marked "press." Shana's final piece of footage shows the tank firing a...Little hope of peace after Olmert
CAIRO (IPS) With Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's recent resignation announcement, the self-proclaimed Jewish state is headed for new leadership. Egyptian commentators, though, entertain few hopes that Olmert's successor whoever he or she may be will temper Israel's hard-line approach to the peace process. "Israeli...Gaza and West Bank in muddied separation
RAMALLAH (IPS) Over a hundred Fatah fighters loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement fled to the West Bank from Gaza last week, fearing for their lives at the hands of Hamas, the Islamic movement which took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after it routed Fatah forces. The Fatah men barely managed to escape...Palestinian Authority rejects Israeli proposal
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected an Israeli peace proposal because it did not provide for a contiguous Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, Abbas' office said Tuesday. Nabil Abu Rdainah, Abbas' spokesman, told the official Palestinian WAFA news agency Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert's plan showed a "lack of...
Palestinians bury poet Darwish in West Bank
August 15th, 20080 Palestinians bade an emotional farewell on Wednesday to their national poet Mahmoud Darwish, who was laid to rest on a hilltop overlooking the West Bank city of Ramallah. Darwish died Saturday in Houston at age 67 after complications from open-heart surgery. He was the first Palestinian to receive a state funeral since Yasser...Medical care contingent on spying
Israel's secret police are pressuring Palestinians in Gaza to spy on their community in exchange for urgent medical treatment, according to a report released this week by an Israeli human rights organization. Physicians for Human Rights says the Shin Bet began interrogating Palestinian patients seeking permission to travel from...Israel attacks charities, orphanages
If you still think there are red lines that Israel has not crossed with regard to its treatment of Palestinians, don't be too sure. In recent days and weeks, the Israeli army has been vandalizing, ransacking and confiscating Palestinian civilian institutions in the West Bank's largest towns and cities, including Ramallah, the seat of...
Roadblocks cripple West Bank economy
July 26th, 20080 HEBRON (IPS) The Israeli military has erected three additional roadblocks, further blocking vehicular access on the road between the south Hebron village of At-Tuwani and the commercial hub of Yatta in the southern West Bank. The West Bank is the Palestinian area west of the Jordan river, much of it under Israeli control....The coming of the third Palestinian exodus
Israel has once again sealed off the Gaza Strip from all but limited humanitarian aid, spawning widespread food, water and fuel shortages and crippling the local economy in the overcrowded territory of 1.5 million people. By depriving Palestinians of the basic conditions of a normal life, it is assumed that they will eventually......
‘Worse than apartheid’
I thought they would feel right at home in the alleys of Balata refugee camp, the Casbah and the Hawara checkpoint. But they said there is no comparison: for them the Israeli occupation regime is worse than anything they knew under apartheid. This week, 21 human rights activists from South Africa visited Israel. Among them were...Gaza under siege despite truce
CAIRO (IPS) Despite a torrent of mutual recriminations, the fragile truce between Israel and Palestinian resistance faction Hamas survived into its third week. Israel, however, has been slow to fulfill its pledge as laid down in an Egypt-brokered ceasefire agreement to allow desperately-needed humanitarian supplies into the......
Sewage in water threatens Gazans
GAZA CITY (IPS) Gaza is being forced to pump 77 tons of untreated or partially treated sewage out to sea daily due to the Israeli blockade of the coastal territory. The fear is that some of this is creeping back into drinking water. "The health of Gaza's 1.5 million people is at risk," Mahmoud Daher, from the U.N. World Health...Tense Israeli-Hamas truce holds
A fragile quiet has been maintained in the Gaza Strip following the implementation of a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas movement. The Egyptian-mediated truce started at dawn on Thursday but Israeli tanks remain on the Gazan border and leaders continue to express doubts about how long the deal can last. Ehud Olmert,...Israel detains Fulbright scholars in Gaza
Gaza City Zohair Abu Shaban graduated at the top of his 2007 class in electrical engineering at the Islamic University here and after a lengthy application process, he was awarded the U.S. State Department's prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to study in Connecticut. But first Mr. Abu Shaban has to get out of Gaza. So far, that's...Israeli attack looking more likely
JERUSALEM (IPS) The likelihood of a large-scale Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip has crept closer as more rockets continue to land in southern Israel and another Israeli was killed by a mortar shell, further hardening attitudes amongst senior ministers against a proposed truce with Hamas. Speaking to reporters aboard......
Investment conference a success?
BETHLEHEM Amid lavish settings and tight security, hundreds of investors and entrepreneurs from around the world last week gathered in the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem to discuss and plan joint business ventures. Palestine Authority (PA) officials described the "Palestine Investment Conference" as a "mega event" in light...American Palestinians move from al-Nakba to organizing
WASHINGTON In the past few weeks, Palestinians around the globe have commemorated the 60th anniversary of al Nakba, or the catastrophe, that led to their displacement from their homeland. Israel's establishment in May 1948 continued and accelerated the forcible Palestinian exile at the hands of Israel's founding pioneers.......
U.S. allies picking up the pieces
WASHINGTON (IPS) As the White House agenda for the Middle East continues to unravel, events over the past 24 hours seem to suggest that U.S. allies in the region are determined to construct a new edifice based on diplomacy, with or without Washington's help. In spite of efforts by President George W. Bush's administration to...Refugees, peace activists mourn
As Israel celebrates 60 years of statehood, Palestinians worldwide mourn the loss of their homes and homeland. While one people Jews fleeing persecution in Europe gained a country, another people the land's indigenous Palestinians lost nearly everything they had. In 1948 hundreds of......