FEATURED NEWS STORIES
Israel planning 50,000 housing units in East Jerusalem
If the East Jerusalem construction plans are implemented, they will make it impossible to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said [Orly Noy,] an activist of the left-wing Ir Amim non-governmental organization. [T]he East Jerusalem construction "will move Israel beyond the point of no return, as far as an agreed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is concerned," she said.
IOA Editor: The history of the past 100 years clearly indicates that this is the intended purpose of the planned projects. Bit by bit - "dunam here and dunam there," as the old Zionist adage goes - the carefully planned expansion will forever eliminate even the theoretical possibility of a Palestinian state. For example, see the following:
Orly Noy: New Construction in East Jerusalem – What It Really Means
EU envoys: Israel trying to sever East Jerusalem from West Bank
New West Bank roads jeopardizing chances for peace accord
Secret Israeli database reveals full extent of illegal settlement...
Israeli court to hear civil case over death of Rachel Corrie in Gaza
Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, said the family was still waiting for the credible, transparent investigation Israel first promised into her daughter's death. "I just want to say to Rachel that our family is here today trying to just do right by her and I hope that she will be very proud of the effort we are making," she said....
10 March 2010 / Read MoreDavid Kimche dies; Israeli spy involved in Iran-contra scandal
He had been "the man with the suitcase," who would "appear in an African country a day or two before a major coup and leave a week later after the new regime was firmly in control, often with the aid of Israeli security teams." Mr. Kimche later supervised agents who infiltrated Arab countries. Haaretz said he was... a founder of Mossad's research department.
IOA Editor: Kimche was probably involved in the Mossad's assassination campaign in Europe in the 1970s-1980s, specifically targeting moderate Palestinians - those who posed the greatest threat to Israel's occupation of lands conquered in the 1967 war....
US: East Jerusalem plan undermines peace talks
Meir Margalit, Meretz's representative to the Jerusalem city council, claimed that the statement was meant to disrupt a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden, saying that he had "no doubt that the timing isn't coincidental," calling the announcement Interior Minister "Eli Yishai's answer to Netanyahu's willingness to renew indirect peace talks with the Palestinians."
IOA Editor: Business as usual, Occupation as usual. As we already know, Israel often behaves as an ungrateful client-state. The Obama White House accepts such behavior with love and understanding....
Top Fatah official faces jail over Jerusalem protests
Jerusalem – Ma’an – Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein filed a litany of charges against senior Fatah official Hatem Abdul Qader, all in relation to recent civil unrest among Palestinians in Jerusalem....
7 March 2010 / Read MorePalestinian boy freed from IDF jail without paying bail
Amira Hass: The boy has been held since his first remand hearing, on March 2, when his father was unable to pay the NIS 2,000 the court required for him to be released on bail. He was released on Sunday without paying bail.
More on child-arrest: IDF arrests two 13-14 old Palestinian boys accused of picking protected flowers, which are said to have been edible greens (Hebrew)....
Hundreds protest police brutality at Jaffa rally
MK Dov Khenin (Hadash): "We have come here today to say clearly that human rights do not end at the borders of Jaffa. We demand that residents of Jaffa receive equal rights, be treated decently by the authorities, especially the police."
UPDATE: Ajami co-director ahead of the Oscars: I don't represent Israel
Ajami co-director Scandar Copti on Sunday said that he does not represent Israel, hours before his film competes for the best foreign film Oscar at the Academy Awards, Army Radio reported. "I am not Israel's national team and do not represent her," Copti reportedly said... "The film technically represents Israel, but I don't represent Israel. I cannot represent a country that does not represent me," he said... (Haaretz - 7 March 2010)...
Islamic conference slams Israel’s Al-Aqsa action
[Secretary-general of the pan-Islamic body] called on the international community and the Quartet on Middle East peace -- the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations -- to "pay heed to the gravity of the Israeli violations and the threat they pose to the region now and in the future."...
6 March 2010 / Read MoreUN official: Israel ‘nourishing despair’ in Gaza
Eighty percent of the people in Gaza are essentially dependent on outside food aid, either from UNWRA or the World Food Program. Not because there isn't food in the shops - there is - but they can't afford it, or they can't afford enough of it because any livelihoods that there were, any jobs that there were outside the government have effectively disappeared. Most private businesses have been destroyed, essentially by the blockade - bulldozed - and the rest finished off by Cast Lead....
5 March 2010 / Read MoreIsrael’s Supreme Court slams police over Sheikh Jarrah protests
[C]riticism was issued by the justices during a court hearing on a petition filed by residents of Sheikh Jarrah, who demanded to be allowed to protest on this coming Saturday night, a demonstration the police hasn't authorized. The justices sided with the residents and stressed that the police should not seize the residents' right to protest. "The police's behavior regarding these protests takes us 30 years backwards," the justices said....
4 March 2010 / Read More39 army raids, 28 arrests: Just another day in the West Bank
Palestinian Agriculture Minister Ismail Daiq: "The year 2009 was the quietest for Israelis from the security point of view and the most violent for the Palestinians from the point of view of attacks by settlers in the West Bank."...
1 March 2010 / Read MoreJerusalem families come out against museum built on ancestors’ graves
Members of prominent Palestinian families from Jerusalem came out last week in protest against plans by the Simon Wiesenthal Center to build a Museum of Tolerance on top of part of the ancient Mamilla Cemetery where their ancestors are buried.
IOA Editor: For more on this Israeli desecration of Muslim cemetery, read:
1. The Center for Constitutional Rights' Mamila Cemetery Fact Sheet
2. Nadia Hijab: Scattered in death as in life
3. Mamilla Cemetery Chutzpah and the Museum of Tolerance by Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance....
Ma’an News Agency
- Abbas: Arabs must intervene in peace debacle
- Student senates: Universities on strike
- Palestine weather forecast: Thursday
- Dahlan: Settlements will derail talks, US must act
- Israel restricts Gaza imports to 23% of pre-siege levels
- Islamic Jihad women march in Gaza for Jerusalem
- EU parliament backs Goldstone report
- Gaza group escalates test of Israeli no-go area
- Witnesses: Undercover Israeli forces raid Silwan
- Clashes erupt in Beit Ummar
IPS – Inter Press Service: Israel – Palestine
- MIDEAST: Iran, Israel Spoiling for a Fight?
- RIGHTS: Middle East Women Ahead But Not Home
- MIDEAST: Israeli Left Emerges From Coma Amid Atrocities
- Q&A: 'Israeli Siege Causing De-development of Gaza'
- MIDEAST: Palestinians Preparing for Statehood Anyhow
- US-TURKEY: Armenian Genocide Vote Threatens Ties at Key Moment
- MIDEAST: Palestinian Homes on 'David's Garden' Spared for Now
- MIDEAST: Occupation Turns Palestinian Women Into Breadwinners
- MIDEAST: Piano Sounds Good in Gaza Too
- MIDEAST: Picking Pebbles to Live Somehow
FEATURED COMMENTARIES
Gideon Levy: Thank you, Eli Yishai, for exposing the peace process masquerade
What's the big deal? Another 1,600 apartments for ultra-Orthodox Jews on occupied, stolen land? Jerusalem won't ever be divided, Benjamin Netanyahu promised, in another applause-winning move. In that case, why not build in it? The Americans have agreed to all this, so they have no reason to pretend to be insulted....
11 Mar 2010 / Read MoreJonathan Cook: Israel Set to Join Club of Richest Nations
"The OECD seems to be so determined to get Israel through its door that it is prepared to cover up the crimes of the occupation," said Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist. Israel has been lobbying for nearly 20 years to be admitted to the OECD, founded in 1961 for wealthy industrialized democracies to meet and coordinate economic and social policies. It includes the United States and most of Europe....
8 Mar 2010 / Read MoreAssaf Kfoury: Whither Hezbollah
Hezbollah is the guerilla force that stymied the Israeli military in southern Lebanon in the 1990’s. The Israeli occupiers and their proxies in the South Lebanon Army finally gave up and withdrew in May 2000. In a return confrontation in July-August 2006, Hezbollah again stood its ground, and the Israeli military was again stunned by a gritty enemy....
8 Mar 2010 / Read MoreMoshe Machover: Israeli Socialism and anti-Zionism
[The] main theses are two sides of one medal:
1. In Israel the struggle for socialism must be part of a regional struggle; and it necessarily implies a struggle to overthrow Zionism.
2. Conversely, a defensive struggle against the worst effects of Zionism can be waged on its own as a series of one-issue campaigns, by single-issue groupings; but Zionism cannot and will not be overthrown in this way. It can only be overthrown as part of a socialist transformation of the entire region, the Arab East. And it requires an organization set up according to this strategy....
Gideon Levy: There has never been an Israeli peace camp
The Israeli peace camp didn't die. It was never born in the first place. While it's true that since the summer of 1967, several radical and brave political groups have been working against the occupation - all worthy of recognition - a large, influential peace camp has never existed here....
7 Mar 2010 / Read MoreVideo Interview: Jeff Halper – The Global Pacification Industry
Interview with Jeff Halper, Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and author of Obstacles to Peace: A Re-framing of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and An Israeli In Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel....
5 Mar 2010 / Read MoreAmira Hass: How will the next Palestinian uprising look?
The truth is that the suicide attacks on civilians gave Israel a golden opportunity to implement plans, which had always existed, to confiscate more and more Palestinian lands, using the excuse of "security." The use of weapons did not stop the colonialist expansion of the Jewish settlements. On the contrary. And the use of weapons only accelerated a process Israel began in 1991: disconnecting the Gaza Strip from the West Bank....
3 Mar 2010 / Read MoreSalman Masalha: Israel’s apartheid doesn’t stop at the West Bank
The alienation between Arabs and Jews can be seen everywhere. It has not arisen solely in the context of the national conflict, but is rather a result of an establishment policy which has expropriated Arabs' lands to build communities "for Jews only" and has pushed the Arab inhabitants into localities under an "ethno-Zionist siege" on all sides....
3 Mar 2010 / Read MoreAkiva Eldar: No country would accept Netanyahu’s conditions for peace
The only difference between "the rock of our existence" that launched the Western Wall tunnel violence in 1996 and the 2010 model is that this time Netanyahu is wearing a mask, trying to pass himself off as peace activist Uri Avnery, with the generous help of Defense Minister Ehud Barak....
1 Mar 2010 / Read MoreJohn Pilger: Listen to the heroes of Israel
John Pilger reminds us of the struggle by an extraordinary few in Israel against the repression and lawlessness of the occupation of Palestine. They are the inspiration to break the loud silence in the Jewish diaspora....
28 Feb 2010 / Read MoreNadia Hijab: Scattered in death as in life
[T]he battle over Jerusalem's Mamilla Cemetery, a Muslim cemetery known in Arabic as Maman Allah, where the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center intends to build a Museum of Tolerance, ... encapsulates many aspects of Israel's approach to Palestinian rights since the conflict began....
25 Feb 2010 / Read MoreHenry Siegman: For Israel, defiance comes at the cost of legitimacy
The disappearance of the two-state solution is triggering a third transformation, which is turning Israel from a democracy into an apartheid state. The democracy Israel provides for its (mostly) Jewish citizens cannot hide its changed character. A democracy reserved for privileged citizens while all others are denied individual and national rights and kept behind checkpoints, barbed wire fences and separation walls manned by Israel’s military, is not democracy....
24 Feb 2010 / Read MoreJoel Beinin: Confronting Settlement Expansion in East Jerusalem
The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, a 20-minute walk up the hill from the Damascus Gate to the Old City of Jerusalem, has become the focal point of the struggle over the expanding project of Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank....
23 Feb 2010 / Read MoreIsraeli Occupation
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