Monday, December 4, 2006

Meanwhile in Palestine

The Death Of A Nation: Audio interview with Prof. Noam Chomsky: "The Palestinians committed a major crime in January (2006) There was a free election, closely monitored, declared to be free and fair and they voted the wrong way. That is absolutely criminal." Click to listen.

Gideon Levy: The cease-fire will go up in flames: The IDF is not interested in the cease-fire. One can assume that neither is the Shin Bet. Reports on how the cease-fire is already being exploited for redeployment on the other side are flooding the media

Speakers Describe Hardship West Bank Wall Is Creating: The 60-mile, $465-million ring of walls and fences being built between Israel and the Palestinian areas in the Occupied West Bank is more about land and resource acquisition by the Israeli government than about improving security for the Israelis, and is causing further isolation and oppression of the Palestinians, speakers told an audience at the Old Lyme Congregational Church on Sunday."The wall and its checkpoints define our lives — and our deaths — today in Bethlehem," said Brother Jack Curran, vice president of Bethlehem University, a Catholic institution...

Settlers uproot Olive trees in Hebron: The sources stated that armed extremist settlers of the Hagai illegal settlement, uprooted and cut more than 70 olive trees that belong to Mohammad Abdul-Hamid Al Tubassi, and Rateb Al Tubassi, while soldiers did not attempt to stop them.

Archaeologists Discover 'Church of the Ark' in West Bank: Emerging from the soil over a few acres in the hills of the Israeli occupied West Bank is believed to be one of the world's first churches, which was uncovered and claimed by archaeologists on Sunday. Jewish residents in the modern settlement of Shiloh, which sits on a hill among Palestinian villages, want the team to keep digging.

Israeli army continues arrests in West Bank : Israeli troops arrested a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the West Bank city of Bethlehem Monday morning. Security sources said the Israeli army pushed into the holy city, stormed the house of Mahmoud Fanouna, also a member of the Palestinian National Council, and boxed him into a military vehicle.

Israeli wall separates Palestinian farmers from land: Jayyous's farmers are used to surveying their land from their commanding hilltop village in the northern West Bank. But for many, gazing is now all they can do. Israel's West Bank barrier has separated the village of Jayyous from 9,500 of its 13,600 dunums (a dunum is 1,000 square metres) of land, and the Israeli authorities have denied them permits to access it.

Special force kills Palestinian in Tulkarm: A special Border Guard police force killed an al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades activist in the West Bank town of Tulkarm Monday evening. According to witnesses, the man killed is Mahmoud Abed al-Al, a Fatah member from Gaza who is currently residing in Tulkarm.

PCHR and anti-apartheid wall campaign: stop support for Israel's war crimes! The Attorney General has given no reasons for crushing the warrant in time for the lawyers to appeal, despite the ruling of the judge that there were 'good and sufficient reasons' to justify the arrest of Moshe Ya'alon. Only after Ya'alon had been permitted to leave the country, he gave untenable motivations such as "unreliable materials" brought as evidence by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Hickman & Rose and the local lawyers.

For Palestinian women soccer players, a field is a dream: The women, between the ages of 14 and 22, make up the majority of the Palestinian Territories national women's soccer team, which meets on an improvised concrete soccer field every Wednesday, rain or shine. Currently, they are working hard in preparation for their next tournament, despite lingering questions over whether they will be able to attend.

Israel bars Gaza residents from university: In recent years, the Israeli security authorities instituted a policy that prevents Gaza residents from pursuing their education at a university in the West Bank. The prohibition is general and does not relate to the question of whether there is actual security information about the particular individual.

Haniyeh in Damascus: PA unity government talks must go on: Assad asserted Syria's full support of the Palestinian people, their efforts to establish an independent state, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the need to break the siege imposed on the Palestinian people.

Israeli Arabs ask: How important is right of return to villages? Later this week, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee will present a paper on "The vision for the future of Palestinian Arabs in Israel." Later this month, a group of Arab Israeli intellectuals will unveil the "Haifa Document," which discusses, inter alia, Arab Israelis' relationship with Palestinians in the territories and overseas. Both of these documents also address the issue of Palestinian refugees, with special emphasis on Arab Israelis' right to return to their former villages.

Not the peace we expected: Barak believed Arafat would find it difficult to resist the temptation of a historic achievement - a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem - and would sign to end the conflict. However, the voice of the opposition arose, and it wasn't coming from just the "resistance front." Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hastened to warn on television that Arafat did not have the power to decide on Jerusalem, because the Old City belonged to all Arabs and Muslims, and dividing it would constitute betrayal.

Negotiations, blocked by the choruses of intimidation: First there are the settlers, for whom an agreement spells existential danger and an ideological-theological rift. Then there is anyone who would lose socio-economic status if an agreement were to be signed. These are cynical politicians and military personnel, the military industries and any others somehow connected to the war machine and the industry of occupation. They include "experts" and respected analysts who built their careers on explaining how the conflict cannot be solved .

Netanyahu: Gaza turning into second Lebanon: Since the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was declared, Netanyahu refrained from publicly criticizing the government, a role which was taken by other right-wing politicians and spokespeople.

Minister: Israel should consider freeing Bargouti in Shalit deal: Environment Minister Gideon Ezra told Israel Radio on Monday that Israel should consider freeing jailed Palestinian militant leader Marwan Bargouti in a prisoner exchange for captured Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit.


Olmert: I preferred captive soldiers to more dead: "We didn't know if they were alive and it is preferable that they spend a little more time in captivity than having more soldiers die," said Olmert when asked why Israel ended the war without receiving kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev back.

F our dead as US helicopter comes down in Iraqi lake: Thirteen US troops died in Iraq over the weekend including four killed when a military helicopter made an "emergency landing" in the restive west of the country, the US military said.

State Comptroller: Many of IDF senior officers poorly trained:
It is not surprising, therefore, that the IDF has discovered a serious deficiency in professionalism and cooperation, and has been promoting senior officers with little relevant knowledge to command battalions or brigades in battle.

US arms to be given to Mideast terrorists?In her meeting last week with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged her country would provide Abbas' Force 17 security forces with new weapons to bolster the group against Hamas, according to senior Palestinian officials.

ISRAEL-OPT: Trapped between the lines: Only 20 men attended the funeral of Ma'azouz Youssef's grandfather as the rest were not allowed to pass through Israel's West Bank barrier to the village, Youssef said. Azzun Atma is one of the few Palestinian villages on the barrier's eastern or Israeli side. "Only those with IDs from the village can get in. My sister could not come today because she married a man from the town of Saniri, which is on her ID as her place of residence. She cannot even visit the place where she was born," said Youssef, 33.

Restraint and generosity: Against this background, Abu Mazen convened the PLO's executive committee. His spokesmen said that within a few days, the chairman would make a dramatic speech in which he would announce the dissolution of the Hamas government and the establishment of a temporary government of technocrats until new elections can be held.

Report: Noam Shalit to visit Gaza: Contacts are underway to arrange a meeting for Shalit with representatives of both organizations, which have agreed in principle to meet with the captive soldier's father, the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat reported on Monday morning.

Cabinet seeks to promote West Bank truce; arrests must be approved by senior officersThe Israel Defense Forces will no longer arrest Palestinians in the West Bank without explicit approval from either the GOC Central Command or the commander of IDF forces in the territories, the diplomatic-security cabinet decided yesterday. However, the IDF opposes expanding the cease-fire to the West Bank .

Report: Arab citizens viewed as 'security threats' at airports: Arab citizens experience institutionalized discrimination in Israeli airports and from Israeli airports abroad, according to a special report released Monday by the Arab Association for Human Rights and the Center for the Struggle Against Racism.

Today more Israeli Arabs in higher education, still far less than Jews: The report, released last week, found that some 19 percent of the graduates of Arab high schools went on to attend higher education institutions in 2002, compared to 11 percent in 1991, the report found. More than 40 percent of all Israeli high school graduates attend college or university. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem medical school, for instance, has changed its admissions methods, leading to a sharp decrease in the number of Arab students accepted this year.

Israeli army bulldozers started on Monday morning to bulldoze farmlands, and barred school students from leaving their school in Al Khader village south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem : Troops and army bulldozers stormed the village on Monday morning, around 10:00, and started to bulldoze and uproot farmlands in the village to build a road and underground tunnel to separate the Palestinian used roads from the Jewish only roads, villagers reported.

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