Posted on November 30th, 2009 by Marian Houk
As Ramallah prepared for the Eid al-Adha (Muslim holiday), boxes of oranges appeared along the sidewalks and streets outside shops selling fruits and vegetables. The oranges also ripened on trees planted years ago, here and there in small private yards around individual stone houses in central Ramallah, a colorful contrast to their deep green leaves [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on November 26th, 2009 by Marian Houk
This is an ugly and traumatic story.
Alec Collett, a former colleague accredited as a journalist at UNHQ/NY in the early to mid-1980s, was one of those internationals kidnapped during the long Lebanese civil war. Alec was taken from a car near Beirut airport in March 1985, while on a temporary assignment for UNRWA in [...]
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Filed under: Human Rights, Lebanon, Libya, United Nations
Posted on November 23rd, 2009 by Marian Houk
This, Madame Secretary [Hilary Clinton], is positive reinforcement: when the IDF, exceptionally, schedules over 200 truckloads of what they call “humanitarian aid” — really, the most basic goods — to enter Gaza, it is worth writing about.
This is the third time in the past two weeks that we’ve had such an astonishing development. It is [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Gaza, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Humanitarian Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on November 21st, 2009 by Marian Houk
Fatah activist Qaddura Fares, chairman of the Palestinian Prisoners Club (a support group), said today in Ramallah that he had received a communication from the Fatah prisoners in Israeli jails in which they acknowledge the recent announcement by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) not to run in the next elections.
Abbas himself made the official [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on November 19th, 2009 by Marian Houk
As the sense of crisis continues here, the Israeli military announced today that 251 truckloads of goods have been permitted to enter Gaza today.
This is a great increase over the daily average in recent months, but it is still a far cry from the 400-600 truckloads daily that entered Gaza before the Israeli [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on November 17th, 2009 by Marian Houk
Palestinian negotiator Sa’eb Erekat said on Sunday that “We are now facing a moment of truth”.
He told journalists in Ramallah (according to a press release issued by the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department that he heads) that “the move to issue a Security Council resolution recognizing the Palestinian state on the borders of June 4th, 1967 [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Security Council
Posted on November 16th, 2009 by Marian Houk
This is news. For months, the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s “Coordinator of [Israeli] Government Activities in the Territories” or COGAT, has been putting Gazans on a very strict “diet”. Only when a high-level American delegation was in town, or maybe Tony Blair, were there even 100 to a max of 112 or [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Gaza, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on November 15th, 2009 by Marian Houk
Today is the 21st anniversary of the Proclamation, by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at a meeting on 15 November 1988 of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s National Council (PNC) in Algiers, of the still-unrealized State of Palestine.
Still, today is marked as Palestinian Independence Day, here in Ramallah and the rest of the [...]
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Filed under: Academic studies and research, Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, International Law, Israel
Posted on November 14th, 2009 by Marian Houk
The Jerusalem Post has a story today informing us that a report presented to members of the Israeli Knesset last Wednesday, and “compiled by the MACRO Center for Political Economics as part of its Position Papers on Social, Economic and Political Issues distributed to MKs and ministers on a biweekly basis to give them an [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, USA
Posted on November 13th, 2009 by Marian Houk
If the Palestinians like setting records for publication in the Guiness Book of World Records, they could add to their list — the world’s biggest knafeh (a sweet dessert made from shredded wheat stuffed with cheese, soaked in a sugary syrup, and garnished with chopped pistachios) in Nablus; the world’s longest or “largest” embroidered dress [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, Palestine & Palestinians
