Yesterday, on Salah ed-Din Street (the Champs-Elysees or Fifth Avenue of East Jerusalem, only very crowded, quite delapidated, and not at all chic, unless you like good coffee), it was absolutely crowded with cars and pedestrians in advance of the coming week-long Muslim Eid holiday. Even at the best of times, people don’t walk on [...]
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Filed under: Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
This is humor. But, like all the best humor, this has a firm basis in reality. It is also brilliant writing. It is uniquely insightful reporting. Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh, a retired doctor from the Galilee in northern Israel, an Arab-Palestinian citizen of Israel, has been covering the Rachel Corrie trial in Haifa, Israel’s northern port. [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
81 percent of the ammunition used in the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead attack on Gaza was precision-guided, we now learn. IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi said yesterday at something called the “International Artillery Conference” in Zichron Ya’akov, Israel, that “When fighting in densely populated areas, our major challenge is distinguishing innocent [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Gaza, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel
The story doesn’t get better. The truth about the ice cold, damp, grim, dark and immeasurably cruel saga of the Irish child penitentiary system is still unfolding. The latest news concerns the Irish “Magdalene Launderies”. Mary Magdalene — once reputedly a sex worker reviled by society, though this is now being described as a “misidentification” [...]
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Filed under: Human Rights, Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Harassment
Israeli authorities have denied entry today to a Swedish MK who was on board the Freedom Flotilla’s Mavi Marmara on 31 May, when Israeli Naval forces launched an interception and boarding attack that ended with 9 dead — all Turks, one of them a 19-year-old American high school student. According to a report by Agence [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel
In Ramallah tonight, two men who I thought might hold different views both proclaimed their vast new admiration for the Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, appointed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). The two, both dear friends, were not well acquainted with each other. Their eyes were locked on each other. They were almost [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Palestine & Palestinians
A chilling report appeared in the Guardian newspaper today, here. Guardian Correspondent in Jerusalem Harriet Sherwood wrote: “Israeli authorities have approved the delivery of four submachine guns to the main UN agency in Gaza for the protection of its head, John Ging, following assassination attempts and death threats … The UN is thought to use [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, United Nations Agencies and Programmes
Haaretz is reporting tonight that Israel will “reduce cooperation” with UNESCO after a vote in Paris last week concerning two heritage sites Israel has claimed for its own — Rachel’s Tomb at the entrance to Bethlehem, and the immensely important Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. The Haaretz account said: “Referring to the [Bethlehem] structure as the [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, United Nations Agencies and Programmes
Yossi Sarid wrote, sardonically, in Haaretz today that Fayyad’s “scheming knows no bounds or fences. After mapping Israeli neglect precisely, he leaped into no man’s land. If Israel will not build and renovate the schools in East Jerusalem, then he will step in to fill the vacuum. If Israel neglects the roads and sidewalks despite [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
How do we know what is “Jerusalem” today? Announce that the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, himself a resident of East Jerusalem, will attend a ceremony inauguration renovated schools in various parts of East Jerusalem… After an order signed by Israel’s Ministry of Internal Security Yitzhak Aharonovitch, banning any Palestinian Authority activity inside Israeli [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians