Posted on October 31st, 2011 by Marian Houk
Despite a near-100% certainty that U.S. funding [representing 22% of the agency's budget] will be cut, UNESCO member states voted this afternoon in Paris to admit the State of Palestine into full membership of the UN’s Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. UPDATE: Within hours, the U.S. State Department announced that a $60 million payment due [...]
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Filed under: Palestine & Palestinians, United Nations Agencies and Programmes
Posted on October 29th, 2011 by Marian Houk
I was driving to Ramallah last Sunday, a sunny day, about 1:30 in the afternoon. The traffic is usually bad at that time in the narrow winding pot-hold streets of Dahiet al-Bariid, where there are two important private schools letting out students at the same time, just as students from the Israeli-run East Jerusalem public [...]
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Filed under: Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on October 29th, 2011 by Marian Houk
Take a look at this article, published here: Look at the headline: The Children of Shu’fat Camp Rejoice at “Animals” Muppet Show . OK. Now, read the article itself. It’s not so long. It appears, from careful reading, that this WAFA article was produced entirely on the basis of a press release from UNRWA. In [...]
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Filed under: Donors, Human Rights, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians, United Nations Agencies and Programmes
Posted on October 28th, 2011 by Marian Houk
Writing for the Huffington Post, East Timor’s President Jose Ramos Horta endorsed [in September, just days before PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas actually deposited the request] Palestine’s “UN bid” for full membership in the international organization. Ramos Horta, who was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, alongside East Timor’s Archbiship Belo, for their efforts for [...]
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Filed under: East Timor, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, US in UN, United Nations
Posted on October 26th, 2011 by Marian Houk
Envoys from the Quartet met, separately, with Israeli and Palestinians at the UN’s lovely and venerable Government House — the seat of government built by the British during the Palestine Mandate period — on the southern edge of Jerusalem today. The location seems to have been specially selected to please the Palestinian side, and was [...]
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Filed under: Ambassadors and other diplomats, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Quartet
Posted on October 25th, 2011 by Marian Houk
John Quigley, renowned legal scholar and professor of international law who has written several books on the Question of Palestine — and who believes that the state of Palestine already exists, based in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s 1988 Declaration of Independence — is in Ramallah for a few days. He will be speaking at a [...]
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Filed under: Academic studies and research, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, United Nations
Posted on October 18th, 2011 by Marian Houk
23:55 pm: A Tweet from Turkish journalist @MahirZeynalov says that 11, not 10, Palestinian released prisoners has arrived in Ankara: “11 released Palestinian prisoners make sajdah right after they leave the plane in Ankara’s airport. Palestinian Amb. to Turkey met them”. UPDATE: The additional person appears to be a woman — perhaps the one [or [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Egypt, Gaza, Human Rights, International Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians, Turkey
Posted on October 17th, 2011 by Marian Houk
According to a report in Haaretz, here, Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal and deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk “are expected in Egypt later Monday, to welcome the 40 prisoners whose release Israel has conditioned upon deportation from the Palestinian territories“. Earalier, Haaretz reported in another story that “the spokesperson for the military wing of Hamas, [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on October 17th, 2011 by Marian Houk
The prisoner exchange in which Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured in late June 2006, by Palestinian fighters from Gaza in a cross-border raid near the Kerem Shalom crossing, and presumably held in Gaza since then, is to be exchanged for some 1027 Palestinian prisoners in two installments, with the first group of 477 of what [...]
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Filed under: Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
Posted on October 6th, 2011 by Marian Houk
The amazing, wonderful, and moving life story of Steve Jobs [Apple] in a post by Juan Cole on his blog, Informed Comment, this morning [overnight on the West Coast of the US], after the announcement that Apple’s Steve Jobs had died — peacefully, his family said — following a long illness: “…Jobs’s technological vision, rooted [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, USA
