“The reason for walls is always fear”

Roger Waters (Pink Floyd, The Wall) has visited The Wall here — Israel’s “security barrier” — a couple of times.
He narrates a film just released (thanks to Angela for this information) by The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in Jerusalem, and he begins by saying:  “The reason for walls is always [...]

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The Wall must fall

Well it took a long time, but today Palestinian activists got together and pulled down a section of The Wall near the dreadful Qalandia checkpoint (or “border terminal” as Israel calls it) between Ramallah and Jerusalem.
A late breaking news flash on Ma’an News Agency said that two persons have been arrested at the site [...]

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How Israeli forces really play ball – Bil’in responds to Israeli Cellcom Ad

The IDF, we now know, has no sense of humor, as the Israeli Cellcom phone company tried to imply in a misleadingly untruthful “feel-good” ad that we have previously reported on here.
The Bil’in village website has posted a video send-up here of the Cellcom ad, but there was no light-hearted athletic exchange last Friday 17 [...]

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Boycott Cellcom (not Leonard Cohen)

Boycotts are in the air — billed as a peaceful alternative to war and conflict of all sorts. The definitive worth of the tactic is debatable — and in some circles it is being debated. Naomi Klein recently visited Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory [West Bank + Gaza -- yes, the [...]

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More on The Wall

Items for reflection:
(1) At a briefing for journalists at Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that there is “concrete data which attests to the fact that the security fence has no impact on economic activities and there are many, many ways actually, to kind of circumvent that, and we have [...]

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5th anniversary – International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of A Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

The Advisory Opinion was a landmark — and it has been ignored.
A reminder: five years ago today, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, handed down an Advisory Opinion – on 9 July 2009 – which ruled that
“The construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied [...]

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Disorderly conduct is way too weak a charge for soldier who shot bound and blindfolded Palestinian

Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled today that “disorderly conduct” charges against a soldier who shot a bound and blindfolded protester and his commanding officer who reportedly said “shoot him” — as a joke, but said he never thought the soldier would take him seriously — were much too lenient.
The Supreme Court said that a [...]

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Shoafat refugee camp – bursting with life, bursting at the seams

Today I went back to Shoafat Refugee Camp — the only Palestinian refugee camp inside Jerusalem, and inside Israel (excluding the West Bank and Gaza).
It is still part of the “Greater Jerusalem” area that was unilaterally declared by Israel after its conquest in the June 1967 war.
But it is one of the places [...]

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Quartet statement – the current situation in Gaza is unsustainable and in nobody’s interest

On the sidelines of a meeting of the G-8 countries in Trieste, Italy, the Middle East Quartet (United Nations, European Union, Russian Federation, and the United States) — joined by Quartet Representative Tony Blair — met to review the situation in the region, and issued a statement on Friday that reflected the somewhat tougher tone [...]

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“Jerusalem unification” day – but is Jerusalem united?

Today, Israel mark’s “Jerusalem unification” day.
However, According to Gershon Baskin, co-chairman and founder of the Israeli-Palestinian Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) — who ran in the last Knesset elections as a candidate from a green party which did not gain the minimum number of votes for a seat — Jerusalem is one of the [...]

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