BEIRUT: The Lebanese government must take concrete steps to end all forms of discrimination against Palestinian refugees and to fully protect and uphold their human rights, Amnesty International said in a new report expected to be launched at a news conference in Beirut on Wednesday.

The new report, “Exiled and Suffering: Palestinian refugees in Lebanon,” examines the wide range of restrictions that continue to impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, as many as 60 years after they or their parents or grandparents fled to Lebanon during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967.

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Officially, Mahmoud Jnaid does not exist. The 25-year-old Palestinian almost made that a reality earlier this month when he doused himself with petrol and tried to set himself alight.

Jnaid is one of about 54,000 displaced Palestinians who returned to Gaza and the West Bank from abroad after an interim peace accord in 1993, but still have no identity cards because Israel refuses to approve them. Following years of silence, they recently started holding weekly protests in Hamas-run Gaza to demand the documents, which they need to travel as well as for daily basics like opening a bank account or getting a driving licence.

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A 60-year-old Palestinian will begin a case against the UK government in the High Court later when he will say that sales of arms to Israel are illegal.

Saleh Hassan, who lives on the West Bank, says his land was confiscated by Israel to make way for its barrier.

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The concern Israel demonstrates for the fate of one Palestinian boy touches the heart: Again, note what a fuss is being made about the case of the killing of Mohammed al-Dura. Our heart is impervious to the fate of other children who have been killed. Just little Mohammed continues to haunt us. But the question of who killed al-Dura is not important. And maybe he is even alive, as some eccentrics claim. Perhaps he committed suicide, as the strange investigations are liable to suggest.

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JERUSALEM: The United Nations agency in charge of Palestinian refugees on Friday called on Israel to open crossings into the Gaza Strip and warned of a humanitarian crisis if further restrictions are imposed.

“We don’t believe that just having humanitarian goods coming in is enough, we need other supplies to come in. People need other things besides food and medicine,” UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Abu Zayd told reporters.

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Mahmoud Abbas has to stay home. As things stand right now, he must not go to Washington. Even his meetings with Ehud Olmert are gradually turning into a disgrace and have become a humiliation for his people. Nothing good will come of them. It has become impossible to bear the spectacle of the Palestinian leader’s jolly visits in Jerusalem, bussing the cheek of the wife of the very prime minister who is meanwhile threatening to blockade a million and a half of his people, condemning them to darkness and hunger.

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In its strongest condemnation of Israel since last summer’s war, Human Rights Watch said yesterday that most Lebanese civilian casualties were caused by “indiscriminate Israeli air strikes”.

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AMMAN – A leading U.S. human rights group said on Friday beatings of inmates in Jordanian jails were rampant and many of the country’s top Islamist detainees were denied justice.

Christoph Wilcke, Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Jordan specialist, speaking after a two-week tour of jails across the country, said detainees had cited serious abuses and beatings and told the group two prisoners died under torture since May.

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Born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Youssef Kanaan has been “an unwelcome guest” all his life – surviving, with no permanent home, at the mercy of others.

Like many of the 4 million Palestinians who lost their ancestral homes in Arab-Israel conflicts in 1948 and 1967, Kanaan is stateless, a peculiar situation that deprives him of basic rights in the land of his birth, Lebanon, and dooms him to a strange limbo in Canada.

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The UK’s reputation was damaged when the government hesitated in calling for an immediate end to the Lebanon war last year, MPs have said.

At the time, then-PM Tony Blair was criticised for waiting a few weeks before eventually calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.

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