protest against dictatorship, repression & in solidarity with street protests in Egypt.
Photo: Hossam el-Hamalawy. Mass protests in Cairo, Egypt against dictatorship.
Independent journalist and social activist Hossam el-Hamalawy has been capturing the mass protests in recent days in Cairo, Egypt, a selection of images from the protests follows, taken from the streets of Cairo.
Photo Palestinian boy peers around a corner looking for Israeli occupation soldier.
George J. Mitchell, the United States Middle East envoy, tried to counter low expectations for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations by harking back to his experience as a mediator in Northern Ireland.
At an Aug. 20 news conference with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, announcing the talks that will begin this week, Mr. Mitchell reminded journalists that during difficult negotiations in Northern Ireland, “We had about 700 days of failure and one day of success” — the day in 1998 that the Belfast Agreement instituting power-sharing between pro-British unionists and Irish nationalists was signed.
Photo ActiveStills Anne Paq Bassam Dardouna stands in the abandoned apartment that he and his family are living in.
“We are not here to steal or take over something which is not our own. We are not criminals or thieves. We are humans who seek a safe shelter after we have lost hope that our houses will be rebuilt,” said Bassam Dardouna, 46, head of a 15-member household, as he stood in the middle of an unfinished apartment.
Photo IRIN Suhair Karam: The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) says 222,000 children are enrolled in its schools in Gaza.
Gaza City, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) – The quality of life, the economy and food security for Palestinians living in Gaza have been severely impaired by Israel’s strict four-year blockade, according to the UN.
Israel says its closure regime is designed to protect Israeli citizens from attacks by militants in Gaza. Hamas, the ruling group in Gaza, says Israel’s blockade is aimed at undermining its rule.
On 13 July, the Israeli Knesset voted by a large margin to strip the parliamentary privileges of Haneen Zoabi, a member of the Palestinian Israeli party Balad. The measure was a punishment for Zoabi’s participation in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. As described in the Israeli daily Haaretz, during the raging debate, Member of Knesset (MK) Anasatassia Michaeli rushed toward Zoabi and handed her a mock Iranian passport with Zoabi’s photo on it.
“Ms. Zoabi, I take your loyalty to Iran seriously and I suggest you contact Ahmadinejad and ask him to give you an Iranian diplomatic passport that will assist you with all your diplomatic incitement tours, because your Israeli passport will be revoked this evening,” said Michaeli, who is a member of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s explicitly anti-Arab Yisrael Beiteinu party (“Knesset revokes Arab MK Zuabi’s privileges over Gaza flotilla,” 13 July 2010).
Charles C. Boycott seems to have become a household word because of his strong sense of duty to his employer. An Englishman and former British soldier, Boycott was the estate agent of the Earl of Erne in County Mayo, Ireland. The earl was one of the absentee landowners who as a group held most of the land in Ireland. Boycott was chosen in the fall of 1880 to be the test case for a new policy advocated by Charles Parnell, an Irish politician who wanted land reform.
Any landlord who would not charge lower rents or any tenant who took over the farm of an evicted tenant would be given the complete cold shoulder by Parnell’s supporters. Boycott refused to charge lower rents and ejected his tenants. At this point members of Parnell’s Irish Land League stepped in, and Boycott and his family found themselves isolated without servants, farmhands, service in stores, or mail delivery.
(Cairo) Gaza Freedom Marchers approved today a declaration aimed at accelerating the global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli Apartheid.
Roughly 1400 activists from 43 countries converged in Cairo on their way to Gaza to join with Palestinians marching to break Israel’s illegal siege. They were prevented from entering Gaza by the Egyptian authorities.
As a result, the Freedom Marchers remained in Cairo. They staged a series of nonviolent actions aimed at pressuring the international community to end the siege as one step in the larger struggle to secure justice for Palestinians throughout historic Palestine.
Did you know that the Gaza Freedom March — a group of over 1300 peace activists from 43 countries — is protesting the continued siege of Gaza, on the anniversary of the brutal Israeli assault that killed over a thousand people last year? (There is also a separate effort to bring a convoy of relief aid to the Gazans, under the auspices of the group Viva Palestina).
Did you know that the Freedom March is now stuck in Cairo, because the Egyptian government has denied them permission to travel to Gaza? The Mubarak regime has its own issues with Hamas, and it is also dependent on U.S. economic and military aid. Israel and the United States don’t want the adverse publicity that the Freedom March might generate and are perfectly content to let the Gazans suffer, so needless to say Washington isn’t putting any pressure on Egypt to let the convoy through.
