Ma’an news, June 8th, 2009

Photo: Israeli fence around Qalandia check-point.

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Under pressure from pro-Palestine campaigners, a French company is poised to withdraw from the controversial Jerusalem Light Rail project that links the city center to illegal West Bank settlements.

The company Veolia, which was supposed to operate the transport system after its construction, is now abandoning the project and also seeking to sell its 5% stake in Citypass light rail consortium, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

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guardian.co.uk, by Ahdaf Soueif, Friday 5 June 2009.

Photo: Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Egypt.

This is hard. It’s hard because we so need to believe that Obama is about change, that he’s wise, that he’s good, that he has the interests of the world – rather than just the interests of the United States – at heart.

The 3,500 invited guests were told they’d have to be in their places by 10.30. But Obama would speak at one. An odd time for everyone, it would seem: for us in Cairo, where the cool of the evening is the preferred time for any event, and for people in America, who wouldn’t yet have woken up. I dress with my eye on the television screen: the loop of Obama touching cheeks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, his hand resting for a companionable minute on the old monarch’s arm. Just before I leave the house I glimpse the prancing horses that make up part of Obama’s procession into Cairo.

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Ma’an news, June 5th, 2009.

Photo: Marco Baroncini. Israeli soldier shooting rubber coated steel bullets.

Bethlehem – Ma’an – A Palestinian demonstrator was killed and another injured after Israeli forces opened fire at an anti-wall rally in the West Bank village of Ni’lin on Friday.

The slain Palestinian was identified as Yousef Akel Sadiq Srour, 36, who was shot in the chest with live fire, according to medics at the scene.

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Vue news, by Bryan Birtles, June 4th, 2009.

Photo: ActiveStills. Palestinian resting after protest in Nil’in, Palestine.

In a somewhat stunning reminder of the way the globalization of commerce has connected the whole world in recent decades, two Canadian companies are being accused of war crimes and are being sued in Canada by the village of Bil’in, located in Palestine’s occupied West Bank.

Green Park and Green Mount International, two Québec-based construction companies, are facing accusations that their construction efforts in the occupied territories violate international law and can be considered war crimes. Violating article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—which states, in part, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”—Green Park and Green Mount are building settlements on behalf of Israel, for Israeli civilians on land that belongs to Palestinians.

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interview with Mohammed Khatib of the Bil’in popular committee by Stefan Christoff

Photo: ActiveStills. Protest against apartheid wall in Bil’in, Palestine.

In April 2009 an Israeli soldier shot a high-velocity teargas canister at Palestinian activist Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme at close range during a protest against the Israeli wall in Bil’in.

Minutes after the shot Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme died, the eighteenth Palestinian to die in popular protests against the Israeli wall in Bil’in which have taken place each Friday for over four years.

Israel’s wall surrounds Bil’in residents, cutting the Palestinian villagers from large sections of their farms lands and olive groves, while Israel continue to construct settlements on lands belonging to the Palestinian municipality.

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International Middle East Media Center report by Katherine Orwell, May 29th, 2009.

Photo: ActiveStills. Protest against the Israeli apartheid wall in West Bank.

Residents of Bil’in, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah marched on Friday after midday prayer in the weekly protest. They were joined by international and Israelis activists.

Demonstrators marched through the village towards the wall waving Palestinian flags, to protest the theft and destruction of around 60 percent of the village lands.

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Ma’an News Agency. May 28th, 2009.

Photo: Israeli bomb exploding over the Gaza, Strip.

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israel repeatedly violated the laws of war during its assault on Gaza last winter, a new report from Amnesty International charges.

“Israeli forces repeatedly breached the laws of war, including by carrying out direct attacks on civilians and civilian buildings and attacks targeting Palestinian militants that caused a disproportionate toll among civilians,” the group said in its annual report on the state of human rights worldwide.

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Matt Kennard and Wilson Dizard, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 May 2009.

Photo: ActiveStills. Palestinian youth with slingshot in Bil’in, Palestine.

Ramallah is tired. The feeling you get walking around the streets here is that the Palestinians are weary of the struggle against the incremental destruction of their homeland, happening right now while the world looks the other way. You hear things like, “Our struggle has been long and it has got us nowhere”. And people ask how the world can stand by while the Israelis annex more land. It’s a good question.

In one village the flame of non-violent resistance still burns. Last week, we went to the weekly demonstration against the annexation wall in Bil’in, where it cuts deep into the farmland of this old Palestinian village and the Green Line (the internationally recognised border of Israel-Palestine). Since Israel started building the wall here in 2005 (stealing about 60% of the village’s land) the people of Bil’in have been inventively and non-violently resisting.

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John Halaka show at the Jerusalem Fund, DC.

Photo: John Halaka art work on land and resistance.

John Halaka’s drawings Landscapes of Desire are inspired by the ruins of Palestinian villages and homes that were destroyed by Israel during and after the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The images compel the viewer to reflect on the unrelenting effort by the Jewish State to annihilate a culture that refuses to disappear and an indigenous people that refuse to go away. The ruins of stone homes from destroyed Palestinian villages such as Kafr Bir’im, Lifta and Al-Bassa, poetically represented in Halaka’s drawings, are a declaration that in the face of looming cultural annihilation, the persistence of memory is a crucial act of resistance.

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Al Jazeera by Ayman Mohyeldin in Gaza.

Photo: Palestinian fisherman on the beach in Gaza Strip.

Every day, as the sun sets on the coast of Gaza, people make their way to the coffee shop-lined beaches and the pot-holed streets that run parallel to its coastline.

On the terrace of the famed Al Deira Hotel, patrons jostle for position, sipping sweet Arabic coffee as the sounds of legendary Arab musicians delicately waft through the air, mingling with the aroma of flavoured tobacco.

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