On December 14, I arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel to carry out my UN role as special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.

I was leading a mission that had intended to visit the West Bank and Gaza to prepare a report on Israel’s compliance with human rights standards and international humanitarian law. Meetings had been scheduled on an hourly basis during the six days, starting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, the following day.

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Interview with Sergio Yahni of the Alternative Information Center, by Stefan Christoff.

Photo: Active Stills. Palestinians protest against Israel’s apartheid wall.

U.S.-backed negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel continue with little concrete results, as political promises from the U.S. administration to establish an independent Palestinian state in 2008 are distant from the reality on the ground. On the street level in both Israel and Palestine popular opinion expresses increasing political frustration towards the ongoing ‘peace process’.

Palestinian political prisoners are a key issue to the ongoing conflict, as Israel continues to imprison an estimated seven-thousand Palestinian prisoners. Israel released around two-hundred prisoners last week in an attempt to boost waning political support for the Palestinian Authority, while thousand more remain behind bars many held without trail under the Israeli policy of ‘administrative detention’.

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MONDAY DECEMBER 15th 12h00 – 14h00
live broadcast on CKUT Radio, 90.3fm
tune-in globally via live stream at www.ckut.ca

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Israel’s siege on Gaza, now in its 19th month, has wreaked havoc on all aspects of life and significant attention has been paid in particular to the economic consequences of border closures and blockade. However, an overlooked epidemic threatens the social and familial ties that bond the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Living under a constant state of crisis in which their livelihoods have been denied, the people of Gaza’s once exemplary resilience and determination are giving way to an unfathomable sea of depression and psychological illnesses.

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Photo: Palestinians sit on Gaza wall after brief liberation from confinement in 2008.

AMMAN: Gaza faces a humanitarian “catastrophe” if Israel continues to prevent aid reaching the territory by blocking crossing points, the head of the main U.N. aid agency for the Palestinians said on Friday.

Karen AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the human toll of this month’s sealing of Gaza’s goods crossings was the gravest since the early days of a Palestinian uprising eight years ago.

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United States President-elect Barack Obama’s election victory has revived hopes that stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations could finally lead to a two-state solution. Few new presidents have been greeted with such optimism and associated high expectations.

However, the chances for progress depend on more than a new American president. There are several interrelated factors: US engagement, the availability of a viable peace agreement, Israeli and Palestinian internal politics and the broader international situation.

An examination of these factors indicates that the optimism is unjustified and that President Obama will not be more successful in bringing about a two-state solution to the conflict. This does not however mean that the situation will remain static or that those pursuing a just peace have no recourse for action.

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within the ongoing cultural series uniting artists in Montreal against Israeli Apartheid.

SUNDAY DECEMBER 7th 2008
8pm. 5-10$
La Sala Rossa, 4848 St. Laurent
Montreal, Quebec

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The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is deeply concerned over continued policies of collective punishment imposed by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip. These policies have included ban on delivery of food supplies and basic goods, including energy fuel required for electricity generation, grains and wheat. Following the halt of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip in the past six days, more than 30 percent of the population of Gaza was in complete darkness last night, and people lined up in front of bakeries to buy flour and bread. Although IOF allowed the delivery of 427,410 liters of energy fuel this morning, which is enough to operate Gaza’s power plant for a single day, PCHR in concerned that humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip may further deteriorate.

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Photo: Israeli soldier holds Palestinian IDs at checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.

During this year’s U.S. presidential election campaign, there was almost no mention made of Israel and the Palestinians by either of the major candidates. That is, until the waning days of the race, when John McCain made a last-ditch attempt to cast aspersions upon Barack Obama by highlighting a connection to respected Palestinian-American academic and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. “It was shameful for them to try and paint Professor Khalidi as anything but an esteemed scholar and academic,” says lawyer and Palestinian-American activist Noura Erakat. “It was reprehensible.”

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A former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has told the BBC she was taken aback by the “terrible” conditions in Gaza on a recent visit.

Mrs Robinson said it was “almost unbelievable” that the world did not care about what she called “a shocking violation of so many human rights”.

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