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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First Quebec Social Forum, from August 23rd to 26th, 2007 in Montreal…

Tadamon! Montreal a Workshop
Saturday, August 25th, 11am.
Why challenge the existence of the Canadian list
of “terrorist” organizations? The example of Lebanon.

JERUSALEM: Israel is constructing a road through the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, that will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to travel along it – separately.

There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall wall of concrete patterned to look like Jerusalem stone, an effort at beautification, indicating that the road is meant to be permanent. The Israeli side has various exits. The Palestinian side has few.

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Map: The Palestinian Bantustan Matrix, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

Is it right to declare a state before the state build its economy, its productive bases?

Is it possible for a huge bureaucratic apparatus to last while there is no local productive base to meet its enormous salaries and needs?

Is it possible to achieve freedom without sovereignty?

Is it possible to sustain democracy without independence?

These are the main reservations against Oslo Accords (OA), and against the recent elections of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBG) for the Palestinian Self- Rule (SR), in spite of its technical success.

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Download the report from Ghassan Bannoura of IMEMC from the A-Infos Radio Project.

Listen to a report produced by Ghassan Bannoura of the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) on the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the occupied Palestinian West Bank on Thursday, August 2nd for the first time since Hamas took control of Gaza. It’s the latest in a series of strides Washington has taken to show its support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and to push for Middle East peace talks. On the day of Rice’s visit to the occupied Palestinian territories the Israeli Army carried out several invasions in the West Bank, kidnapping twelve Palestinians.

The battle between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam inside the Nahr al-Bared camp has lasted 40 days so far, resulting in huge destruction and displacing 30,000 people to the other camps. In Ein al-Hilweh, many arguments lead to clashes between armed young men. Some other camps are besieged in an attempt to control human and arms flows to the camps.

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The Lebanese army and internal security forces have arbitrarily detained and physically abused some Palestinian men fleeing the fighting in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, Human Rights Watch said today.

Since Sunday, more than 340 civilians have fled the camp in northern Lebanon, where fighting between the Lebanese army and the armed group Fatah al-Islam has entered its fourth week. The Lebanese army is interrogating many of the men as they leave the camp, and detaining those suspected of supporting or having information about Fatah al-Islam.

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This year’s US State Department annual report on human rights practices in Israel identifies discrimination against Palestinian citizens in most spheres of their lives.

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Beit Arabiya is the name of the home of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh, a family of nine whose home has been demolished four times.

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