Nahr el-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp located on the Mediterranean coast of Lebanon, near Tripoli, was the setting of massive violence in the conflict between the Lebanese army and the armed faction of Fatah al-Islam, which lasted from the 20th of May to the 4th of September. This conflict ultimately forced 40,000 of the camps’ residents to evacuate against their will. Today, nothing but rubbles remain, the most part of which are inhabitable.
2007 has been a busy and exciting year for the Palestine solidarity movement. While Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert attempt to hide Israel’s crimes behind the lie of ‘peace negotiations’, thousands of individuals and organizations around the world are building a real and effective alternative centered on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid. Here in Toronto, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) has been a proud participant in this global movement. This brief report captures some of our activities over 2007.
Craig Appleby did not take part in the Second Lebanon War. The 36-year-old Briton from Farnham came to Lebanon in September 2007, more than a year after the end of the fighting. A month later he had joined the list of war dead.
An Israeli cluster bomblet, one of hundreds of thousands of bomblets contained in cluster rockets that the Israel Defense Forces fired at Lebanon during the war, blew up in his hands not far from Bint Jbail. Appleby, a British Army veteran who was head of one of the UN cluster munition clearing teams in South Lebanon, was killed instantly. A week earlier, a six-year-old Lebanese boy and a shepherd were also killed by bomblets.
WASHINGTON (AFP): The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.
As two of the authors of a recent document advocating a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli colonial conflict, we intended to generate debate. Predictably, Zionists decried the proclamation as yet another proof of the unwavering devotion of Palestinian – and some radical Israeli – intellectuals to the “destruction of Israel”. Some pro-Palestinian activists accused us of forsaking immediate and critical Palestinian rights in the quest of a “utopian” dream.
Inspired in part by the South African Freedom Charter and the Belfast Agreement, the much humbler One State Declaration, authored by a group of Palestinian, Israeli and international academics and activists, affirms that “the historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status”. It envisages a system of government founded on “the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens”.
On Wednesday afternoon a group of 50 Palestinians, Israelis and international Human Rights activists gathered at Har Homa settlement, known to Palestinians as Abu Ghinim settlement, which is built on land illegally taken by the Israeli army from the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem.
The non-violent action was organized by the Israeli communist party, it came to protest against the expansion of the settlement, which comes weeks after the Annapolis Conference, and is in clear breach of the 2003 USA sponsored Road Map Peace Plan.
Over a month ago, a French documentary, “Liban, Pays des Esclaves,” harshly criticized Lebanese society and the authorities for their treatment of migrant domestic workers. But instead of being outraged by the behavior of their fellow citizens, many Lebanese expressed outrage against the filmmaker who dared to sully their reputation in France. One group even organized a petition against the documentary on Facebook, Lebanon’s latest craze.
Lebanon ended the year much as it had begun, in political limbo. In November 2006, six ministers’ resignations paralysed the government and crystallised the two-year-old split between government loyalists and the opposition. A year later, president Emile Lahoud’s term ended without a successor, leaving a dangerous vacuum at the top. As the year drew to a close, it looked as though Lebanon would drift rudderless until either fractious politicians resolved their power struggle, or frustrations spread to the streets.
Why are feds subsidizing the refurbishment of a park built on razed Palestinian towns?
Ramallah, Palestine: It‚s easy to forget, while soaking up the tranquillity along with happy picnickers under the pine trees, that Canada Park is steeped in a disturbing controversy.
Last night the rains finally arrived in Beit Jala, a small town in the West Bank, one kilometer west of Bethlehem and about eight kilometers south of Jerusalem. Its alluring hills are covered with olive trees, vineyards and apricots. In 1967 Israel confiscated 22 percent of Beit Jala’s land. Now, the construction of Israel’s separation wall is in full swing and will cut off another 45 per cent of Beit Jala’s land. We went to visit the area to feel the impact of the wall and listen to the stories of the farmers who didn’t sell their land and choose to resist the its confiscation.
