The Lebanese government on Wednesday rejected Israel’s call for direct peace negotiations.

“Lebanon’s position is clear to all and there is no place for bilateral negotiations between Lebanon and Israel,” Premier Fouad Siniora’s media office said in a statement late Wednesday. The statement stressed that Lebanese territories occupied by the Jewish state are subject to “UN resolutions that do not require any negotiations.”

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Les Palestiniens, qui subissent les privations quotidiennes dues au siège de l’armée israélienne, sont très durement frappés par la flambée des prix des aliments, qu’ils doivent importer en grande partie.

C’est ce qu’a indiqué le syndicaliste Manawell Abdul-Al, dirigeant de la Fédération générale des syndicats palestiniens (FGSP), hier à La Presse.

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Tyre, Lebanon (AFP): Almost half of the areas in southern Lebanon contaminated with cluster bombs dropped by Israel in 2006 have been cleared, a UN official said on Wednesday.

“Forty three percent of the areas affected by the cluster bombs dropped during the July 2006 war have been cleared”, UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for South Lebanon spokeswoman Dalya Farran said.

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Call to support the first major student union in Quebec or Canada to back
the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel…

Montreal May 2008: Across the world grassroots movements struggling in opposition to Israeli apartheid are marking the 60th year of the Palestinian Nakba (”catastrophe”) – 60 years of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and exile for Palestinians resulting from the creation of the state of Israel.

A grassroots response in opposition to Israeli apartheid is growing throughout the world sparked by an appeal launched by Palestinian civil-society organizations in 2005 for an international campaign directed at the government in Israel, a campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions. This critical campaign is modeled on a successful international campaign similar in nature that played a critical role in bringing an end to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

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Photo: Lebanese woman admits Israeli military destruction in south Lebanon 2006.

A cluster bomb dropped on Centre Block on Parliament Hill could also reach in its spread the East Block, Senate, Supreme Court, Sparks Street pedestrian mall, Ottawa Visitors Center, and parts of the Wellington and Metcalfe thoroughfares. Such is the range, and randomness, of the weapon.

Made up of hundreds of “bomblets” that scatter when a bomb is dropped, cluster bombs not only kill and injure civilians during attacks, but “continue to take life, limb and land from them long after the conflict has ended,” according to the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), a network of over 250 non-government organizations in 70 countries, including Canada, that is calling for a complete end to the use of these weapons.

Such is the case in south Lebanon since the summer war of 2006. The UN estimated that of around four million cluster bomblets dropped by Israel during its war with Hezbollah, up to one million remained unexploded, “contaminating fields, schools, rivers and homes.” These have led to the death or maiming of nearly 200 civilians since the conclusion of the conflict.

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A Tadamon! interview project aiming to highlight progressive voices from the ground in Lebanon on the ongoing conflict, voices independent from major political parties…

Conflict in Lebanon has spread this past week beyond Beirut, to mountain areas above the capital city, to Tripoli in Northern Lebanon. Throughout Lebanon a tense political stand-off remains between the U.S.-backed government lead-by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and a political opposition fronted by the armed Lebanese political party Hezbollah.

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Hezbollah and its allies may have achieved a swift military victory in Beirut and the Druze mountains, but the political battle for Lebanon will be tougher and the consequences long-term, say analysts.

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to student unions and social movements across Quebec and Canada.

Montreal, May 2008 – L’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), a Quebec-wide student union representing over 42 000 students, has passed a resolution to support the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israeli Apartheid. The motion was passed at the ASSÉ annual Congress, held on April 26th and 27th in Montreal. This resolution comes after over a year of consultations and discussions held within local student unions, in collaboration with Tadamon! Montreal, a local social justice collective. ASSÉ now invites all progressive organizations to join and support the call for the boycott campaign, issued by over 170 Palestinian civil society groups.

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Lebanon is currently facing a major political crisis, as armed battles have erupted in multiple districts in Beirut, battles between pro-government forces and the political opposition backed by the Lebanese movement Hezbollah. Currently the Lebanese capital is divided, as opposition forces maintain a hold in West Beirut, having handed control in certain districts to the Lebanese Army, while the western-backed Lebanese government remains in lock down within government buildings.

Today Lebanon’s government has maintained a contested hold on official state power in Lebanon without representation from Hezbollah or other opposition parties for over one year. This week the government announced that Hezbollah’s independent communications network or telephone system operating in Lebanon as illegal, sparking the current crisis. Hezbollah’s independent telephone or communications system is considered to be a critical element to the success of the Lebanese resistance to Israel in successfully halting Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon.

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Bold claims about Middle East peace from
London ring hollow in the empty streets of Gaza.

It is a strange feeling: after working as a productive professional in Gaza for five years, I have become a black market junkie. I make several phone calls a day hunting for fuel for my car, diesel for the electricity generator waiting on standby to power the house, even cigarettes and vitamins. The only way to get hold of these things, to buy life-saving medicines, to purchase the essentials for a life of basic dignity, is through the black market, if at all. Today all Gaza suffers severe water shortages, with the fuel needed to pump and transport water (as well as sewage) dangerously scarce. The few cars seen on Gaza’s mostly empty streets today almost invariably run on used cooking oil due to the lack of diesel.

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