Monday Oct. 26 2009 Reuters by Nidal al-Mughrabi.

Photo: Displaced Palestinian youth in Gaza Strip winter 2009.

Gaza, Oct 26 – Gaza schools damaged by Israeli bombing will be exposed to the cold and rain this winter unless Israel relaxes its blockade to permit the import of windows, doors and building materials, officials said.

Officials of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Gaza’s Education Ministry say thousands of pupils face “darkness and cold” this winter in poorly lit and sparsely furnished schoolrooms.

Ministry spokesman Khaled Radi said more than 170 schools that suffered some damaged in the three-week Israeli offensive from Dec. 27 to Jan. 18 had not yet been repaired.

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Sarah Irving, Electronic Intifada 26 October 2009.

Photo: Nanjing subway station, Shanghai, China.

George Habash, the late leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), called China Palestine’s “best friend.” Indeed, he was on an official PFLP visit to China when the conflict between Palestinian forces and the Hashemite Kingdom erupted in Jordan in 1970, the events later known as “Black September.”

Habash had good reason to appreciate China’s friendship at the time. According to Dr. Yukiko Miyagi of the UK-based Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW), one characteristic of the People’s Republic’s policy toward the Arab states and political movements in the 1960s was high-profile support for the Palestinian liberation movement.

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photo essay by Valérian Mazataud

Photo: Valérian Mazataud. Israeli occupation forces launch teargas at protests, Nil’in.

Palestinian protests in opposition to Israel’s ‘separation barrier’ or apartheid wall have spread across the West Bank in recent years, as popular protest committees have formed in multiple cities, many holding weekly demonstrations as in Bil’in and Nil’in villages.

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Download report from Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

Photo: Valerian Mazataud Child at protests in Bil’in, Palestine.

It has been five years since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its advisory opinion on the Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory – where they held in a unanimous opinion that it was illegal and should be dismantled. No significant advance in the situation on the ground has been achieved, and the Wall construction continues relentlessly. Instead, since the Court started its hearings in February 2004, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have intensified repression of the affected villages struggling against the Wall, killing the first activists.

The gaze of the international community must now turn not only to the illegality and injustice of the Wall, but also to the plight of those still attempting to resist its construction. In villages across the West Bank, local residents have formed committees and taken on a campaign of mass popular resistance to the Wall, engaging in weekly, and even daily, demonstrations. These communities have faced a staggering level of repression and violence from the Israeli authorities. It is the aim of this report to investigate that repression and to determine its true extent and nature.

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press release, Saturday, October 31st, 2009.

Photo: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign graphic.

Montreal, October 31 – On the scariest day of the year, members of Middle East solidarity groups Tadamon, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) and the Québec BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Committee will be demanding that the Bay take its creepiest product, Ahava Dead Sea cosmetics, off its shelves.

Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories (www.ahava.co.il) is a privately held Israeli cosmetics company that manufactures products using minerals and mud from the Dead Sea. Ahava products are widely available in high-end department stores and pharmacies throughout the United States, Europe and Canada. But Ahava is hiding the ugly truth — its products are derived from Palestinian natural resources stolen from the occupied West Bank and are manufactured in the illegal West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Shalem. Ahava’s corporate practices violate international law.

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Al Jazeera Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

Photo: Dendoune Nadir. Palestinian Sharihan Hannoun evicted from East Jerusalem

Israeli authorities have torn down several Palestinian houses in occupied east Jerusalem, defying international calls to halt the demolitions in the disputed city.

Gidi Schmerling, a Jerusalem municipality spokesman, said the houses in the Shuafat, Zur Baher, Silwan and Jabel Mukabar neighbourhoods were pulled down on Tuesday because they had been built illegally.

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Report November 30th, 2009. Bil’in Popular Committee

Photo: Valerian Mazataud Protests in Bil’in, Palestine.

Adeeb Abu Rahmah was arrested on 10 July this year, and is still held in custody for taking part in organizing the village’s demonstrations. Demonstrators wore masks of his face and called for his release.

Two injured and several demonstrators suffered from tear gas inhalation from canisters thrown at them by the Israeli occupation soldiers in their attempt to suppress the weekly protest of Bil’in citizens and solidarity groups.

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photo essay by Valerian Mazataud

Photo: Valerian Mazataud. Palestinians in Bil’in raise Palestinian flag at weekly protest.

Bil’in village in Palestine holds protests every Friday in opposition to the Israeli apartheid wall, which cuts directly through Bil’in’s agricultural territory, effectively annexing over fifty percent of the village lands.

Every week villagers from Bil’in, backed by international and Israeli activists, gather to protest the Israeli ‘separation wall’, a popular protest ritual that has made international headlines globally, Protests in Bil’in have attracted thousands of international activists to join the Palestinian-lead protests, including celebrated South African anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu.

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Inter Press Service, Mel Frykberg, 28 October 2009

Photo: Palestinian activist confronts Israeli occupation solider at Bil’in weekly protest

Jerusalem – Israeli authorities are increasingly targeting and intimidating nonviolent Palestinian grassroots activists involved in anti-occupation activities who are drawing increased support from the international community.

Several weeks ago masked Israeli soldiers stormed the home of Ehab Jallad from The Jerusalem Popular Committee for the Celebration of Jerusalem as the Capital of Arab Culture for 2009.

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interview with Lebanese activist Natalie Abou Shakra by Stefan Christoff

Photo: Zoriah (c) Destruction in Gaza after Israeli bombing winter 2009.

Politicians and activists across the Middle East, from Beirut, to Casablanca, express open solidarity with the Palestinian people, however not often do social activists make the direct trip to Gaza.

In 2008 Lebanese activist Natalie Abou Shakra joined the Free Gaza movement, traveling to Gaza on the movement’s SS Dignity, which broke the Israeli siege arriving on the shores of the Gaza Strip in 2008 with medical and humanitarian aid in open defiance of Israel’s military blockade on Gaza.

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