“We grow on our roof because we are farmers but have no land now,” says Moatassan Hamad, 21, from Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.
“Our family is large and thankfully what we grow feeds us,” he says. They grow a variety of staple vegetables.
Today’s demonstration in Bil’in against the Apartheid wall, organized by the Popular Committee of Bil’in, was joined by many local residents, Israeli activists as well as many internationals. As the group moved peacefully towards the Apartheid wall, they chanted to “Freedom to all Palestinian Political Prisoners”. Demonstrators carrying the Palestinian flag crossed through a gate to confront the awaiting soldiers with a simple question, “What are you doing here?”
Six women and their children from the village of Araba, northern West Bank, were detained by Israeli troops on Tuesday evening.
The women and their children were collecting grab leaves from their lands close to the Mabo Do Than settlement built on villagers’ lands. Troops detained them, then moved them to a military site inside the settlement and kept them there until Wednesday at dawn.
Report from United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), September 2009.
Photo: Palestinian youth walking down Israeli military Erez checkpoint in Gaza Strip.
The underground water supplies, upon which 1.5 million Palestinians depend for agricultural and drinking water, are in danger of collapse as a result of years of over-use and contamination that have been exacerbated by the recent conflict.
A report released today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on the environmental condition of the Gaza Strip following the hostilities, calls for the aquifer to be “rested” and alternative water sources found.
Photo: Masser: Golan Heights, Israeli-occupied Syria, south of Shebaa Farms.
BEIRUT: The politics of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, a rugged sliver of mountainside wedged between Lebanon, Israel and Syria, have long overshadowed what some Lebanese environmentalists call “the real issue” of the disputed area: its water resources. Now activists are calling for hydro-diplomacy to take precedence over political maneuvering as the most effective solution to one of the key stumbling blocks to Middle East peace.
“Rising Temperatures Rising Tensions,” a report published in June by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, considers water to be a major trigger for conflict in the Middle East, the world’s most water scarce region.
An economic association agreement between the European Union and Israel lends international political legitimacy to the Israeli government, while providing a critical export market for Israeli goods and products, an essential element to Israel’s international trade policy.
Growing debate is occurring within Europe concerning the E.U.-Israel agreement in the face of Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian land and systemic abuses of Palestinian human rights as documented by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International. A critical provision within the economic agreement stipulates that both the E.U. and Israel respect human rights, a provision that has clearly been ignored in the continuation of the agreement, despite wide-spread abuses of Palestinian human rights by Israel.
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.
Standing on a hill at the edge of Idhna with the displaced farmers Muhammad Talab and Muhammad Ibrahim Natah, the only visible remnants of their destroyed village is a patch of white dust just on the other side of Israel’s wall. Despite being part of the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military destroyed the 267-person farming village of tents and tin houses west of Hebron on October 29 and allegedly ordered villagers to relocate to Idhna.
(BEIRUT/PARIS: 13 May 2007): As Lebanon heads down the fast track to trade liberalisation, some commentators, including UK-based charity Oxfam, are predicting a devastating impact on small-holder farmers. Unable even to sell produce on the Lebanese market let alone for export, these farmers are painfully unprepared to compete with subsidised imports. Yet little is being done to fortify the agricultural industry as the fruits of major bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) and liberalising reforms loom on the near horizon.
By Rami Zurayk, 1 May 2007, Scoop
Much of the land in South Lebanon has remained unfarmed this year. In spite of the active de-mining efforts deployed by the UN and by local NGOs, it has been difficult to plough, sow and harvest, as only a fraction of the million and a half Israeli cluster bombs have been removed. These bombs were sown by the Israelis in August 2006, in the last 72 hours of the war, and after a cease fire was agreed upon in the UN Security Council. Now why would the Israelis do something like that? (…اكثر)
