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.

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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.

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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JERUSALEM: The Israeli army on Monday said it will not press charges against officers who ordered the use of cluster bombs during last year’s war in Lebanon, brushing off international criticism that the weapons unnecessarily put Lebanese civilians at risk.

Announcing the results of a more than year-long probe, the army said investigators determined Israel’s use of cluster bombs was a “concrete military necessity” and did not violate international humanitarian law. Lebanese officials accused the army of covering up war crimes.

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Increasingly, Israel is handing over its ‘Judaisation’ project to private firms
– leading to a corrosion of accountability…

For less than four dollars an hour, the Jewish teenagers removed furniture, clothes, kitchenware and toys from the homes and loaded them on to trucks. As they worked diligently alongside the many policemen who had come to secure the destruction of 30 houses in two unrecognised Bedouin villages, Bedouin teenagers stood by watching their homes being emptied.

When all the belongings had been removed, the bulldozers rapidly destroyed the homes. All those present, Jews and Bedouins, were Israeli citizens; together they learned an important lesson in the discrimination characterising civic life in the Jewish state.

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Palestinian medical sources reported on Tuesday that six Palestinians have been killed and 19 others wounded, during an Israeli army ground offensive on southern Gaza Strip today.

Dr. Moa’wiya Abu Hasanin, chief of emergency room of the health ministry, told the IMEMC that a number of the wounded had to undergo surgery to amputate limbs and that majority of those killed had burns all over their bodies.

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For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them.

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