Press Release: Al-Haq, March 30th, 2007

Al-Haq takes the occasion of Land Day to highlight the intrinsic link between land and the exercise of the right to self-determination. Over nearly 40 years of occupation, Israel’s pervasive policies of land expropriation and confiscation, settlement construction and movement restrictions have severely damaged the access of the Palestinian people to their land in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), thereby rendering the meaningful exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination all but impossible.

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Rafeef Ziadah, The Electronic Intifada, 11 March 2007

A refugee sits near the fence of Rweished camp, 50 km off the Jordanian / Iraqi border.

On the border between Iraq/Jordan and Iraq/Syria today live hundreds of Palestinian families who fled the US war to find themselves stranded in no-mans land. These families live in tents, in squalor, with little certainty or hope for the future, like their parents and grandparents did after their expulsion from their own homeland in the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) by the Israelis. The Al-Hol, Al-Tanaf, Al-Ruweished and Al-Walid refugee camps in the Iraqi desert are examples of the on-going Nakba that Palestinian refugees face. The fate of the 34,000 Palestinian refugees who once lived in Iraq can be added to the many tragic stories of the US invasion and occupation of that country.

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Nafez Zouk of Tadamon!, Published in the McGill Daily.

Palestinian Refugees Displaced in 1948. Photo: Palestine Remembered

In a low profile lecture at the Faculty of Law at McGill University last Thursday, Irwin Cotler articulated a biased, view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and presented a vision for its future that not only fails to address the root causes of the conflict, but intentionally distorts them.

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OCHA: U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Occupied Palestine

February, 28th 2007: At approximately 02:30 on 28 February, a large force of IDF soldiers and Israeli Border Police re-entered Nablus. This latest incursion marks the continuation of Operation “Hot Winter”, the largest military incursion in three years in Nablus city.

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Campagne Citoyenne Palestinienne contre le Mur de l’Apartheid

À l’occasion de l’anniversaire de la Réclamation Territoriale des Six Nations, nous vous exprimons notre solidarité ainsi qu’à tous ceux qui défendent aujourd’hui leur terre et leur existence contre la spoliation et la colonisation.

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By Yoav Stern, Haaretz.

A proposed constitution written by the Israeli Arab advocacy center, Adalah, states that Arab Knesset members will be able to bring about the disqualification of bills that impinge on the rights of Arabs, and classifies the State of Israel as a “bilingual and multicultural” country rather than a Jewish state.

The proposal, entitled “The Democratic Constitution,” also calls for majority and minority groups to split control of the government in such a way that will strengthen the Arab minority on issues relating to the character of the state.

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By Alan Johnston, BBC News, Gaza

A UN human rights envoy has compared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to elements of apartheid.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur, John Dugard, describes the regime as being designed to dominate and systematically oppress the occupied population.

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Ilan Pappé – The Electronic Intifada

Sur ce sujet, j’ai affirmé, il n’y a pas très longtemps, qu’Israel menait une politique de génocide dans la Bande de Gaza. J’ai beaucoup hésité avant d’utiliser ce terme très accusateur mais j’ai décidé de l’adopter.

En effet, les réponses que j’ai reçues, y compris de certains activistes des droits de l’homme, indiquaient un certain malaise quant à l’utilisation d’un tel terme.

J’ai été, pendant un moment, enclin à revoir le terme, mais j’ai recommencé à l’utiliser aujourd’hui avec encore plus de convictions : c’est la seule façon appropriée de décrire ce que fait l’armée israélienne dans la bande de Gaza.

Le 28 décembre 2006, l’organisation des Droits de l’Homme israélienne B’Tselem a publié son rapport annuel sur les atrocités israéliennes dans les territoires occupés. Les forces israéliennes ont tué l’année dernière 660 citoyens. Le nombre de Palestiniens tués par Israel a triplé l’année dernière par rapport à l’année précédente (environ 200).

Selon B’Tselem, les Israéliens ont tué 140 enfants au cours de l’année dernière. La plupart des tués l’ont été dans la Bande de Gaza, où les forces israéliennes ont démoli près de 300 maisons et tué des familles entières. Cela signifie que depuis 2000, les forces israéliennes ont tué près de 4000 Palestiniens, dont la moitié étaient des enfants et fait plus de 20.000 blessés. B’Tselem est une organisation conservatrice, et les chiffres pourraient être plus élevés. Mais il ne n’agit pas seulement d’une escalade des meurtres intentionnels, cela concerne la tendance et la stratégie.
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What the Canadian Foreign Minister did not see or discuss during his visit

GAZA CITY, GAZA: Despite the impression cast by corporate news coverage, there is never anything like “calm” here in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The casualty count for 2006 released by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports that Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, while 17 Israeli civilians were killed, 13 of them in the West Bank. The violence is often spectacular, as during the summer and fall siege operations in Gaza that killed more than 450 Palestinians under withering aerial bombardment, artillery barrages and two major ground invasions. But, as an unusually frank headline in the current edition of the Economist rightly stated, “It’s the little things that make an occupation.”

When Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay visited Israel this week, it was these “little things” that he missed–like the more than 530 fixed checkpoints and roadblocks identified in a joint UN-IDF count in the occupied West Bank. These obstacles make simple travel between neighbouring Palestinian villages often impossible, particularly when added to the more than 7,000 “flying checkpoints” that spring up at the whim of the Israeli army, anywhere and at anytime. As the Economist pointed out, “arbitrariness is one of the most crippling features of these rules.”
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