Qualified as a “war crime” by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and illegal “collective punishment” by the European Union and international agencies, the humanitarian and political crisis created by Israel’s five-day hermetic seal on Gaza is taking a toll not only on the 1.5 million inhabitants of the impoverished coastal strip. Damaged “beyond repair”, according to several Palestinians speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly from Rafah, is the image of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is being widely blamed for “turning a blind eye to the misery of his own people in Gaza” while continuing to engage in talks with Israel on peace.

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ZAWTAR WEST, 22 January: Deminers clearing Israeli-dropped cluster bombs in south Lebanon are turning up an average of 10 new sites per month, while Israel continues to ignore requests for data that would assist clearing the estimated one million unexploded bomblets, which continue to kill and maim civilians and decimate rural livelihoods. A single cluster bomb can disperse hundreds of bomblets.

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Last night I received a text message from my dear friend Fida: “It’s coming down — it’s coming down!” she declared ecstatically. “Laila! The Palestinians destroyed [the] Rafah wall, all of it. All of it not part of it! Your sister, Fida.”

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bring banners, signs, placards, noise-makers…

FRIDAY, JANUARY 25th, 2pm
corner of Maisonneuve & Mackay
ends at Square Phillips
(metro Guy-Concordia)
Montreal, Quebec

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Cities across Canada and around the world are participating in a global week of action against Israeli apartheid from 3 to 10 February. Israeli Apartheid Week, initiated at the grassroots level in Palestine, is now in its fourth consecutive year. In 2008, Israeli Apartheid Week occurs during 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.

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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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Lebanon ended the year much as it had begun, in political limbo. In November 2006, six ministers’ resignations paralysed the government and crystallised the two-year-old split between government loyalists and the opposition. A year later, president Emile Lahoud’s term ended without a successor, leaving a dangerous vacuum at the top. As the year drew to a close, it looked as though Lebanon would drift rudderless until either fractious politicians resolved their power struggle, or frustrations spread to the streets.

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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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