Al Kitab club members (six to 10 people) will meet in a comfortable place (someone’s home, a quiet café, or a room in a public library) once a month to discuss and reflect on a book.
Bethlehem – Ma’an – Under pressure from pro-Palestine campaigners, a French company is poised to withdraw from the controversial Jerusalem Light Rail project that links the city center to illegal West Bank settlements.
The company Veolia, which was supposed to operate the transport system after its construction, is now abandoning the project and also seeking to sell its 5% stake in Citypass light rail consortium, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
This is hard. It’s hard because we so need to believe that Obama is about change, that he’s wise, that he’s good, that he has the interests of the world – rather than just the interests of the United States – at heart.
The 3,500 invited guests were told they’d have to be in their places by 10.30. But Obama would speak at one. An odd time for everyone, it would seem: for us in Cairo, where the cool of the evening is the preferred time for any event, and for people in America, who wouldn’t yet have woken up. I dress with my eye on the television screen: the loop of Obama touching cheeks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, his hand resting for a companionable minute on the old monarch’s arm. Just before I leave the house I glimpse the prancing horses that make up part of Obama’s procession into Cairo.
Bethlehem – Ma’an – A Palestinian demonstrator was killed and another injured after Israeli forces opened fire at an anti-wall rally in the West Bank village of Ni’lin on Friday.
The slain Palestinian was identified as Yousef Akel Sadiq Srour, 36, who was shot in the chest with live fire, according to medics at the scene.
In a somewhat stunning reminder of the way the globalization of commerce has connected the whole world in recent decades, two Canadian companies are being accused of war crimes and are being sued in Canada by the village of Bil’in, located in Palestine’s occupied West Bank.
Green Park and Green Mount International, two Québec-based construction companies, are facing accusations that their construction efforts in the occupied territories violate international law and can be considered war crimes. Violating article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—which states, in part, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”—Green Park and Green Mount are building settlements on behalf of Israel, for Israeli civilians on land that belongs to Palestinians.
