To day in Palestine

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PACUSA] Today in Palestine! Monday, 27 July 2009 

Land theft / Settlements

IDF: More than 300,000 settlers in West Bank
As of June 30, the settlements had 304,569 residents, an increase of 2.3 percent since January. Most of the growth was in the most religious communities, including the ultra-Orthodox settlements. Modi’in Ilit gained 1,879 residents, a 4.5 percent increase. Beitar Ilit gained 1,074 residents, a 3.1 percent jump.... The highest growth rates by percentage were in small settlements such as Itamar, Elon Moreh and Kfar Tapuah. [These figures do not include settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which would add anothe 190,000 to the total]
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1103125.html

Sheikh Jarrah residents continue battle
As Obama echoes the numerous international demands for a cease to settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the 37 year battles of Muhammad Sawbagh, Maher Hannoun and other Sheikh Jarrah families continue.... Due the complex and enduring nature of their cases, Maher, with the assistance of internationals, created a website which can be accesses at www.standupforjerusalem.org
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1020

Two-day-old Silwan information center in jeopardy
“We built this place last Sunday, and on Tuesday, the police arrived with orders to knock it down,” said Ahmad Qara’een, as he sat inside the Wadi Hilwah Information Center, a 35-sq.m. covered wooden deck erected by residents of east Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood.
http://palsolidarity.org/2009/07/7849

Orthodox Church: No Israeli settlements on our land
The Israeli Central Court of Jerusalem issued a decision preventing an Israeli settlement company from making use of properties of the Greek Orthodox Church in the old city of Jerusalem. Spokesperson of the Church father Issa Muslih said Sunday that the team of lawyers “saved the Church property from the settlement company,” who made business deals with the deposed Patriarch Irenios I ... Muslih described the Sunday decision as a triumph for the Church’s team of lawyers Rami Mughrabi, Samir Zu’bi, and Renato Barak.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214953

Obama presses Israel to halt plans funded by Rennert
July 27 (Bloomberg) — Renco Group Inc. founder Ira Rennert and bingo entrepreneur Irving Moskowitz are among U.S. donors who have given $25.4 million in five years to build Jewish homes in Arab parts of Jerusalem — the same areas where President Barack Obama is pressing Israel to stop such construction. The American contributions, detailed in Internal Revenue Service records, have gone to organizations such as Ateret Cohanim. The group says it bought at least 45 properties, most in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter, to advance its goal of settling a Jewish majority in the now predominantly Arab Old City.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aJ9nbfeqX2Es

US, Israel inch closer to deal on settlement freeze
U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell arrived in Israel Sunday and met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak as part of an ongoing effort to reach an agreement on construction in the settlements. The two are reportedly close to a deal in which Washington would allow a limited number of projects in advanced stages of construction to be completed, but Israel would freeze all other building for an as-yet undetermined period of time.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1103115.html

Unsettled — In two West Bank settlements, a sign of hope for a deal
MODIIN ILLIT, West Bank — Seen from afar, this fast-growing settlement embodies everything that the Obama administration wants to address through its demand for a freeze on settlement building: it sits on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and, with 45,000 residents and 60 births a week, it is the largest and fastest-growing Jewish community in the West Bank ...But appearances are deceiving. Modiin Illit and its sister community, Beitar Illit, are entirely ultra-Orthodox, a world apart, one of strict religious observance and study. They offer surprising potential for compromise. Unlike settlers who believe they are continuing the historic Zionist mission of reclaiming the Jewish homeland, most ultra-Orthodox do not consider themselves settlers or Zionists and express no commitment to being in the West Bank, so their growth in these settlement towns, situated just inside the pre-1967 boundary, could be redirected westward to within Israel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/world/middleeast/27settlers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

US’s largest Jewish newspaper promotes aliyah without disclosing settlement angle
This week’s NY Jewish Week has a front page article describing the economic recession’s effect on the number of people making aliyah to Israel. A spokesperson for Nefesh B’ Nefesh, the main organization assisting Jewish people making aliyah, says that 4,000 people from North America and England will likely settle in Israel this year, a 25% increase from last year. The author, Stuart Ain, profiles a family and a single individual who have recently moved to Israel, as well as a family that will be moving in August. The glaring omission in the article is a discussion of where these people have decided to, or are planning, to live.
http://mondoweiss.net/2009/07/u-s-s-largest-jewish-newspaper-promotes-aliyah-without-disclosing-settlement-angle.html

Detention / Movement restriction

Report: Israel forces detain four Palestinians
At least four Palestinians were seized by soldiers overnight Sunday, according to Israel’s Channel 10. It was not immediately clear from where they were taken, or if they were suspected of having committed any crimes.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214872

Former PA minister released from Israeli custody
Israel’s Interior Ministry on Sunday issued an order preventing former Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Hatim Abdul Qader from approaching an area in East Jerusalem for 15 days. The former official was detained earlier on Sunday, apparently while trying to block more attacks on a home that had earlier been ransacked by a group of rightist settlers ... Abdul Qader was interrogated for eight hours at an Israeli police station on Salah Ad-Din Street in East Jerusalem before he was transferred to the Russian compound detention center for questioning by Israel’s Shabak intelligence service. He said he refused to answer questions, and was ultimately released for this reason.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214832

Radio show to deliver direct testimony from Palestinians inside Israeli prisons
Bethlehem / PNN - A new program is coming to the airwaves to talk about the reality faced by Palestinian political prisoners within the Israeli prison system ... The Voice of Arabs is a Cairo-based program that is working in cooperation with Bethlehem’s Hossam Society on a broadcast specifically talking about Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centers. Mowaffaq Hamid, Director of Public Relations at Hossam, explained today that an agreement was reached with the Voice of Arabs for a weekly, hour and a half program. Palestinians will be on the air from inside Israeli prisons via mobile phone, in addition to loved ones, legal personalities, rights groups and advocates.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6285&Itemid=

New Israeli committee undermines achievement made by Palestinians through protest in Israeli jails
...Within the past few months the intensity of mistreatment is up, says the prisoners’ ministry, because of a decision made by the Special Committee created by the Israeli government.The director of the information department of the Palestinian prison ministry said today that the occupying administration “has spared no effort to undermine the achievements of the prisoners and their rights, while interfering in both large and small details of the lives of prisoners.” The Ministry of Detainees added that this is done “in order to ensure that their lives are narrow and disrupted, with the prisoners constantly employed in how to cope with a new situation after withdrawing from the last.”
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6270

Kamal Abu T’iema, the latest victim of PA barbarianism
AL-KHALIL, (PIC)— An official source at the King Hussein’s Medical Center in Amman announced Sunday night that Kamal Abu Ti’ema of the Fawwar Refugee camp near al Khalil [Hebron] was in a state of clinical death. Abu T’iema, 46, was transferred to hospital for treatment from a serious stroke he suffered a few months ago as a result of severe torture at the hands of Preventive Security interrogators in al-Khalil.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7Goti7fQneJl%2fMWDbUDAqNAbTX3dCx3QJvaALz3ib%2f8lLitnKsF5jmJHl4MxYbILNZCPu5Tnt2DiZnaORpMvm4E1IEXV4nTZDRTK3d4pGPys%3d

Israeli forces erect flying checkpoint near Sinjel
Israeli forces erected a flying military checkpoint at the main entrance to the central West Bank village of Sinjel, north of Ramallah, stopping hundreds of Palestinian vehicles. Eyewitnesses told Ma’an that soldiers inspected cars very slowly and scrutinized people’s identity cards, causing a heavy traffic jam. After hours, the soldiers withdrew.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214878

Testimony - The day of the Palestinian revolt at Atara checkpoint - the checkpoint that does not exist
[with many photos] In a recent report, Machsom Watch, a group of Israeli women who observe the behavior of Israeli forces at Palestinian checkpoints in the West Bank, have documented a Palestinian civilian mini-revolt during an abusive delay at the Atara/Bir Zeit checkpoint just north of Ramallah on Sunday 12 July.
http://un-truth.com/israel/the-day-of-the-palestinian-revolt-at-atara-checkpoint

Siege

Death toll in Rafah tunnel collapse reaches six
Medics on Monday evening pulled out two more bodies from rubble left behind by a tunnel collapse between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip in Rafah the day before. The death toll officially rose to six after ambulance workers and fireman identified the bodies of Issa Muhammad Al-Qisy, 24, and Tamer Sayyid Saraj, 21. Medics on Monday morning had found three bodies under the collapsed tunnel, said to be caused by a fire set off by leaking fuel on Sunday afternoon ... Two unnamed men who sustained moderate burns were hospitalized, a medical official said. Last Monday two young Gazans were killed and eight others injured when benzene, which was being smuggled through via long pipes, began to leak into the underground area.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214880

Israel permits first Gaza benzene transfer in ten months
A limited amount of diesel and benzene for use in civilian cars was purchased from Israel and will be allowed into Gaza on Monday, the first time since October 2008 that such a transfer has been permitted, an official said. Mahmoud Al-Khizindar, deputy chairman of the Union of Gas Station Owners, told Ma‘an that Israeli authorities requested information on needed quantities of fuel and gas, and that the Palestinians responded such needs were being taken care of through the smuggling tunnels. In an apparent attempt to offset the Egypt-Gaza fuel black market, Israel agreed to allow its companies to sell some fuel to Gaza. According to Al-Khizindar, Israel will permit sales of about 800,000 liters of diesel and 75,000 liters of benzene per week, which is the same limited quantity that had been allowed before October 2008.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214957

Israel to open all Gaza crossings on Monday
As-Sarraj noted that the Kerem Shalom crossing would be opened to allow 76 truckloads, one of which is aid, while 57 others will carry commercial products and 18 for the agricultural sector. He added that the Karni and Nahal Oz crossings would be opened, as well. Recent food and fuel shipments into the Strip have been edging close to Israel’s pre-war blockade levels, which saw less than a bare of minimum supplies entering, following the launch of projectiles by Gaza factions.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214837

Eight US Congress members enter Gaza Strip
A delegation of eight US congressmen and women entered the Gaza Strip on Monday morning through the Erez crossing point between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip ... Sha’ath asserted that the delegation would visit destroyed buildings in the Strip and meet the director of UN operations in Gaza, John Ging, before they leave.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214974

Testimony - From Gaza with love - homeward bound
By Mona El-Farra. I now see a different Gaza, and it is not the Gaza I have known, it is like a city after an earthquake ... I thought it might be a good idea to wait for the arrival of the delegation of US citizens who were due to cross the border. In the meantime, I met some dear friends and workmates who came to say hello. All of them were loaded with war stories and the panic they faced during the attacks against Gaza. One friend who was a political prisoner, who spent 15 years in the Israeli jails said to me, "I never felt afraid of anything there like the fear I felt this time."
http://fromgaza.blogspot.com/2009/07/homeward-bound.html

Testimony - Hope lives in Gaza despite siege, desperation, and anger
By Antony Loewenstein. Ever since my arrival in Gaza, the blockaded strip has confounded my expectations, provoked me in ways I have rarely felt, angered and frustrated me and also given me hope (a large collection of my photos are here).
http://mondoweiss.net/2009/07/hope-lives-in-gaza-despite-siege-desperation-and-anger.html

Don’t miss these photographs - Portraits of survival - by Asim Rafiqui
This, I realized, was what I could add. Not the familiar scenes of destruction in Gaza but the steadfast faces of survival. To capture each intimate portrait required that I spend just a little more time with people, that I hear a bit more about their lives, look more deeply at them. And find the story of Gaza in their faces.
http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2009/summer/rafiqui-portraits-survival/

Political developments

Abbas aide to step down from Fatah leadership
A top aide to President Mahmoud Abbas, At-Tayyib Abdul Rahim, has decided not to stand for election to Fatah’s Central Committee, sources close to him say. Fatah will elect new leadership at a conference that begins on 4 August in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. It is the party’s first general congress in more than a decade.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214643

Hamas says elections won’t be on time
Hamas doubts legislative and presidential elections will be held on 25 January 2010, leader Salah Al-Bardawil said on Monday. There are no signs of a possible conciliation agreement with Fatah, Al-Bardawil said, noting that the last round of talks was not successful. With no conciliation, he said, "how can we hold fair elections?" According to earlier Hamas statements, legislative and Presidential elections should have been held simultaneously in January 2009.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214910

Barak to Gates: All options viable on Iran
Defense minister meets American counterpart in Jerusalem to discuss Iranian nuclear threat. ’We prefer to defend ourselves independently,’ Barak states. Gates says, ’We will continue to ensure that Israel has the most advanced weapons for its national defense’
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3752686,00.html

Obama envoy: Arab-Israeli normalization will come
After talks with Mubarak, Mitchell says he plans to encourage Arab leaders to ’take genuine steps toward normalization’ of ties with Israel; Arab League chief Moussa: No Arab steps before settlement building halted
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3752981,00.html

Clinton says Israel should be patient on Iran
US secretary of state says she hopes Jewish state understands American attempts to talk to Islamic republic is a better approach than military strike, adds Tehran’s nuclear pursuit is ’futile’
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3752379,00.html

War Crimes

Israel prepares ’defense brief’ ahead of UN Gaza reports
A group of legal experts from the Foreign Ministry is writing a defense brief for the government in advance of two harsh reports on Operation Cast Lead expected to be released soon ... Legal experts in the Foreign Ministry told the special ministerial committee following suits against Israeli public figures abroad and various reports on Operation Cast Lead that they believe the release of the two UN reports could lead to legal proceedings against Israel or individual Israeli public figures in the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1103109.html

Other news

Nablus festival stage torched as Israeli patrols oust local forces
Unidentified armed arsonists set fire to the Shopping Festival main stage under the watch of Israeli troops patrolling Nablus’ city center Monday before dawn. The Israeli security arrangement in the West Bank sees Palestinian police and security forces evacuate the city center when Israel announces its own security patrols of the area. On Monday morning Israeli troops invaded the city, so local police were unable to prevent the torching of the festival stage, member of the shopping festival committee Taysir Nasrullah reported.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=215018

For the first time in Palestine: A deaf student obtains the ’Tawjihi’ certificate
Palestinian Red Crescent Society: Al-Bireh: Asma’a Anqawi from the PRCS Total Communication School sat for and obtained the Palestinian High School Certificate "Tawjihi" with a general average of 76.2% (Literary Stream), becoming the first deaf student ever to pass the exam and to obtain the Tawjihi certificate in Palestine. Based on the right of deaf students to education, Asma’a sat for the Tawjihi exams hoping to succeed, start her university education and prove that her hearing-impairment will not stand in the way of her education
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/KHII-7UC9YW?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P

French fund first of three new West Bank industrial zones
A new industrial zone was created on Waqf land and is expected to create at least 2,000 new jobs following a two-phase construction program with a price tag of 32 million US dollars in part from French donations. The project was inaugurated with a brick laying ceremony Sunday with Palestinian Minster of economy Basem Khoury, Minister of International Cooperation Ali Al-Jarbawi and Meanwhile the French Consul Allan Remy. The site is south of Bethlehem at the Hensaza area.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214828

Palestinian teens pose as IDF soldiers (update)
Five Palestinians aged 15 to 17 were arrested Sunday by the Palestinian police on suspicion of posing as Israel Defense Forces and raiding houses in the West Bank village of Marah Rabah, south of Bethlehem ... According to the village residents, the five had even tried to declare a curfew on one of the streets before entering a house and searching it ... Although the circumstances of the incident are unclear, a PA security source believes the youths are members of a street gang which sought to rob houses. According to the source, when IDF soldiers raid houses they usually gather all family members in one room and roam freely in the other parts of the house.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3752504,00.html

Citizen: Renaming streets causes unnecessary confusion
Concerned citizens write letters to members of Knesset expressing opposition to Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz’s initiative to Hebraize Israel’s road signs, saying step likely to confuse tourists who are familiar with sites according to their English names ... A significant portion of tourist favorites are likely to disappear from their maps: Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus will become Har Hatsofim; the Sea of Galilee will become Yam Kinneret; Capernaum, mentioned in the New Testament, will become Kfar Nahum.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3751617,00.html

Securing the nightspots of Ramallah
By Omar Karmi. RAMALLAH // Basem Sharawi is having a typically busy weekend. In between joking with would-be revellers at the popular Snowbar nightspot in Ramallah while politely but firmly telling them they cannot get in to the party raging below, the 28-year-old is constantly on his walkie-talkie to other members of his five-man security team.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090727/FOREIGN/707269851/1011/NEWS

USA buys 300 movie tickets for Nablus youth
Youth involved with the US-funded English Access Microscholarship and Camp Discovery summer programs were invited to attend viewings of the Disney/Pixar movie Wall-E next week ... According to a Monday statement from Assistant Country Director at Amideast Maha Hasan "this will be the first experience for kids to be exposed to American-style cinema, which will give them greater exposure to American culture and the wider world.” While most homes have satellite television offering dozens of American movies each day, most Nablus-area youth will never have seen the films on a cinema screen.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214914

EU-backed programs offer hope for Palestine’s disabled
Recent statistics show that about three percent of Palestinians suffer from a disability, and new initiatives by the Palestinian Authority are seeking to improve their lives, funded largely by the European Union.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=214560

First time in Israel: Bone marrow drive for Arab Israelis
Non-profit Ezer Mizion embarks on bone marrow drive Wednesday to find matches for two Arab patients in desperate need of bone marrow transplants and to increase Arab donors in national bone marrow bank. Arab Israeli bone marrow donors make up only 0.3% of donors nationwide, making it exceedingly difficult to find bone marrow matches for Arab patients
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3749777,00.html

Israeli-Palestinian partnership launches startup
BEIT JALLA, West Bank — In a rare show of cooperation, a team of Israeli and Palestinian software developers came together earlier this month in the shadow of Israel’s West Bank separation barrier to launch a product they hope will revolutionize personal computing and perhaps improve communication between the two conflicted sides. Israeli entrepreneur Zvi Schreiber partnered with Palestinian engineers to launch G.ho.st Virtual Computer, a Web-based operating system that recreates the attributes of a personal computer’s desktop from any computer with an Internet connection.
http://www.mercurynews.com/nationworld/ci_12909638?nclick_check=1

Israel likely to investigate alleged money-laundering op
The Israel Police will likely receive a request from the FBI to assist in the investigation of an enormous money-laundering ring that allegedly involved Orthodox charities operating in the US and Israel, a law enforcement source told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. The source stressed, however, that no such request had been received yet by Israeli authorities.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1248277896765&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

PNGO warns of deceptive slogans promoting normalization with Israel
RAMALLAH, (PIC)— The Palestinian Non-Governmental Organization Network (PNGO) has warned of a number of Palestinian societies that have suspicious missions and are promoting normalization of ties with the Israeli occupation using deceptive slogans ...The network plainly accused those suspicious Palestinian groups of holding joint projects with Israeli societies around the world with the aim to deceive the world’s people that everything was OK between the Israeli occupation an the Palestinian people. In this regard, the network called on international donors and financiers of such projects to stop those internationally forbidden activities, reminding them that those projects are being carried out on Palestinian lands occupied by Israel.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s79eZn0qcKf6EJB%2bn1JGeCPyS8JltD3CAVdITQtriee4aErCofuZ%2b%2fsuAVjyrgll2nmC04TDHv%2bHwwd3gkFbbNG0aDDndQPaqPCeA5JcHdTSI%3d

Jerusalem: University withdraws tender, causing religious tensions
Tender for acquisition of two university-owned dorm buildings in secular neighborhood with growing ultra-Orthodox population cancelled after seven haredi companies placed high bids on property
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3752902,00.html

Opinion / Analysis

Stop saying ’Free Gaza’
By Fayyad. Gaza is not a different country than Palestine; its plight is not isolated from that of the West Bank, Palestinian-Israeli’s, or Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora. So stop changing your banners and placards to from “Free Palestine” and “End Apartheid” to “Free Gaza.” Palestinians and their supporters alike have fallen in a simple trap set in the sideshow of Israel’s Attack on Gaza earlier this year. Israel has consistently tried to separate segments of the Palestinian society and find ways to foster distrust among them.
http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/07/stop-saying-%E2%80%9Cfree-gaza%E2%80%9D.html

How much pressure can Washington exert on Tel Aviv?
By Steven Stanek. WASHINGTON // Israel’s recent decision to press ahead with a housing project in East Jerusalem, defying calls by the White House to halt settlement activity, raises an inevitable question for Barack Obama: how much pressure can he exert on a longtime US ally to bring it in line with his policies? The short answer, at least according to the conventional wisdom, is not much. Although Israel has a variety of trade and weapons agreements with the United States – it is also the largest recipient of American aid – tough measures such as economic sanctions have traditionally been perceived as so unpopular here that no US president would risk implementing them.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090726/FOREIGN/707259888/1011

Reassessing our ties with US
By Yarden Gazit. America’s support is one of the most valuable strategic assets Israel has. The US gives it military and economic aid; it provides diplomatic support at the United Nations, often blocking resolutions that would jeopardize Israel’s interests; and it is an important trade partner. Furthermore, Israel shares many common values with the US. Israelis tend to view themselves as Westerners, so it is only natural for them to seek the support of the largest Western power. But Israel must also ask itself what are the costs of preserving its dependency on the US. An honest examination of the situation will reveal that the costs of allying so closely with America amount to much more than restricting settlement construction and periodically restraining the IDF.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3752146,00.html

Everything is ready; just sign
By Alex Fishman, Yediot Ahronot. If the Americans are ready to push a final-status agreement forward, and it appears that they are, then the plan revealed here for the first time will soon become reality. During recent months senior Israelis and Palestinians drafted a detailed security annex which resolves the relations between the state and the state-to-be. From the withdrawal schedule, through early warning stations, to the G.P.S systems that will be distributed to drivers upon entrance into West Bank roads. This is how sheep and wolves are supposed to live together.
http://www.geneva-accord.org/mainmenu/everything-is-ready-just-sign

Guardian editorial: Obama seeks results
...George Mitchell, the Middle East envoy; Robert Gates, the defence secretary; and Jim Jones, the national security adviser, are all pounding around the region in a drive to revive another patient on life support – the Middle East peace process. Mr Obama has lost none of his ambition. The number and complexity of the issues on the table – bringing Syria in from the cold, curtailing Iran, normalising relations between Israel and the Arab world, pressing Israel to freeze settlement construction and restarting talks with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – make their task daunting, and yet Mr Obama is searching for concrete results. The lesson this administration has learned from the last one is to put a senior American presence in every negotiating room.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/27/middle-east-obama-peace-process

A shared Jerusalem
By James Carroll. ...For a decade or more there has been a majority consensus among Israelis and Palestinians that Jerusalem will be the capital of both states, with some combination of east-west distinction, and overlapping sovereignty (Israel sovereign over the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, Palestine sovereign over the Muslim Quarter and the Noble Sanctuary). The vision assumes a side-by-side accommodation, no return to the barbed-wire border of the pre-1967 era. In that sense, a shared Jerusalem was to be, in a phrase of President Bill Clinton’s formula, “an open and undivided city.’’ That was the ideal to which candidate Barack Obama had referenced when he declared before a Jewish group in 2008 that Jerusalem “must remain undivided.’’ That he was misunderstood by Jews and Palestinians alike as echoing a minority Israeli wish to preempt Palestinian authority in Jerusalem showed how far the “shared Jerusalem’’ concept had eroded. It must be restored.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/07/27/a_shared_jerusalem/

Jews sans frontières: Israel appeals to white solidarity
By Gabriel. It is common for Israeli apologists to ask why Israel has become such a symbol of imperialism. The implication is that this is due to antisemitism. An alternative explanation is to note just how transparent Israeli support for racism is, not just against Palestinians but in general. ... What is interesting is the logic of Israel’s appeal to the Dutch Foreign Minister. According to a senior Israeli official: "A friendly government cannot fund opposition bodies. We are not a third world country." There you have it. States of white people can fund "oppositional" groups in states of dark people, but not in other states of white people. Everybody understands this global demarcation, but only Israeli diplomats are unselfconsciously racist enough to express it so blatantly.
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2009/07/israel-appeals-to-white-solidarity.html

Israeli anthem kits in Arab schools
By Jonathan Cook. NAZARETH // A leading Arab educator in Israel has described the decision of Gideon Saar, the education minister, to require schools to study the Israeli national anthem as “a kind of attempted rape” of the country’s one-in-four Arab pupils ... The kits have been designed to be suitable for all age groups and for use across the curriculum, from civics and history classes to music and literature lessons. The anthem, known as Ha-Tikva, or The Hope, has long been unpopular with Israel’s Arab minority because its lyrics refer only to a Jewish historical connection to the land ... A report published in March, Yousef Jabareen added, showed that the government invested US$1,100 (Dh4,035) in each Jewish pupil’s education compared to $190 for each Arab pupil. There was also a shortfall of more than 1,000 classrooms for Arab students.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090727/FOREIGN/707269849/1011

The limits of freedom
In theory we are free to say what we like in Israel, but the reality can be quite different — By Gal Wettstein. Israel is a democracy, we are told. We have freedom of speech to prove it. Aside from a few pesky details of a permanent state of emergency which allows the government and security forces to impose censorship of the media, we really are free to speak our minds – to an extent.The legal limits on personal expression are draconian, but not very often invoked. It is the unspoken limits of freedom of speech which are more binding. Even as I write I hear the clinking of the chains in my mind: how much do I dare expose? What might be the repercussions of this word, or that sentence?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jul/26/israel-freedom-speech-censorship

I remember the Nakba
By Yoram Kaniuk. I remember the Nakba. I saw it to a much greater extent than the education minister, who apparently only heard about it. It was a harsh, merciless campaign of young soldiers who spilled their blood while fighting a determined enemy that was eventually defeated. Yet the enemy that was defeated is not a geometrical unknown, but rather, a people that still exists. Its parents and grandparents fought well. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have suffered so many casualties. I was wounded in battle, but I believe that the education minister must educate our young people to be heroes by teaching them that this war had losers too, and that they too have a narrative. They don’t have the country that was theirs but they have a history, and no education minister can erase the defeated people from its powerful memory.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3751318,00.html

Duraid Laham drinks the toast of his homeland in Gaza but how drunk Palestinians should become?
By Iqbal Tamimi. To those who do not know what it means to welcome the Syrian - Lebanese - Arab icon Duraid Laham in Gaza, I will try to come as close as can be to the shadows of this gigantic human figure. Duraid was chosen as a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations but long before that he was chosen as an Ambassador of theatrical art by the Arab people.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/07/26/iqbal-tamimi-duraid-laham-drinks-the-toast-of-his-homeland-in-gaza-but-how-drunk-palestinians-should-become/

Not only in tunnels, not only in Gaza
...According to data of the World Bank, the per capita gross national product in the West Bank is US$487. The level of official unemployment is approaching 20%. In the industrial and agricultural areas of settlements we find approximately 26,000 Palestinian workers, women and men, including approximately 2,000 minors. A majority of the youth and children work in fields and orchards in the Jordan Valley. Some of them replace their fathers and uncles who worked in Israel or in the settlements until their work permits were annulled for various reasons, which are never explained ... In October 2007 the Israeli High Court made a precedent-setting ruling that the Israeli labor laws are applicable for Palestinian workers in the settlements. Despite this, Israeli labor laws are not enforced there. In actuality, neither are the Jordanian or Palestinian labor laws for that matter. A paradise for employers. Children under the age of 14 employed at a daily wage of NIS 50-60.
http://www.alternativenews.org/english/2024-not-only-in-tunnels-not-only-in-gaza-.html

Out of the Stone Age - empowering a West Bank village
As the Americans embark on a new peace mission, Donald Macintyre reports from a West Bank village trapped by its history but now lit up with help from across the divide — Susiya, a beleaguered community in the arid, windswept South Hebron hills, now has electricity thanks to a unique renewable energy project. Pioneered by two physicists who have a strong interest in environmentalism and a close relationship with the villagers, the changes, in the words of 32-year-old farmer Hassan Shineran "have brought us from the Stone Age to modern life". Both Noam Dotan and Elad Orian, who came to help the Palestinian Arabs in this impoverished, conflict-scarred tract of the southern West Bank, happen to be Israeli Jews.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/out-of-the-stone-age-empowering-a-west-bank-village-1762065.html

The Holocaust and Israel’s ’re-establishment’
By Jack Ross. There has been something bizarre about the turn in Israeli/Zionist rhetoric in recent months, particularly following Obama’s speech in Cairo. The Zionists have become positively hysterical on the point that Obama– just like big bad Ahmadinejad–apparently suggested that Israel exists as compensation for the Final Solution. How dare they not acknowledge the enduring tie of "the Jewish people" to their "ancient homeland"!! But honestly, where do they think Israel would be without its Holocaust cloak?
http://mondoweiss.net/2009/07/the-holocaust-and-israels-re-establishment.html

Book review: Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s View by Ben White
Reviewed by Raymond Deane. ...In pondering "a different kind of future," White stresses that there is no point in "trying to ’undo’ things that cannot be undone." He castigates rhetoric about a "two-state solution" or demands that Palestinians should "compromise," as if the solution could by-pass the dissolution of Israeli apartheid ... For all those engaged in the "cleaner struggle" against Israeli apartheid that Ehud Olmert so dreads, this little book is an invaluable tool. For those who simply wish to brush up rapidly on the facts of the Israel/Palestine issue, it is equally invaluable.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10677.shtml