Palestine News Updates

For the latest news, check out the online edition of Israel's Haaretz newspaper, or visit the website of the Electronic Intifada.

For the latest news coming out of Lebanon, including first-hand diary accounts, check out Electronic Lebanon

July 16, 2008
IPS
    Conflict Tops Med Union Agenda -- The Union for the Mediterranean, a French-led grouping of EU nations plus 16 non-European Mediterranean states, was inaugurated Sunday (Jul. 13). The launch of the forum, of which Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is co-president, was dominated by issues related to the perennial Arab-Israeli dispute.
 
July 15, 2008
IPS
    Israel Targets Hamas Orphanages -- Shopping malls. Schools. Medical centres. Charities, orphanages. Soup kitchens. These are the latest targets in the campaign the Israeli military is waging against Hamas in the West Bank.
 
July 15, 2008
IPS
    Israeli Magnate Draws Activists' Ire -- Having successfully lobbied the U.N. Children's Agency UNICEF to stop accepting donations from Israeli billionaire Lev Avnerovich Leviev, activists are urging celebrities who have made public appearances with Leviev to cut all ties with him.
 
July 10, 2008
IPS
   West Bank village sues corporations over settlement construction -- In a continuation of their struggle for justice in the face of unlawful appropriation of their land, the people of Bil'in village yesterday commenced legal proceedings before the Superior Court of Quebec against Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc.
 
July 07, 2008
IPS
    Gaza Locked In Despite Truce -- Despite a torrent of mutual recriminations, the fragile truce between Israel and Palestinian resistance faction Hamas survived into its third week. Israel, however, has been slow to fulfil its pledge -- as laid down in an Egypt-brokered ceasefire agreement -- to allow desperately-needed humanitarian supplies into the outdoor prison that is the Gaza Strip.
 
July 02, 2008
IPS
    Sewage in Water Threatens Gazans -- Gaza is being forced to pump 77 tonnes of untreated or partially treated sewage out to sea daily due to the Israeli blockade of the coastal territory. The fear is that some of this is creeping back into drinking water.
 
July 01, 2008
B'Tselem
   B'Tselem warns of grave water shortage in the West Bank -- The chronic water shortage in the West Bank, resulting from an unfair distribution of water resources shared by the Palestinians and Israel, will be much graver this summer because of this year’s drought. In the northern West Bank, water consumption has fallen to one-third of the minimal amount needed.
 
June 12, 2008
B'Tselem
   Settler Violence -- On Saturday afternoon, 3 May 2008, fields belonging to residents of 'Asira al-Qibliya were torched, apparently by settlers.
 
June 12, 2008
BBC News
    'Jewish settler attack' on film -- Footage from a video camera handed out by an Israeli human rights group appears to show Jewish settlers beating up Palestinians in the West Bank.
 
June 09, 2008
New Profile
   Annual Activity Report for 2007 -- We proudly present our annual report for the year 2007.
 
June 09, 2008
Electronic Intifada
   The most reliable path to freedom -- "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger," said Dov Weissglas, Sharon's closest advisor, a few years ago. Today, Israel is slowly choking occupied Gaza, indeed bringing its civilian population to the brink of starvation and a planned humanitarian catastrophe.
 
June 07, 2008
Electronic Intifada
   An award for the voiceless in Gaza -- The siege of Gaza has many layers. I work here as a journalist, amid near-daily air and land assaults from Israel, amid the unending killings and destruction of land and livelihood, which are all made more unbearable by critical shortages of fuel, food, medicine,
 
May 30, 2008
Counter Punch
   An Open Letter to Defense Minister, Ehud Barak -- Bassam Aramin, co-founder of Combatants for Peace. He is a Palestinian who was a political prisoner and whose daughter was killed by Israeli soldiers. He writes an open letter to Ehud Olmert in opposition to the occupation.
 
May 22, 2008
The New York Times
   Israel Holds Peace Talks With Syria -- Israel and Syria announced on Wednesday that they were engaged in negotiations for a comprehensive peace treaty through Turkish mediators, a sign that Israel is hoping to halt the growing influence of Iran, Syria’s most important ally, which sponsors the anti-Israel groups Hezbollah and Hamas.
 
May 14, 2008
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
    Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory -- Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)
 
May 11, 2008
The LA Times
   Israel's unhappy birthday -- Israel at 60 is a sad place. It is sad despite the prosperity that is apparent at every turn.
 
May 11, 2008
The LA Times
   Forget the two-state solution -- All that matters are the facts on the ground, of which the most important is that -- after four decades of intensive Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 war -- Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created.
 
April 24, 2008
BBC News
    Fuel crisis halts Gaza food aid -- The United Nations says it has had to halt food distribution in the Gaza Strip because it has run out of fuel.
 
April 23, 2008
San Francisco Chronicle
   Hamas offers conditional truce in Gaza -- Senior Hamas representatives said Tuesday that the militant group is willing to accept a cease-fire limited to the Gaza Strip, dropping a long-standing demand that the West Bank be included in a halt to fighting with Israel.
 
April 21, 2008
The Guardian
   Carter: Hamas will accept Israel's right to live in peace -- "There's no doubt that both the Arab world and Hamas will accept Israel's right to exist in peace within 1967 borders," Carter said.
 
April 16, 2008
Relief Web
   Weekly Report on Israeli human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory -- Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Escalate Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)
 
April 09, 2008
Telegraph
   Israel bars UN envoy after 'holocaust' claim -- Israel has said it will refuse a visa for the new United Nations human rights envoy to the Palestinians after he said it was responsible for a “Holocaust in the making” in Gaza.
 
April 09, 2008
Haaretz
   Peace Now: Our views are now mainstream but peace still elusive -- Israel's largest peace group marked what it called a bittersweet milestone Tuesday, 30 years since its foundation. Peace Now's call for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel has largely been embraced by the Israeli mainstream, but peace itself remains painfully elusive, representatives of the movement said.
 
April 05, 2008
Inter Press Service
    Israel and Syria Flirt Dangerously -- With negotiations on the Palestinian track limping along unproductively, Israeli leaders have again begun talking about renewing peace negotiations with Syria. But at the same time they are keeping a wary eye on new deployments by the Syrian military.
 
March 30, 2008
BBC
    Israel to cut W Bank roadblocks -- Israel and the Palestinian Authority have agreed to a series of "concrete steps" to ease Palestinians' lives in the West Bank, US officials have said.
 
March 28, 2008
Electronic Intifdada
   The high road to freedom -- Last week, Fatah and Hamas officials held direct talks for the first time since Hamas' June takeover of Gaza...However, it is unclear whether these talks, like those that preceded the Gaza takeover, will result in reconciliation and national unity.
 
March 14, 2008
Inter Press Service
    Opening the Door to Hamas -- Undermined by recent violence, the U.S.-brokered Palestinian-Israeli peace process laid out in Annapolis, Maryland is in critical condition. And bringing the militant Islamic group Hamas into the fold could be the only way to save the faltering plan -- an idea that even the George W. Bush administration may be reluctantly conceding is a necessary step.
 
March 10, 2008
Inter Press Service
   MIDEAST: An Uneasy Calm Descends -- After the latest round of Mideast bloodletting, in early March, in which over 100 Palestinians were killed, four Israeli soldiers died and Palestinian rockets for the first time slammed into a major Israeli city, a tense quiet has descended on the area.
 
March 09, 2008
BBC News
   Israel approves settlement growth -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has approved a plan to build up to 750 new homes in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
 
March 07, 2008
BBC
   Eight killed at Jerusalem school -- The White House has led international condemnation but the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called the attack "heroic" while not claiming responsibility...[T]he 15-strong UN Security Council failed to agree on a resolution condemning the attack because of reservations from temporary member Libya, which sought to link it to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.