All Hail the Israeli peace movement 14

The achievement of the failed flotilla to Gaza - mainly, it must be conceded, by its dead - is that the demand is being heard from everywhere that Israel halt its policy of siege. The government of Israel was not willing to listen to the desperate supplications of John Ging, the head of UNRWA in Gaza. Now it must heed French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But unknowingly, this flotilla, like its predecessors and the ones still to come, serves the Israeli goal, which is to complete the process of separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank. The process, it will be said here for the millionth time, started in 1991 and not after the rise of Hamas rule. It's purpose was to thwart the two-state solution, which the world understood at that time as based on all of Gaza and the West Bank, and the link between them.
Not by cement alone

Gazans get halva, but not cookies

Israel eased its three-year blockade on the Gaza Strip this week, allowing in a number of previously banned food items, including coriander and instant coffee. The move came in the wake of worldwide condemnation following Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.

Who is Afraid of a real Inquiry?

If a real Commission of Inquiry had been set up (instead of the pathetic excuse for a commission), here are some of the questions it should have addressed:

1. What is the real aim of the Gaza Strip blockade?
2. If the aim is to prevent the flow of arms into the Strip, why are only 100 products allowed in (as compared to the more than 12 thousand products in an average Israeli supermarket)?

Isreali Apartheid, Jeff Halper, New York

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao5CnwsbfT0

Micha Kurz: Grassroots Jerusalem (1/2)

Riz Khan - Israel silencing internal critics

A Flash of Lightning

NIGHT. UTTER darkness. Heavy rain. Visibility close to nil.

And suddenly - a flash of lightning. For a fraction of a second, the landscape is lit up. For this split second, the terrain surrounding us can be seen. It is not the way it used to be.

OUR GOVERNMENT' action against the Gaza aid flotilla was such a lightning flash.

Who will be punished for killing civilians in the Gaza war?

Why was Staff Sgt. S., out of all the Israel Defense Forces' soldiers and officers, chosen to stand trial for killing two women in the Gaza Strip on January 4, 2009, the first day of Israel's ground incursion there? The IDF killed 34 armed men that same day. Was S. chosen because he was the only one who killed civilians?

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/amira-hass-easing-of-siege-may-have-negligible-effect-on-gaza-1.297552

The decisions of the Israeli government regarding the easing of the siege on the Gaza Strip were not felt on the ground the day after the decision. The economist Muhammed Skaik, trade officer at the Gaza branch of the Palestinian trade center Paltrade, told Haaretz that improvement and change depend on a number of factors and cannot be measured only by the increase in the number of items permitted to be brought into the Strip.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/to-neutralize-1.297780

If a policeman had witnessed the hit-and-run accident that took the life of cyclist Shneor Cheshin on Friday, would he have killed the driver after catching him? Of course not. But on Friday, June 11, in broad daylight in the middle of a residential neighborhood, a policeman killed a driver who ran into - but did not kill - pedestrians: police officers on foot.

Shalit, For Example

I AM composing these lines while looking through the window at the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and thinking about the young man who is being held not far from this sea, a few dozen kilometers from here.

Can Gilad Shalit look out on the same sea through his window? Does he even have a window? How is he? How is he being treated?

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/the-invisible-israelis-1.298684

The Palestinian Monitoring Group at the Negotiations Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization is continuing on a daily basis to report the events of the previous day. The report is concise and tends to be repetitive, with some omissions that are understandable and others that are not. (For example, they do not keep track of Israeli bureaucratic harassment, perhaps because they lack the manpower to keep an eye on all these events ). The report provides boring but necessary statistics that remind us where we are living.

More annoying than a vuvuzela

The vuvuzelas apparently annoy Gazans who watch the soccer World Cup less than their brothers in the West Bank - that's simply because the noise of the generators disturbs them more.

Haaretz's sources estimate cautiously that the number of mobile generators in Gaza increased in the run-up to the World Cup. Coffee shops and clubs that did not yet have one hurried to buy a generator and procure diesel oil from Egypt. The number of beach cafes that set up a generator and bought a large flat-screen TV also increased. This is yet another way to forget the prolonged initiated electricity outages that sometimes last up to 16 hours a day.

 In Gaza, Cast Lead felt like a war on civilians
It was clear by January 5, 2009 that something terrible had happened to the Al-Samouni family, after a few survivors of the bombed building reached the hospital. In front of Al Jazeera cameras, a father gestured toward the bodies of several of the family's toddlers and said in Hebrew: "We just want to understand what these children did, that they killed them."

Two Sit-Ins

AT THIS moment, two sit-ins are taking place in Jerusalem, two kilometers apart. In West Jerusalem, the Shalit family is sitting in a protest tent in front of the Prime Minister's residence, swearing to remain there until the return of their son. In East Jerusalem, three members of the Palestinian parliament are holed up in the building of the International Red Cross.

The word that connects the two is: Hamas.

The day after Barack Obama praised Benjamin Netanyahu for easing the blockade of Gaza, the High Court of Justice supported the state's position that a lawyer from the Gaza Strip should not be allowed to leave it so she can study for a master's degree in human rights at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Justices Miriam Naor, Hanan Melcer and Isaac Amit wrote in a ruling they handed down on Wednesday, in the case of 29-year-old Fatma Sharif: "We are not convinced that under the present political and security situation, the personal circumstances [of the petitioner] justify intervention in the decision of the respondent [the defense minister]."
Israel bans Gaza woman from studying human rights in West Bank

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/the-brain-tumor-method-of-leaving-gaza-1.302722

The woman looked at the young man in front of her as though he were a rare museum exhibit. He's a native of Gaza who arrived in the West Bank on his own about four years ago, and has lived there since then. He's not a senior official in Fatah or in one of the Palestinian Authority security services, not a relative or an associate of a highly placed person.