A Palestinian woman died yesterday morning after inhaling tear gas at a demonstration Friday in Bil'in. While Palestinians claim her death was caused by tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers, the Israel Defense Forces says the circumstances are not entirely clear.
All Hail the Peace Makers (Israelis and Palestinians fighting for peace and justice in the holy land) part 16
Tue, 2011-01-04 20:23
#1
All Hail the Peace Makers (Israelis and Palestinians fighting for peace and justice in the holy land) part 16
Tue, 2011-01-04 13:09
#2
Exhausted from the prolonged struggle, the Indians of the village of Walajeh know their fate has been decided and they will be encircled by the winding separation wall. They will be cut off from their eastern neighbor, Beit Jala. They will be a tiny enclave next to the other choking enclave, that of Bethlehem, which is surrounded by thriving Jewish settlements (those of Gush Etzion, Har Gilo, and so forth ), the inseparable part of the State of Israel.
Sat, 2011-01-08 17:16
#3
GOOD MORNING, Joe. At home In the US, your name is mud. But here you can really feel at home.
In your time, you succeeded in infecting all of the US with hysteria. You detected a Soviet agent under every bed. You waved a list of Soviet spies in the State Department (a list which nobody was ever shown). In a hundred languages around the world - including Hebrew - the name McCarthy, McCarthyism, has become a household word. Yes, you made your mark alright.
Sat, 2011-01-15 16:15
#4
The Crown and the Coals
LEBANON IS in crisis. And what is new?
Since the founding of the state, 90 years ago, the word "crisis" has been inseparably linked with its name.
From the Israeli perspective, this crisis has a double significance.
Sat, 2011-01-15 19:14
#5
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/residents-of-jerusalem-are...
Exhausted from the prolonged struggle, the Indians of the village of Walajeh know their fate has been decided and they will be encircled by the winding separation wall. They will be cut off from their eastern neighbor, Beit Jala. They will be a tiny enclave next to the other choking enclave, that of Bethlehem, which is surrounded by thriving Jewish settlements (those of Gush Etzion, Har Gilo, and so forth ), the inseparable part of the State of Israel.
Sat, 2011-01-15 19:58
#6
A petition demanding the Shin Bet security service release figures on the extent to which it prohibits detainees from meeting with lawyers was rejected Tuesday by the High Court of Justice.
Sat, 2011-01-15 20:03
#7
"Get away from the window, you're crazy!" screamed Kauthar. She was terrified to find her daughter standing on the couch by the window, observing the street from the seventh floor. The window had bars. She was afraid not that the girl might fall, but that she would be struck by fire from a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). A next-door neighbour had been killed that way only a day or two earlier: a missile hit him as he was talking on his phone on the balcony.
That was on one of the first days of the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip, which began on 27 December 2008. People very quickly learned the hard way that their daily activities could tempt death: standing by a window, trying to find a spot that still had a shred of mobile-phone reception so you could tell your worried father in the Rafah refugee camp that everything was all right, riding a motorbike, going up to the roof to take the washing off the line or feed the pigeons, paying a condolence visit, baking bread in the backyard oven, taking water to the goats. Journalists' notebooks and reports from human rights organisations overflow with testimonies from ordinary civilians, people who lost loved ones or who were wounded under these non-combat circumstances.
Sat, 2011-01-15 21:25
#8
The airmen who bombed the home of a Hamas military leader in 2002 did not know or did not want to know the identity of their target before the strike, according to T., one of the crewmen directly involved, who spoke recently with students at a secular yeshiva in Tel Aviv.
The July 22 bombing of the home of Salah Shehadeh, who had headed Hamas' military wing, in the densely populated Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City, killed a total of 15 people, including Shehadeh and his assistant. The other victims included eight children (ranging in age from less than a year to 14 years old) and three women.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-pilot-describes-good-s...
Sat, 2011-01-15 21:30
#9
Last week, an Israeli woman I know drove a Palestinian woman to the western side of the separation barrier - not for a day of fun in Tel Aviv, as a few Israeli Jewish women do regularly, but due to urgent, unfortunate personal reasons. The police, at the behest of right-wing activists, summoned the transgressors for questioning. In Jewish and democratic Israel the Israeli women are double offenders. They transport Palestinian women without that piece of paper that only Palestinians are required to carry, and bring them out via one of the roads that are open to anyone in the world except for the legal owners of the land on which they were built.
That reminds me: In 1977 I found myself in Romania during the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Among his many prohibitions in the name of socialism was a ban on hosting foreigners. But I had grown very close to a young couple with a baby who lived in a matchbox in a crowded Bucharest tenement. "Ceausescu can't tell me who can sleep in my apartment," Vera said defiantly as she made up a cot for me in their narrow kitchen. We lost touch after a few years, but her courage still warms my heart. I recall that one could be fined the equivalent of one or two months' wages and earn another black mark from the Securitate. I don't remember even asking about the punishment for the tourists.
Sat, 2011-01-15 21:38
#10
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-nation-is-behind-you-galant-1.336533
The seizure of public land, unauthorized road paving, misleading testimony, double standards in land allocation - all under the cover of an army uniform. Is this a precis of the history of Israeli colonialism? Not at all. These claims are the basis of the High Court of Justice petition by the Green Movement political party against Yoav Galant's appointment as the next Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, accusations that Maariv journalist Kalman Liebeskind has made repeatedly in investigative reports over the past two years.
Sun, 2011-01-16 17:06
#11
Sun, 2011-01-16 17:53
#12
Leftists March Against 'Dark Regime''
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4013941,00.html
"Thousands of left-wing activists belonging to groups Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has labeled 'terror aiders' gathered in Meir Park in Tel Aviv Saturday evening to protest against 'anti-democratic trends in the Knesset.' 'Tonight we are telling the Labor Party that it is a full partner of the most racist government in state history.."
Sat, 2011-01-22 13:18
#13
We are not loyal - to a government of racists!
"The Slumbering Majority wakes up" proclaimed large signs as the human river flowed from the entrance to the Gan Meir Park and unto the streets. Later on, KM Nitzan Horowitz would proclaim from the podium, to the crowd overflowing the Museum Plaza: "Look around you: We are not small and we are not weak, and we have no reason whatsoever to despair!".
Sat, 2011-01-22 13:30
#14
The widow of a motorist who was shot to death by police in East Jerusalem in June learned yesterday from her lawyer that the Justice Ministry closed its investigation into the case. In a conversation with Haaretz Moira Jilani, a U.S. citizen, expressed shock over the closure of the investigation.
Sat, 2011-01-22 13:35
#15
Hebron: Yehoshua and Adel are having a fight. A commotion ensues. Yehoshua, an Israeli citizen, is arrested, spends the night in the lockup in Jerusalem's Russian Compound and, the following day, a judge at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court releases him on NIS 1,000 bail. Even though he lives in Hebron, Israeli law applies to him and he must be brought before a judge within 24 hours of his arrest.
Beinisch doesn't understand
Sat, 2011-01-22 13:38
#16
Palestinian military prosecutors vow to stop arresting civilians
The Palestinian military prosecutor's office will stop detaining civilians, and civilians will no longer be tried by Palestinian military courts, according to a pledge made by senior officials in the Palestinian security establishment to representatives of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq.
The pledge is backed by senior political officials in the Palestinian Authority, Al-Haq was told.
Sun, 2011-01-23 00:33
#17
ISRAEL IS, as we well know, the land of unlimited impossibilities. In Israel, for example, the diplomats are striking.
A strike of diplomats? But that is impossible! Postmen strike. Longshoremen strike. But diplomats? The most conservative, the most establishment people? The people who serve any Israeli government, whatever its complexion? Who find pretexts for all its actions, whatever they may be?
Sat, 2011-01-29 21:16
#18
The Aljazeera Scandal
ALWAYS thought this a specifically Israeli trait: whenever a scandal of national proportions breaks out, we ignore the crucial issues and focus our attention on some secondary detail. This spares us having to face the real problems and making painful decisions.
There are examples galore. The classic one centered on the question: "Who Gave the Order?" When it became known that in 1954 an Israeli spy ring had been ordered to plant bombs in US and British institutions in Egypt, in order to sabotage the effort to improve relations between the West and Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, a huge crisis rocked Israel. Almost nobody asked whether the idea itself had been wise or stupid. Almost nobody asked whether it was really in the best interest of Israel to challenge the new and vigorous Egyptian leader, who was fast becoming the idol of the entire Arab world (and who had already secretly indicated that he could possibly make peace with Israel).
Sat, 2011-01-29 22:31
#19
So, what do the reports of Israeli demonstrations for democracy in the Arab states tell us about the "peace makers" in Palestine, all of which is, by the way, occupied territory?
Sat, 2011-02-05 21:15
#20
WE ARE in the middle of a geological event. An earthquake of epoch-making dimensions is changing the landscape of our region. Mountains turn into valleys, islands emerge from the sea, volcanoes cover the land with lava.
People are afraid of change. When it happens, they tend to deny, ignore, pretend that nothing really important is happening.
Israelis are no exception. While in neighboring Egypt earth-shattering events were taking place, Israel was absorbed with a scandal in the army high command. The Minister of Defense abhors the incumbent Chief of Staff and makes no secret of it. The presumptive new chief was exposed as a liar and his appointment canceled. These were the headlines.
Sun, 2011-02-06 00:47
#21
Al, I need your help. I opened this place up to material from Palestinian activists, but the thread is still rather Jew centric. I was wondering whether you could provide the work of some peace endorsing Palestinian rabble rousers. Does Ali Abunimah have a blog, outside of the EI that is?
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:13
#22
My meeting with Uri (not his real name) - along with several other soldiers who took part in the Cast Lead military attack on Gaza that ended two years ago this week - was arranged by Breaking the Silence, an organization of army veterans whose mission is to expose Israelis to IDF practices in the occupied territories. Uri's testimony about civilian killings in that attack appears to correspond with one of the testimonies provided by graduates of the Rabin Pre-Military Academy, the published version of which prompted an angry response by the IDF spokesman's office, directed at the soldiers, the academy and the media. Breaking the Silence had chosen not to publicize Uri's testimony, which appears below, in accordance with a rule that requires at least two eyewitnesses to such grave incidents before they are publicized. Uri's responses to Haaretz's questions corroborate testimonies of Palestinians survivors of the onslaught, underscoring their importance and value.
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:18
#23
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/news-for-sad-jews-1.338813
Equipped with an extra pair of glasses, I went to the village of Maghar near Ramallah, on Route 60. In order to make the location clearer to the Israeli reader, I shall mention that it is east of the settlement of Shiloh and its subsidiaries. "Shiloh gave birth to five," as they say in the village, referring to the unauthorized outposts there whose names are Shvut Rachel, Kida, Adei Ad, Givat Harel and Esh Kodesh.
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:21
#24
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-real-palestinian-concession-1.339252
The real concession of the Palestinian leadership is on its occupied people as an active force in the struggle for independence. For this, there is no need for leaked documents.
Indeed, the "Palestine Papers" confirm an open secret: Contrary to the declarations recited in public, the leadership of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority is prepared for far-reaching concessions on the holy grail of the traditional Palestinian position: the right of return of refugees from the Palestinian "nakba" of 1948.
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:31
#25
The number of Palestinian residences demolished by Israel's Civil Administration in the part of the West Bank under full Israeli control tripled last year compared to 2009, data complied by B'Tselem shows.
Attorney Shlomo Lecker, who has represented the Jahalin Bedouin tribe in the West Bank for years, attributed the increase in Area C demolitions directly to the increased pressure applied over the last two years by both settlers and a new organization, Regavim.
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:41
#26
Over the shelves of lettuce and broccoli (product of Israel ), and the honey, eggs, parsley and coriander (product of Palestine ), the demonstrators on television are no longer the same. The TV set in the vegetable shop in Ramallah is situated opposite the cashier, and the live broadcasts from the streets of Tunis two weeks ago, and from Egypt and Jordan this past week, drew more ratings than the soap operas and religious sermons customers often see playing there.
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:49
#27
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/when-israel-s-protective-net-of-tyranny-tears-1.340720
There is a miraculous moment in popular uprisings, when fear of the machinery of repression no longer deters people in their masses and that machinery begins to unravel into its component parts - who are also people. They stop obeying and begin thinking.
Where is that moment for us? A group of Palestinian businesspeople had discussed the possibility of joining the popular struggle in the villages near Ramallah against the separation fence. That was before the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The conclusion, a participant told me, was that they cannot allow themselves to take part in those activities because the very next day "Beit El" (the nickname for the Civil Administration, whose base is located near the eponymous settlement ) will revoke all the special passes that allow their businesses to exist. The experiences of others in similar circumstances (for example, senior Fatah officials who deigned to take part in a demonstration or two and had their VIP passes revoked ) are enough to create the fear.
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:49
#28
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/when-israel-s-protective-net-of-tyranny-tears-1.340720
There is a miraculous moment in popular uprisings, when fear of the machinery of repression no longer deters people in their masses and that machinery begins to unravel into its component parts - who are also people. They stop obeying and begin thinking.
Where is that moment for us? A group of Palestinian businesspeople had discussed the possibility of joining the popular struggle in the villages near Ramallah against the separation fence. That was before the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The conclusion, a participant told me, was that they cannot allow themselves to take part in those activities because the very next day "Beit El" (the nickname for the Civil Administration, whose base is located near the eponymous settlement ) will revoke all the special passes that allow their businesses to exist. The experiences of others in similar circumstances (for example, senior Fatah officials who deigned to take part in a demonstration or two and had their VIP passes revoked ) are enough to create the fear.
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:52
#29
The Palestinian leadership has been careful not to support the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and has banned demonstrations in solidarity with the rebelling peoples. Palestinian television has virtually ignored the events in Egypt.
Sun, 2011-02-06 13:57
#30
Spurred by the events in Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and its ruling Fatah party also promised to hold local elections, followed by general elections, very soon. Palestinian Minister of Local Government Khaled Qawasma made the announcement in midweek, adding that local elections would likely be held in May.
But Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said it would refuse to take part in the elections unless a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation agreement is reached. Hamas officials said they do not trust the PA and Fatah to hold fair elections.
Mon, 2011-02-07 00:23
#31
Mon, 2011-02-07 14:16
#32
Mon, 2011-02-07 14:35
#33
Mon, 2011-02-07 14:42
#34
Mon, 2011-02-07 16:09
#35
Tue, 2011-02-08 00:55
#36
Tue, 2011-02-08 12:43
#37
Tue, 2011-02-08 13:32
#38
Enduro Man
Should I post in this thing or is it a closed thread? ???
Sat, 2011-02-12 20:53
#39
To maintain and strengthen the peace with Egypt, we must end the occupation and make peace with the Palestinians.
Only one who has lost all basic human feeling can oppose the aspiration of masses of young Egyptians, mostly secular, to live in a democracy and enjoy the basic rights which citizens of Israel take for granted - the right to freely express their opinions, to organize politically as they please and to freely elect their government and parliament. It is in the supreme interest of the State of Israel that in its neighboring countries a real democracy will prevail, a democracy growing from below out of the dreams and aspirations and determined struggle by thousands and millions of people.
Sat, 2011-02-12 20:59
#40
UNTIL THE very last moment, the Israeli leadership tried to keep Hosni Mubarak in power.
It was hopeless. Even the mighty United States was impotent when faced with this tsunami of popular outrage.
In the end it settled for second best: a pro-Western military dictatorship. But will this really be the outcome?
Tsunami in Egypt
Wed, 2011-02-16 00:05
#41
Egypt's revolution and Israel: "Bad for the Jews"
The view from Israel is that if they indeed succeed, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are bad, very bad. Educated Arabs -- not all of them dressed as "Islamists," quite a few of them speaking perfect English whose wish for democracy is articulated without resorting to "anti-Western" rhetoric -- are bad for Israel.
Wed, 2011-02-16 00:10
#42
I was asked for some resources about the Palestine Papers, which were released by Al Jazeera on 23 January. These 1600 documents, dated from 1999 to 2010, including minutes, reports, emails, maps and presentations, constitute the largest leak and the deepest insight into the failed "peace process" ever.
I was asked for some resources about the Palestine Papers, which were released http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/the-palestine-papers
Wed, 2011-02-16 17:29
#43
Wed, 2011-02-16 17:42
#44
Sat, 2011-02-19 12:37
#45
The Genie is out of the Bottle
THIS IS a story right out of "1001 Nights". The genie escaped from the bottle, and no power on earth can put it back.
When it happened in Tunisia, it could have been said: OK, an Arab country, but a minor one. It was always a bit more progressive than the others. Just an isolated incident.
And then it happened in Egypt. A pivotal country. The heart of the Arab world. The spiritual center of Sunni Islam. But it could have been said: Egypt is a special case. The land of the Pharaohs. Thousands of years of history before the Arabs even got there.
Sat, 2011-02-19 15:51
#46
We are still preoccupied with demonstrations and their dispersal in this part of the world. After the immediate shock and anger died down last Wednesday, however, one could not help but notice the European, mainly French, scent that wafted from Al-Manara Square in Ramallah where the Palestinian Authority once again suppressed a demonstration of support for the Egyptian people that evening. A few hours earlier, in the same streets, supporters of Fatah had held an undisturbed demonstration in support of the Egyptian government and President Hosni Mubarak.
Sat, 2011-02-19 15:55
#47
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/egypt-s-thirst-for-freedom-has...
CAIRO - Prior to Mubarak's fall, demonstrators in Tahrir Square shouted "The army and the people - one hand." After the man who ruled for the past 30 years was toppled, those who listened closely noticed that the chant had changed slightly: "The people and the army - one hand."
Sat, 2011-02-19 15:59
#48
Last week's column, which in Hebrew was titled "Dispersing a demonstration with a French scent," prompted a visit to the headquarters of EUPOL COPPS, the EU Police Coordination Office for Palestinian Police Support, which trains the civilian police force in the West Bank. The initiative was theirs, and the perfume, it turns out, was Jean Paul Gaultier.
Sat, 2011-02-19 16:03
#49
CAIRO - The political demands of the coalition that fomented the recent revolution in Egypt appeared yesterday in a position paper published in numerous Egyptian newspapers.
Sat, 2011-02-19 16:06
#50
Millions of Egyptian cell phone users on Tuesday evening received the following text message from the "Armed Forces": "The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces urges honest citizens to take part in efforts to reach a save haven."
This was a poetic way of warning the public against continuing to strike, continuing to close the country's bank and stock market, and continuing slowdowns in industrial production.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/egypt-military-s-pleas-to-end-...
Tue, 2011-02-22 01:09
#51