'This is how they think of us – like trash'
The unrecognized village of Twail Abu-Jarwal has been demolished entirely already nine times: this is the tenth. The bulldozers evacuated the area entirely: 20 tents, that were the homes of more than 100 people: men, women, elderly and children – were collected in to trucks, together with the belongings of the village people, and sent to the local dump. When they completed the destruction, the policepeople and the rest sat to make coffee and eat their lunch. 'They even laughed', said Muhammad, whose tent was sent to the dump. The children and women whose water tank was destroyed, who had no shade just stood and stared.
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=22078

 
'The most detailed mapping of Palestine ever', via Google's Maps and Earth programs
You can zoom way out and look at the whole region, or way in and see individual houses, roadblocks, even individual olive trees…. All cities, villages i(both still existing and destroyed), refugee camps (including those outside Palestine), colonies, highways, and a few prison camps are marked. Some have photographs, and you can add any that you have.
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story1913.html

 
Border Control / The best doctors are moving to the West
"As could have been expected, the inability to pay physicians' salaries led to a brain drain to Arab countries and to the West. For a long time now, there has not been a single senior gynecologist in Ramallah. A severe shortage of pathologists makes it very difficult to diagnose blood ailments and cancer. A pathologist who goes to Jordan can earn a salary five times as high [as what he would earn in the territories].
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/898510.html

 
Eight wounded in massive Hamas rally at Rafah border
including one pronounced brain dead.  Tens of thousands of flag-waving Hamas supporters gathered at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to demand it be reopened. Hamas gunmen fired in the air as hundreds of protesters tried to rush the border terminal and attempted to infiltrate into Egypt. Ashraf Abu Daya, one of the rally's organizers, appealed for calm from the crowd. "There is no need to break into the crossing. The crossing is no longer under the occupation. The crossing is under the control of the Hamas Executive Committee," he said.
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899609.html

 
Peace activists under arrest for preventing rebuilding of military roadblock in Sarra village
VIDEO Four human rights defenders from Germany, the United States , The United Kingdom and Canada were arrested for blocking Israeli military bulldozers from rebuilding a roadblock between the village and the city of Nablus. Israeli activists were also arrested at the same demonstration. Two of the activists, women from the UK and Canada, were forced to spend the night handcuffed and shackled at the ankles in the hallway of the police station. The protest was held after Israeli authorities had broken their promise to remove the roadblock permanently.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/09/01/peace-activists-under-arrest-for-preventing-the-rebuilding-of-military-roadblock-in-palestinian-village/ 

 
Israeli army kidnaps seven Israeli peace activists
as they protested against a flying checkpoint placed at the entry of a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Friday afternoon. Palestinian sources reported that the army set a flying checkpoint at one of the entrances to Surra village. The village's main entrance was closed five years ago. This protest was managed by Surra village residents and has ran for two consecutive weeks.
http://www.imemc.org/article/50185

 
International human rights workers try to enforce Israeli court order when military will not
Hebron region:   The area in question was declared a closed military zone by the army on August 18th which forbade all but one settler man, Musi Doyts, from entering, or working on the property. The settlers, Musi Doyts, one Thai worker, and one 16-17 year old boy, were busy erecting a fence on the land, and digging the ground in order to keep the fence level. The soldiers told the internationals that they knew nothing of the closed military zone order, instead asking them arbitrary questions like "where are you from," and "why are you here."
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/09/01/international-human-rights-workers-try-to-enforce-israeli-court-order-when-the-military-will-not/ 

 
Jerusalem Post Exclusive: Abbas wants Orient House reopened
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a special adviser on Jerusalem affairs, PA officials in Ramallah said Wednesday, indicating that Israel and the PA are now readying to grapple in earnest with the issue of the city's status. The new adviser is Adnan Husseini, the former director-general of the Waqf department in Jerusalem. Husseini told the Post one of his first tasks would be to try and persuade Israel to reopen Palestinian institutions in the city that were closed down by Israel over the past seven years.  One of these institutions, Orient House, served as the unofficial headquarters of the PLO in Jerusalem . The [Israeli] Prime Minister's Office had no response to the report.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188392494367&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 
What is Zion, if not the Temple Mount?
Olmert's silence today, in light of reports on concessions at the Temple Mount and in the Old City as part of negotiations over a permanent arrangement with the Palestinians that are supposedly taking place in his name, cannot be understood as reassuring. If it is indeed true that someone is now working on Olmert's behalf, and perhaps even - perish the thought - with his knowledge, to again divide Jerusalem and its holy places, he is doing so without having received a mandate and, primarily, is misleading the residents of the state and the Jewish people.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899333.html

 
Any chatter about Jordanian-Palestinian confederation is humbug – King Abdullah
Any chatter about a Jordanian-Palestinian federation or confederation before the birth of a bona-fide Palestinian state is pure bunk, said King Abdullah II in an interview with state-run TV. He asked "a confederation with whom exactly, with the PLO, or with some other Palestinian entity? And what would it be based on? And why is it that every time Israel feels the heat from the international community pressing it to become serious about the establishment of a Palestinian state, this question on the federation or confederation crops up."
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1838080&Language=en

 
If not attacked by Israeli soldiers, Palestinian journalists are attacked by their own security forces
Palestinian journalists were this week attacked three times by Palestinian Authority forces in the Gaza strip. Similarly, security forces last week attacked journalists and media organizations in the West Bank. While Palestinian journalists have always had to deal with the brutality of the Israeli army, these new attacks set a dangerous new precedent. Palestinian journalists are now asking themselves how they are best able to communicate with the rest of the world when they are being forced to write about two separate Palestinian governments, both of whom are hostile to one another.
http://www.imemc.org/article/50192

 
DFLP slams attacks carried out by the Executive Force in Gaza
against residents and journalists in the Gaza Strip. The attacks also included confiscating cameras and arrests. The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said the only solution is that Hamas should end its military control over the Gaza Strip and resume talks with all factions.
http://www.imemc.org/article/50189

 
PLO body to discuss Gaza clashes
The Executive Committee of the PLO is to meet on Saturday to discuss the recent spate of clashes between Fatah supporters and the Hamas-allied Executive Force in the Gaza Strip, local sources have reported.  The meeting comes after Friday clashes that left approximately 20 people wounded. Among those injured were two children and two foreign journalists. Video footage of the confrontation shows one reporter being beaten to the ground by members of the Executive Force.
http://www.imemc.org/article/50191

 
Hamas member's car bombed in Gaza
An explosion ripped through a Hamas member's car in southern Gaza city Saturday in the first internal violence targeting the Islamic movement since its takeover of the enclave in June, Hamas sources said. The blast wholly damaged the vehicle which was parked in front of the owner's house, said the sources, without disclosing the identity of the Hamas member.
http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5491&Itemid=88

 
IDF: Three children killed in Gaza Tuesday were just playing tag
Ten-year-old Mahmoud Ghazal and his 12-year-old cousin, Yehiya Ghazal, died immediately. Their 10-year-old cousin Sara Ghazal was critically injured and died later. In the initial IDF statement after the incident on Tuesday, the army said it "wishes to express sorrow" for the "use of children in terror attacks," implying that the children had been sent by terrorists to collect the rocket launchers. But the probe, which was launched immediately after the incident, determined that the children were playing tag near the launchers, as revealed by army footage recording the incident.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899414.html  

 
Haaretz editorial: Five children in one week
The Israeli public reacted to these killings, just like it did to the killing of two other children several days earlier, with near complete apathy. It might as well be an act of god, or an acceptable price that balances out the frustration at the continued Qassam rocket attacks. This indifference is dangerous because it does not encourage greater care in identifying targets.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899399.html

 
Twilight Zone / Charlie's angels by Gideon Levy
It's possible that it was his mother's time to die in any case, but why did it have to be such a humiliating death, on the floor of a van at the checkpoint? How many more such articles will still be written, and how many times will the Israel Defense Forces explain that "humanitarian cases" are allowed to pass through the checkpoint, an explanation that repeatedly contrasts with reality?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899356.html

 
The Sorrows of Occupation – by George Longsteth, M.D. and Karen Longsteth, R.N.
Our experience in the West Bank this summer gave us a view seldom seen by Americans of Palestinian life under Israeli military occupation. Disregarding travel warnings from the U.S. State Department, we volunteered at hospitals and clinics, visited aid organizations, and traveled widely from our base in Ramallah . . . Israeli policies in the West Bank seem designed to eliminate Palestinians by making life so difficult for them that they leave. Our experiences amply support President Carter's description of Palestine as an "apartheid" state.
http://www.counterpunch.com/longstreth09012007.html

 
All West Bank security chiefs meet IDF counterparts
For the first time since 1994, all Palestinian security organizations in the West Bank participated in a senior level meeting with their Israeli counterparts. Security coordination at this level between the two sides occurred up until the outbreak of the intifada in late September 2000 on an individual basis. The Israeli officers promised to consider a variety of measures that would ease the difficulty in travel faced by the Palestinian population in the West Bank. However, at this stage they did not specify the roadblocks that would be lifted.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899379.html

 
Israel slams UN-sponsored Palestinian conference
Israel on Friday attacked a UN-sponsored conference on Palestinian rights as a "virulent anti-Israeli propaganda effort" and criticized the United Nations and European Parliament for their role in the event.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444317,00.html

 
Palestinians poorer than ever
During 2006 the number of Palestinians living in 'deep poverty' almost doubled to more than 1 million. Some 46 percent of public sector employees do not have enough food to meet their basic needs, with 53 percent of households in the Gaza reporting that their incomes declined in the last year by more than half. The report's publication coincided with a UN-sponsored conference on resolving the Middle East conflict in Brussels. Leila Shahid, delegate general of Palestine to the European Union, reminded the conference that it is 40 years since Israel began "the longest occupation in contemporary history Clare Short, the former secretary for international development in the British government, said that Israel has razed 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967 and that "each demolition is a war crime."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39100

 
Persuade the people
In view of the existing reality in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, all the talk about declarations, conferences and principles isn't worth much. One only has to look at the headlines in the Arabic press in general and the Palestinian press in particular, which report daily on the dead and wounded, on incidents they term massacres or cold-blooded murder, and add to these the reports by the women from Machsom Watch recounting acts of abuse and humiliation - to understand that the gap between talk and action is immense.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899397.html

 
Rescuing their pride
It is perhaps surprising that senior Palestinian officers take such great pride in the rescue of an Israeli officer. In the past, they might have been afraid to discuss such an event in public, for fear they would be considered collaborators.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899594.html

 
Hamas sets hefty bail for arrested Fatah activists
it arrested following a Gaza protest rally, in yet another crackdown against its vanquished rival. The violence began at the end of a Fatah prayer meeting held to protest against Hamas, which seized control of the coastal territory in June. After hundreds of Fatah supporters finished prayers in Gaza City, a group of worshippers pelted Hamas-controlled buildings with stones and pipe bombs. Hamas men began firing into the air to disperse the crowd. In a frenzy, Hamas security forces then began arresting protesters and taking them away in jeeps, chasing them in the streets and also beating several demonstrators.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899609.html

 
CPT Hebron: Israeli settlers threaten land, injure nonviolent activist
Palestinian non-violent activist Issa Amro was released from Alia hospital around noon today after Israeli settlers attacked him as he helped harvest hay in the Al Ja`abari fields across from Kiryat Arba settlement. Israelis from B`nai Avraham organized the harvest in cooperation with landowner Anan Al Ja`abari. Amro`s injuries were not serious. CPTer John Lynes visited the Ja`abari family at 8a.m. and learned that settlers had attacked the Ja`abari home in the night, smashing a light and threatening the family. Dianne Roe and Mary Wendeln went to the land at 8:20a.m. as Israeli settlers were arriving with loudspeakers, blankets, bottles of cola and fruit drinks.
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=22086

 
Amira Hass: A pattern of closure
This coming fall, designer Shelly Gueta's jackets will have no lining. This is her way of dealing with the prolonged closure of the Karni border crossing terminal. Sewing a lining is complicated work that demands a high level of professional skill. There are professional tailors in the Gaza Strip who are capable of doing this, but for more than two months now, there has been no way of sending them the sewing patterns or to get the prepared garments out to shops in Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896813.html

 
First day of school canceled in the West Bank by teachers' strike
The teachers are protesting a government decision to reduce weekends to one day per week and end having Saturday as a day off.  Awwad said that the strike will continue every Saturday until the caretaker government revokes its decision to order teachers to work a six-day week.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=25083

 
Israel: Arab sector cancels school strike
Negotiations between the Education Ministry and Interior Ministry supervised by President Shimon Peres ended successfully, and thus 460,000 Arab students will start school as planned this Sunday. The budget for Arab sector schools will get an additional NIS 100 million, it was agreed. In addition, 40 thousand school hours will be added, totaling NIS 21.9 million, and four new committees to examine education in the Arab sector will be established.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444302,00.html

 
A meeting at Qalandiyah
The clip about Hatem Hushi is only one of the films, pictures, and texts that comprise the Mahsanmilim (word warehouse) site. It is one of the most interesting political sites in Israel. There are provocative scenes, like the one documenting soldiers abusing peddlers in Qalandiyah (tinyurl.com/32xsba) or the young girl bursting into tears in front of a soldier at the Hawara checkpoint (tinyurl.com/2eugss).
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=22026

 
Roger Cohen: A return to the mother of conflicts
The sources of global frustration with the Bush administration have been many and varied, but its refusal over several years to get serious about the Israel-Palestine conflict has ranked high. So President George W. Bush's discovery last month that "Iraq is not the only pivotal matter in the Middle East" was encouraging, as was his tacit relegation of the "road map" to nowhere.
http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/08/roger-cohen-return-to-mother-of.html

 
Reform Judaism leader to Muslim Americans; Together we will fight the opportunists who demonize you
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of the Reform movement, spoke this afternoon to the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. The leadership of ISNA and the Union for Reform Judaism are planning a joint dialogue and education program for synagogues and mosques, Yoffie said. He asked the ISNA to help solve the Middle East crisis. "we understand the ties of Muslim Americans and Arab Americans to the Palestinian people."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=899628&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1

 
'Lost' – Decrease our investment in 'Palestine' - JINSA
from the (U.S.) Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs: If Iraq can be called "not lost," Palestine – the notional national entity that was to normalize Palestinian identity and provide a peaceful neighbor for Israel – is indeed lost, if it ever existed. . . The U.S. should think long and hard before making additional investments of military training, technology and arms in the rump army of Abu Mazen. If he fights, he will lose and if he concedes, we will lose and lose whatever new equipment and/or capabilities we try to give them.
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/650/documentid/3909/history/3,2359,650,3909

 
Avi Hein: Let's talk
That week, after living in Israel, despite being born and raised in America, I realized that Americans do not have an accurate view of Israel. Despite the rhetoric of support for Israel, Americans are not looking at Israel on the verge of [the year] 5758 but rather imagining a mythic Third World country of the 1950s, a safe haven if … .no, when … the Holocaust happens in the United States. The Israel of today is not a country dependent on American economic aid.  It's time for American Jews to find a new paradigm that deals with the Israel of the present and today's global Jewish community.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3443457,00.html

 
Gaza-born Canadian held in Israeli prison returns to Canada
Jamal Akkal, 27, was arrested in Gaza in November 2003 and spent four years in prison on charges by the Israeli military court of conspiracy to commit manslaughter. Prosecutors said Akkal planned to carry out attacks against Israeli officials traveling in the United States, as well as bombings of Jewish targets in North America. Akkal pleaded guilty to the charges, but has always claimed the confession he gave was made under duress. Akkal was born and raised in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip and moved to Canada in 1999, where he received citizenship. During his trial, Akkal claimed he traveled to Gaza to get engaged.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/31/america/NA-GEN-Canada-Prisoner-Return.php

 
UK Zionist Federation cancels Haaretz journalist's scheduled appearance
after he reportedly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa during a UN conference in Brussels on Thursday. According to a UN report, Rubinstein said that `Israel today was an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem , the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status.`
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=22083

 
Egyptian Actors' Union to probe movie star working with Israeli
The controversy began when the group discovered that Amr Waked, who starred in the Hollywood film Syriana, was in Tunisia filming a four part series on Saddam Hussein's life opposite Yigal Naor, an Israeli of Iraqi descent. "We found out Amr Waked was participating in a movie with an Israeli artist and so when he returns from abroad he will be investigated," union chairman Ashraf Zaki said. "The Actors' Union here is against normalization with Israel."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/899322.html