Category Archives: Palestine

In Four Loops, Marathon Conveys Palestinian Constraints – NYTimes.com

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — The runners looped four times through this city, following a route that took them from the Church of the Nativity, traditionally considered Christ’s birthplace, down Bethlehem’s main avenue and alongside Israel’s looming separation barrier, scrawled with graffiti and blackened from hurled projectiles.

The Palestine Marathon, held last week, is a hemmed-in affair, much like the city where it is run. “In Bethlehem, there’s not a continuous 42 kilometers,” huffed Marwa Younis, 32, as she ran. “You have to run back and forth.”

But that is exactly why the organizers of the Right to Movement: Palestine Marathon chose to stage it here. What better way to draw attention to the constraints Palestinians say they face in their daily lives?

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“We want to send a message that we don’t have the right to movement — we are occupied and have the apartheid wall,” said an organizer, Diala Isid, referring to Israel’s 26-foot-high separation barrier, which surrounds the city on three sides. “So we thought, ‘Let’s make an international marathon.’ ”

via In Four Loops, Marathon Conveys Palestinian Constraints – NYTimes.com.

In One-Woman Show, Arafat Protégée Offers Personal Take on Conflict – NYTimes.com

With that story began the sold-out closing performance last week of the autobiographical one-woman show “Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali,” written and performed by the Palestinian writer Raeda Taha and directed by Lina Abyad at the Babel Theater in Beirut.

Ms. Taha’s show has drawn large crowds and critical acclaim since it opened here last month because of its deeply personal and often ironic take on a life shaped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ms. Taha’s pedigree gives her a rare tie to the Palestinian struggle: her father was a militant killed by Israeli commandos after hijacking an airplane in 1972. Mr. Arafat then virtually adopted her and her sisters, lavishing them with gifts as the daughters of a “martyr.” As an adult, she worked as Mr. Arafat’s press secretary.

via In One-Woman Show, Arafat Protégée Offers Personal Take on Conflict – NYTimes.com.

Fail! Settlers enter Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron | Maan News Agency

A group of Israeli settlers entered the Isaac Hall inside the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron on Thursday under armed protection from Israeli forces, witnesses said.

Local sources said that guards attempted to prevent settlers from entering the mosque, but the army facilitated their entrance.

Under an agreement with endowment officials, Jewish visits to Isaac’s Hall are limited to 10 per year.

The agreement came into place after a Brooklyn-born Jewish settler massacred 29 Palestinians in the mosque after opening fire at worshipers in 1994.

The Ibrahimi Mosque is known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs, and is the site where both faiths believe the Biblical patriarch Abraham is buried.

via Settlers enter Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron | Maan News Agency.

Netanyahu vows wave of Jerusalem settler homes if elected | Maan News Agency

Creepiest sucking up to right-wing radicals seen yet! Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday that if reelected he will build thousands of settler homes in East Jerusalem to prevent future concessions to the Palestinians.

Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s general election on a whistle-stop tour of Har Homa, a contentious settlement neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem, Netanyahu vowed he would never allow the Palestinians to establish a capital in the city’s eastern sector.

“I won’t let that happen. My friends and I in Likud will preserve the unity of Jerusalem,” he said of his ruling right-wing party, vowing to prevent any future division of the city by building thousands of new settler homes.

via Netanyahu vows wave of Jerusalem settler homes if elected | Maan News Agency.

IRIN Middle East | What refugees really think of aid agencies | Israel | Jordan | Lebanon | Syria | Aid Policy | Human Rights | Refugees/IDPs

Aid agencies are partial, unaccountable and potentially corrupt, and they fail to meet refugees’ most pressing needs.

These are just some of the criticisms emerging from a series of new focus groups with refugees and others who receive aid across the Middle East.

Concerns included a lack of consultation about people’s needs, a failure to protect the most vulnerable, confusion over which agency was responsible for what, duplicated aid, as well as instances where help was perceived to be withheld or prioritised due to political or religious affiliation.

“When you decide to help someone you have to remove all their affiliations and simply treat them as humans,” noted one female youth leader from Palestine.

via IRIN Middle East | What refugees really think of aid agencies | Israel | Jordan | Lebanon | Syria | Aid Policy | Human Rights | Refugees/IDPs.

Noa: Netanyahu’s speech writer [wish it was real]

To summarize my offer:

1.    No nuclear weapons, for anybody in the middle-east.

2.    A regional agreement that will start with the Palestinians, and embrace the entire Arab world, wherever there are partners for dialogue, and I know they exist, backed and secured by the US and the international community as a whole.

I am willing to take the first, courageous step, in the name of my people, the citizens of Israel.

I believe we have no chance to survive in the region if we do not initiate a positive dynamic, one of good will and action, and I would like to lead this movement

I have no idea if this plan, at this moment in time after all that has come to pass, will lead us to the fulfillment of our goals, but I do know, that continuing on the present  destructive track we are all on, will lead to our certain demise.

I do not know if I will be in office long, as elections are coming up. My words are not meant to serve me, but a higher ideal. I wish these words to be my legacy, continued by my successors and on into the future.

A future of life.

Thank you for your attention.

via Noa: Netanyahu’s speech writer.

UNRWA Declares Urgent Need for 100 M to Repair Gaza Homes

UNRWA has registered 96,ooo homes as refugee houses or structures exposed to breaking down. The agency stressed the urgent need for $720 million to repair these houses.

The consequences of last summer assault are still ongoing, and the number of homes that were damaged is estimated reach about 100,000 by this March.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees last month halted Gaza reconstruction for lack of fund, since it could not afford repairing homes because “donors have failed to pay.”

via UNRWA Declares Urgent Need for 0 M to Repair Gaza Homes.

IRIN Middle East | Only five percent of pledged aid reaches Gaza | Israel | OPT | Saudi Arabia | Conflict

Contrasting it with pledging conferences for Syria, one UN staffer said the Egyptians had not been sufficiently pro-active.

“When Kuwait organized the conference on Syria the secretariat followed strict procedures to ensure that the money got paid, including inviting donors to meetings. Egypt has done nothing.”

Egyptian officials did not respond to requests for comment.

In fact it was only in mid-January, ahead of a donors’ meeting in March, that Norway formally requested the World Bank to track down how much money had been delivered.

According to Steen Lau Jorgensen, the World Bank’s Country Director for Gaza and the West Bank, the process will “include a report … that will reflect the pledges of Gaza reconstruction disbursed through all channels and the timing for disbursement. It will also assess to what extent the donors have realized their pledges and will break down the list of pledges into budget support and Gaza reconstruction.”

via IRIN Middle East | Only five percent of pledged aid reaches Gaza | Israel | OPT | Saudi Arabia | Conflict.

700 British Artists Pledge to Boycott ‘Israel’

700 British Artists Pledge to Boycott ‘Israel’.

The pledge which was published in the Guardian newspaper along with a letter reads as follows: “We support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality. In response to the call from Palestinian artists and cultural workers for a cultural boycott of Israel, we pledge to accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.”