A court in Israel is due to hear final arguments on the construction of a separation wall in a pristine valley in the West Bank. Lawyers representing Palestinian landowners and a convent say if the wall is built they will lose their land and the convent will be surrounded.
Tag Archive for 'West Bank'
Palestinians say they are outraged by the Israeli government’s decision to withhold millions of dollars of tax revenues from them while accelerating settlement construction. The decision follows Palestine being recognised as a state by UNESCO — the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
There are now 150,000 Palestinian Authority employees across the West Bank and Gaza who do not know whether they will receive their full salaries next week.
On the night of July 11th, the Israeli parliament passed the controversial anti-boycott law. The law was written in response to the mounting global movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (or BDS) against Israel and profits from its settlements and industry in the occupied West Bank. The Boycott movement began as a mass Palestinian civil society call, and has been supported from the beginning by some Israelis. The new law bans them from publicly calling for a boycott, classifying it a civil wrong.
Like father, like son. There’s little to comment at this juncture, evidence speaks for itself.
The Israeli prime minister’s 19-year-old son — a military spokesman — posted derisive comments about Arabs and Muslims on his Facebook page, drawing a slap on the wrist from his superiors and focusing new attention on the controversial first family.
Earlier this year, Yair Netanyahu posted that Muslims “celebrate hate and death,” the Haaretz daily newspaper reported Friday. In the same post, written after Palestinian assailants entered a West Bank settlement and stabbed five members of an Israeli family to death, he wrote that “terror has a religion and it is Islam.”
Continue reading ‘Israeli PM’s son exhibits Islamophobia and abuses Muslims on Facebook’
Sixty-three years ago, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was forced to leave his home in the Galilean city of Safed and flee with his family to Syria. He took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees. Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their home and homeland, they were denied that most basic of human rights. That child’s story, like that of so many other Palestinians, is mine.
This month, however, as we commemorate another year of our expulsion — which we call the nakba, or catastrophe — the Palestinian people have cause for hope: this September, at the United Nations General Assembly, we will request international recognition of the State of Palestine on the 1967 border and that our state be admitted as a full member of the United Nations.
Many are questioning what value there is to such recognition while the Israeli occupation continues. Others have accused us of imperiling the peace process. We believe, however, that there is tremendous value for all Palestinians — those living in the homeland, in exile and under occupation.
Continue reading ‘Mahmoud Abbas: The Long Overdue Palestinian State’
