Tracing Gaza’s chaos to 1948 - Israel/USA Law/Terrorism/Europe & Boycott/Health/Settlers
Mark Levine; 21/2/08
The roots of Gaza’s misery today can be traced back to the late Ottoman period, decades before the war of 1948 transformed the Gaza Strip from a minor port and agricultural hinterland into one of the most overcrowded places on earth. It was then, in the middle of the first great age of globalisation, that Gaza’s fate was sealed, although it would take half a century for it to unfold. At the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman empire was undergoing a process of modernisation that was opening provinces like Palestine to greater economic and cultural penetration by Europe. It was during this period - the heyday of high imperialism - that Zionism arrived on Palestinian soil.
See: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7205AFFD-7B62-4F40-BCDE-94242112BA82.htm
Israel fears Europe will break boycott of Hamas
Barak Ravid; 21/2/08
Ran Koriel, Israel’s European Union ambassador, recently warned the Foreign Ministry of a change in EU policy on Hamas, amid mounting international pressure on Israel over its handling of the situation in the Gaza Strip. The government has recently been getting strong signals that both the U.S. and Europe are deeply frustrated by lack of progress in negotiations with the Palestinians. Envoys of the Quartet on the Middle East convened in Berlin on February 11 to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip and the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). David Welch, top Middle East aide to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Mark Otte, the European Union peace envoy; UN Middle East envoy Robery Serry; and Russian envoy to the Middle East Sergei Yakovlev took part in the meeting.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/956465.html
USA in quandary over helping victims of Palestinian terror, or the PA
Shmuel Rosner; 21/2/08
Dr. Katherine Baker, a microbiologist from Pittsburgh, says it wasn’t by chance that she decided to research germs. “People,” she says, “are too difficult to understand.” Last Thursday afternoon she stood at the entrance to the office of Congressman Mark Kirk, exhausted after three days of meetings with people - those creatures she finds so difficult to understand. Each time she mentions the morning of July 31, 2002 her eyes water up. She recalls how she woke up in the morning intending to plan a birthday party for her son who was just about to return from Israel, and how by the end of that day she was planning his funeral instead. Benjamin Blutstein was at the wrong place at the wrong time, one of five U.S. citizens killed in the Hebrew University cafeteria bombing in Jerusalem.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/956647.html
Palestinian woman poses as Israeli in order to undergo surgery
Fadi Eyadat; 21/2/06
A 22-year-old Jenin resident was arrested Wednesday for posing as an Israeli citizen in order to receive medical treatment. According to suspicions, the young Palestinian woman passed herself off as an Israeli in order to undergo complicated lung surgery at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital. The woman arrived at the hospital a week and a half ago and presented herself as a citizen of Israel. During the course of her treatment, the hospital staff discovered that that her blood type does no match that that of the Israeli woman whose identity she stole. Despite this, and because of her sensitive condition, the suspect underwent the operation. Hospital staff only notified the police of the crime after the patient was healthy enough to be discharged.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/956402.html
Construction continuing in West Bank settlements despite PM’s pledge
Amos Harel; 21/2/08
A new neighborhood comprising 27 trailers is currently under construction at the settlement of Eli, north of Ramallah, even though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed publicly after the Annapolis conference that any such building would cease. Even though some of the trailers are being set up on land privately owned by Palestinians, the authorities are taking no action. Similar unauthorized construction has taken place in the settlement of Maskiot in the northern Jordan Valley. Last December, after the Annapolis conference, Olmert promised to freeze construction in the settlements.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/956199.html
If the land isn’t private? - Settlers
Amira Hass; 21/2/08
Not long ago the greengrocer in Ramallah recalled - between weighing locally grown zucchini and stripped hyssop leaves - that his family owns the land on which the gas station at the old entrance to the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank is located. He would not be surprised by the figure that the Peace Now movement has succeeded in officially extracting from the defense establishment, after more than a year of fighting for the freedom of information: About one-third of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank (44 out of 120) were built on privately owned Palestinian land that was seized, by means of confiscation orders, for “security needs.” From the data it emerges that at least 19 of the 44 settlements were built on private land, even after prime minister Menachem Begin decided in 1979 that the construction and expansion of settlements would take place only on state-owned land.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/955979.html
Activists bar clinic to Israeli bulldozers
Mel Frykberg; 21/2/08
The West Bank village of Baqaa and its surrounding environs, near the city of Hebron, has only one medical center to meet the needs of about 1,000 Palestinians. But it, together with 11 homes, faces imminent demolition by Israeli bulldozers for being constructed without building permits. Palestinians say they cannot afford the high application costs for the permits or wade through the long bureaucratic nightmare the process involves, especially when the answer is often negative, which it usually is in areas of the West Bank where Israel wants Palestinian communities to move out.
See: http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/02/20/activists_bar_clinic_to _israeli_bulldozers/9974/