The Israeli siege of Gaza that has restricted access to food, water and medicine is now beginning to hit unborn children and newborn babies.

Sixty years ago, with Israel's establishment, Palestinians entered a nightmare from which they have never awoken. By joining Israel's celebration of its sixtieth anniversary, President Bush neglects this crucial reality, and underscores our government's insensitivity to Palestinian rights.

Canada's Ignorant Prime Minister...

"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct...If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs...As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds."

Sitting in the courtyard to his home one gloomy day in Gaza Beach Camp, surrounded by members of his family, Mostafa Abed Al Monem Ghwazy,is holding the legacy of his life in his hands,reading for us the handwritten official documents.Worth more then gold and diamonds, is the contract of the Ghwazy family property in Jaffa, and the invoice which the family received from the British government.A testament of ownership and a prove of that the land and property his parents bought long time ago, is orderly and fully payed for.

Twenty-six-year-old Jamila Merhi was forced from her family's home in Akbara village near Safad, Palestine in 1948. Now, 86, she lives in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon and still holds onto a copy of her family's deed for their land in Palestine.

Though some Zionist apologists have insisted that Israel did not practice a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing, the displacement of the Palestinians was an indispensable part of the Zionist dream.

The UN is demanding an investigation into how the Israeli military killed one of its Palestinian school teachers by blasting open the front door of her Gaza home with explosives in the presence of three of her children.

Wafer Shaker al Daghma, 34, a teacher at a local UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) elementary school, was killed last Wednesday as she stood preparing to open the wooden door of her home to the troops. According to UNRWA and relatives who found her body, the military used an explosive device on the door which blew most of her head from her body.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently made outrageously ignorant comments on the plight of the Palestinian people.

A carpet red with the blood of the Palestinian people is being rolled out to welcome the visiting dignitaries coming to 'celebrate' 60 years of ethnic cleansing in the Holy Land.

The Nakba of 1948 was a disaster for the people of Palestine.... The Nakba of today is..... 'A disaster for everybody'

NAKBA EVENTS NEAR YOU.......

Ali Abu Zour lived in a village near Jaffa that no longer exists. The residents of Abu Kishk fled or were forced from their homes in 1948.

And at the same time as we unreservedly condemn the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe, we categorically reject the exploitation of the Holocaust by the Zionists to justify their crimes and harness international acceptance of the campaign of ethnic cleansing and subjection they have been waging against us - to the point where in February the Israeli deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai threatened the people of Gaza with a "holocaust".

Passover ended on the Hebrew calendar almost a month ago.... Ramadan is not due to start until the 1st of September...

Why then are the bakeries in Gaza closing NOW???

Consider that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said in 1969 in an often-repeated statement: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian."

Too bad she didn't read history because there has been a collective consciousness of their unique identity for millennia. The ancient Canaanites weren't called Palestinians, but neither were the Mesopotamians called Iraqis or the Celts called Irish or British. Still, the roots are unquestionable and run eternally deep, from archeological finds to folktales.

Eighty-year-old Beatrice Habesch sobbed when she caught sight of her father's house in Jerusalem on Sunday and remembered how it was taken over by Jews in 1948.

"This is our house! This is my house!" she shouted as fellow Palestinians held her back from running towards the building.

"We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed ... we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them."

PALESTINE REMEMBERED~~ 60 YEARS LATER ~~ PHOTO OF THE DAY: THESE KEYS FIT...

VIDEO - THOUSANDS MARCH IN LONDON FOR A FREE PALESTINE...

ISRAEL'S 60 YEAR OLD LEGACY TO IT'S ARAB CITIZENS IS RACISM...

The image of a key has become the symbol of the Palestinian people's dream of returning to the homes they were driven out of by the zionist pogroms of 1948. These were homes that families lived in for generations, homes that contained memories, homes that BELONGED TO THEM!

On a day when across the country, hundreds of thousands attended official military shows, firework displays and communal barbeques, this was the biggest event held by Palestinians inside Israel. Participating in the procession were the very top level Arab leaders, including Knesset members, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee and the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

. Now it is clear that Beirut is firmly in the hands of Hizballah and nothing the Americans can do will dislodge or weaken this popular movement, just as they cannot weaken the Sadrists in Iraq or Hamas in Gaza.

After failing to anticipate Hamas's victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 19/2008 (30 April- 07 May 2008)...

With the US and Israel telling Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas that keeping away from Hamas is a sine qua non for the continuation of the "peace process," many in Fatah are now realising that Israel and its US guardian-ally are only utilising Palestinian national disunity to further weaken the Palestinian negotiating position.

PALESTINIANS IN ISRAEL ARE NOT CELEBRATING TODAY...

DEFINE 'PALESTINIAN'...

Haitham Sabbah, Mary Rizzo and Gilad Atzmon are very pleased to announce their new site, Palestine Think Tank. It is a site containing news, analysis, art and more to further the cause of justice for Palestinians. It concentrates on many aspects of the resistance, but also focuses on the issues affecting the entire Middle East. Please visit us at

This week, the "hero" of the Qana-1 massacre, told foreign correspondents based in Israel that "Hamas was standing in the way of Palestinian statehood."

Well, this is, of course, a blatant lie, to say the least, because every honest person under the sun, Jew or gentile, knows well that the main obstacle impeding the realization of peace in the Middle East has been the intensive colonization of Palestinian land and unending expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied territories that belong to another people.

This elusive peace is widely proclaimed as both essential and achievable. But while the former is true and desirable, the latter is a widespread misperception. The solution to the conflict exists and is well known, but it cannot be implemented in the foreseeable future.

Of the 40,000 fishermen and others who make a living from the catch, only about 700 are still busy, according to the Fishing Syndicate in Gaza. The boats need oil, and Israel will not let the fishermen have it.

The spokesperson of the Gaza-based anti-siege popular committee Rami Abdo has warned on Tuesday that the Israeli blockade on Gaza Strip caused a sharp decrease in drinking water, putting lives of the 1.5 million Gazans at risk.

THE WALL OF APARTHEID AS SEEN BY A 14 YEAR OLD...

Rarely seen archival photographs alongside Palestinian survivors remembering the 1948 ' Nakba ' (Catastrophe), describing the expulsion from their land on which the suburbs of Tel Aviv have since been built and their subsequent struggles as refugees. Memories include the terror immediately prior to fleeing, the slow realisation that they would not be returning home soon, the struggle to rebuild their lives in cramped refugee camps, and the increased resistance that grew once the Israeli military pursued them to the refugee camps.

The sources said frankly that Abbas is nearly ready to resign, regardless of having not completed his term.

The stated reasons include what happened with US President George Bush during their recent meeting in Washington. Meetings with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were also mentioned.

The stated reasons include what happened with US President George Bush during their recent meeting in Washington. Meetings with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were also mentioned. The source say that Abbas does not want to carry on with empty negotiations as Bush is going to attend celebrations for the 60 years of existence of the state of Israel and present a paper expressly affirming the lack of opposition to Israeli settlement expansion. It will also categorically reject the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees and secure complete umbrella protection for Israel by the US.

We really didn't mean to do it. Again we didn't mean to do it. We have never meant to do it. Yet as usual, even though we didn't mean it - we hit them. We hit them 1,000 times already without meaning to do it. We have killed a total of 1,000 Palestinian children since the second Intifada broke out on September 29, 2000. A thousand.

The Hamduni family used to live in the Palestinian city of Jaffa before it was torn apart with the creation of Israel.

Sixty years later, half the family lives in a quiet village in the north of what is now Israel while the other half is in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israel's assault on the people of Gaza is so horrendous that it will not soon be forgotten. This vicious attempt by Israel to destroy an entire nation has tipped the scales for good and Zionism will forever be remembered as a blemish in the history of the Jewish people. The people of Gaza, however, give us hope and they will forever be remembered for their courage and resilience during these trying times.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas feels quite depressed these days, having been unceremoniously told by President Bush that the US administration won't pressure Israel to halt Jewish settlement expansion nor commit itself to a total Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.

Some of Abbas's aides have described his recent visit to Washington as the "straw that broke the camel's back." Abbas himself described the visit as "a clear failure."

PALESTINE REMEMBERED ~~ 60 YEARS OF DIGNITY AND JUSTICE DENIED...

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B'Tselem, has issued a report finding that the Israeli government has continued to maintain severe and comprehensive restrictions on movement in the West Bank, despite claims to the contrary.

During this past week, Israeli military forces invaded civilian villages trapped within Gaza's closed borders with tanks, helicopters, warplanes, and drones, massacring 39 and wounding over 100, including scores of unarmed children, babies, and women. Israel says this is punishment for the homemade Qassam rockets fired this week toward Sderot. The total number of Israelis killed by these Qassams was zero.

One would think any fair-minded reviewer would at least make mention of the fact that Morris has made such comments. But, of course, The New York Times is rarely fair-minded when it comes to Israel.

It is a strange feeling: after working as a productive professional in Gaza for five years, I have become a black market junkie. I make several phone calls a day hunting for fuel for my car, diesel for the electricity generator waiting on standby to power the house, even cigarettes and vitamins.

Spurned in Washington, can President Abbas defer any longer the imperative of re-establishing Palestinian national unity, asks Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

Show your support for the Palestinian Struggle by supporting the Palestinians themselves...

Mohammed Omer, my dear Brother living in Gaza, was interviewed yesterday by Crossing The Line. He speaks about the latest incidents there including the brutal murder of his fellow photojournalist and friend Fadel Shana.

Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman is expected to arrive in Israel shortly to receive Israel's official response to the Egyptian cease-fire proposal, Palestinian sources in Cairo said yesterday.

At 1.00 in the morning on the 30th of April, the Israeli Army raids orphanage in Hebron, home to 110 girls, seizing all equipment from community sewing workshop.

We have compiled the most complete mapping of Palestine ever (over 5,600 placemarks have been identified), however, to view our presentation Google Earth should be installed.

Sixty years ago, more than 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and belongings, their farms and businesses, their towns and cities. Jewish militias seeking to create a state with a Jewish majority in Palestine, and later, the Israeli army, drove them out. Israel rapidly moved Jews into the newly-emptied Palestinian homes. Nakba means "catastrophe" in Arabic, and Palestinians refer to the destruction of their society and the takeover of their homeland as an-Nakba, "The Catastrophe."

When Hassan Amin al-Bana gingerly steps on the gas pedal of his bright yellow taxi, a strange smell wafts from the exhaust: deep-fried fast food.

Faced with chronic fuel shortages due to an Israeli blockade and a strike by Palestinian distributors protesting supply caps, taxi drivers in the Gaza Strip are filling their tanks with cooking oil, often scrounging leftover fat from street vendors.

Auntie Sameera said " Layla, I beg of you, tell the world..." I don't understand why she said that to me, she knows nothing of my blog. She continued "tell them we can't take it anymore, we can't. Let someone have Mercy on us. Have Mercy on us." And the line got cut off.

PALESTINIAN PHOTO ALBUM ~~ LIFE IN EAST JERUSALEM...

Twelve Palestinian factions have agreed to proposals for a truce with Israel, starting in the Gaza Strip, Egypt's state news agency Mena says.

The latest slaughter in the Gaza Strip is generating the predictable claims and counter-claims about responsibility for the loss of innocent lives. The Palestinians say a mother, her four children and another youth were killed by Israeli tank fire, while the Israelis insist that explosives belonging to militants were accidentally set off. As is generally the case, though, whatever the immediate cause on this specific occasion, these and the thousands of civilian deaths that have preceded them are the result of the impunity with which the Israeli government is habitually allowed to run roughshod over Arabs.

Perhaps Israelis should look at the following videos to help them remember..... after all, it all happened just this week..... Perhaps the words NEVER AGAIN will get a new meaning....

BUT..... they can't! They have already been censored...

As far as the organisers of the exhibition are concerned, these photographs of Arab refugees, displaced from their homes in Israel in 1948, are merely an artistic slice of life from a dramatic point in Middle Eastern history.

But the Barbican Arts Centre's show Homeland Lost, consisting of 16 black and white images taken by the photojournalist Alan Gignoux soon after Israel gained independence, is the unlikely frontier of new hostilities between Britain's Israeli and Arab communities.

Jonathan Hoffman, of the Jewish umbrella group the Zionist Federation, has complained to the London arts venue's director Nicholas Kenyon about captions accompanying the photos, which state that the 800,000 Palestinians who left their homes were "uprooted" and "dispossessed". He accused the Barbican of "falsifying" history.

A wide-ranging group of U.S. Jewish leaders plans to release a statement Wednesday urging Jews worldwide to boycott the Summer Olympics in Beijing, citing China's troubling record on human rights and Tibet.

In the next few days, a new Israeli settlement will be established in the Palestinian neighborhood of Ras al-Amud, east of Jerusalem, according to the former Israeli police commissioner Moshe Karadi.

WATCH DEATH 'LIVE ON CAMERA'...

The scandal of the international community's impotence in resolving one of history's longest bloodlettings is that it knows what the problem is but does not have the courage to speak the truth, much less deal with it. The next peace conference in Germany (or in Moscow, where the Russians want to hold it) will suffer from the same gutlessness that has marked all previous efforts. It will deal with everything except the problem primarily responsible for this conflict's multi-generational impasse.

Colonization of Palestine

It was difficult for 87-year-old Jamil Khader to discover that nearly all of the 1,400 olive trees his extended family planted in February had suddenly gone missing, having been uprooted and stolen.

You heard me right! Israel is no longer responsible for the genocide and continued holocaust of the people living in Gaza.... it's all Hamas' doing....

SPRINGTIME USED TO BE A SEASON FOR WEDDINGS........

Were the Jews who massacred the Roman families garrisoned at Masada freedom fighters or brutal terrorists? Was the Zealots leader, Eleazar Ben Yair, a mass murderer and a terrorist or a religious hero? When Eleazar Ben Yair ordered all of the Jewish families murdered, were they willing martyrs for their faith or innocent, terrified victims of an extremist leader? When the Zealot soldiers killed each member of their own families, were they fanatical followers or faithful believers? Perhaps the interpretation depends on which Masada tour guide you get.

Masada's powerful legacy of Zionist values appears to strongly influence todays Palestinians, too. The Palestinian Arabs never really shared the Zionist values before, but todays Palestinians may someday have a Masada of their own, as their national symbol. The Likud Party is certainly doing all it can to help them produce one.

Tove Johansson from Stockholm walked through the Tel Rumeida checkpoint with a small group of human rights workers (HRWs) to accompany Palestinian schoolchildren to their homes. They were confronted by about 100 Jewish extremists in small groups. They started chanting in Hebrew "We killed Jesus, we'll kill you too!" -- a refrain the settlers had been repeating to internationals in Tel Rumeida all day.

An Israeli tank shell slammed into a tiny Gaza Strip home Monday during a skirmish with gunmen, killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children as they prepared to sit down for breakfast, officials and relatives said. ADVERTISEMENT The new violence threatened to hobble Egyptian attempts to bring a cease-fire to the area.

The Israelis already have the Gaza Strip under military siege, carefully controlling what and who goes in and out of it. They have now cut off most fuel, and the United Nations has been forced to stop distributing food aid. This Israeli government action is an unvarnished war crime. It is known as collective punishment. There was already hunger and malnutrition among Palestinian children, which will now be worsened. Hamas told Jimmy Carter it was ready to negotiate.

VIDEO - ISRAEL'S RESPONSE TO PALESTINIAN PEACE OFFER...

Palestinian rockets hit Israeli cemetery...

The UN is to halt food handouts for up to 800,000 Palestinians from tomorrow because of a severe fuel shortage in Gaza brought on by an Israeli economic blockade.

WAR WITH Syria? Peace with Syria?

A big military operation against Hamas in the Gaza strip? A cease-fire with Hamas?

Our media discuss these questions dispassionately, as if they were equivalent options. Like a person in a showroom making a choice between two cars. This one is good, and so is the other one. So which should one buy?

And nobody cries out: War is the height of stupidity!

As 1.5 million Gazans are crying out to the world to pressure Israel to lift its scandalously callous blockade of the coastal territory, another 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank are struggling to cope with an unprecedented economic crisis that is further impoverishing and exhausting them.

The crisis, the harshest in recent memory, stems from a host of local and global factors, including soaring food and energy prices, sagging currency value, rampant joblessness and draconian Israeli restrictions on the movement of people, goods and services.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas met with President Bush in Washington Thursday in a desperate effort to save the American-backed peace process from the danger of collapse. Abbas is reportedly "gravely concerned " that the prospects of reaching a breakthrough in peace talks with Israel before the expiration of Bush's term in the White House are very slim.

As 1.5 million Gazans are crying out to the world to pressure Israel to lift its scandalously callous blockade of the coastal territory, another 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank are struggling to cope with an unprecedented economic crisis that is further impoverishing and exhausting them.

He figured if he was going to be drafted anyway, he would agree to serve in the Israeli-occupied territories, "to see what really happens, and maybe to change things," he says. "But I didn't succeed."

Today, he is one of 39 recently discharged soldiers whose testimonies are part of a grim new report on the situation in the West Bank city of Hebron, where the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) oversee a volatile population of 700 to 800 Jewish settlers living amid nearly 170,000 Palestinians. The 118-page report, which tells of systematic mistreatment of local Palestinians by both soldiers and settlers, was released during this week's Passover holiday.

From the moment I set foot in Gaza there was one question everyone kept asking me: "When are they going to open the crossings?"

For almost a year now the two points at which people can get out of Gaza - the Erez and Rafah crossings - have been closed to all Palestinians.

Palestinian leaders and Christian peace activists as well as representatives of human rights organizations operating in the occupied Palestinian territories on Thursday made an impassioned appeal to "all men and women of conscience all over the world" to help stop Israeli army plans to close down and take over several orphanages and boarding schools sheltering thousands of orphans and impoverished students. Many of the orphans' parents had been killed by the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish terrorists, also known as "settlers."

Hamas will tell Egyptian mediators on Thursday it is prepared to accept a truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip with a timetable for extending it to the West Bank, a Palestinian official close to the talks said.

"Hamas's position is that they agree to a calm in Gaza and the West Bank but it would begin in Gaza at this stage and then apply to the West Bank after an agreed and specified period of time," said the official, who declined to be named.

Israel said it was ready for "quiet" at the Gaza border, but that it would require a complete halt to attacks by Hamas against Israelis, a stop to cross-border rocket fire from all Palestinian groups and an end to weapon smuggling into the Hamas-controlled territory.

Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush's letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

Hamas agrees on conditions for truce with Israel - paper...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday the Bush administration explicitly warned former President Jimmy Carter against meeting with members of Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip and which is regarded by the U.S. as a terror group.

In two weeks time Israel will celebrate the 60th anniversry of its founding. In two weeks time Palestine will begin a mourning period for the 60th anniversary of the destruction of their nation.

Carter: Include Hamas in peace bid...

Former US President Jimmy Carter has said that Hamas is prepared to accept the right of Israel to "live as a neighbour next door in peace".

"Unlike terrorist organizations, the IDF does not intentionally attack civilians, and takes various precautionary measures to avoid and prevent such incidents from occurring."

So says the murders of the gorgeous young man to the left... he just happened to be 'in the way' of the projectile that killed him. So starts the official whitewash of the incident, commonly referred to as an 'investigation'. When the murderers themselves conduct the 'investigation', you can be pretty sure what the outcome will be.

It was another of those routine tragedies that are never publicized. At eight in the morning we at ICAHD (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) received a call that the Border Police, Israeli police and Jerusalem Municipality bulldozers were massing below the Palestinian village of Anata, poised to begin another day of home demolitions.

In case a comprehensive Palestinian-Israeli accord is reached by the end of this year, as espoused by US President George Bush, Israel is taking no chances. It is seeking whatever it can get its hands on should a peace deal that includes a Palestinian state be reached. Hence, the announcement that 100 new houses will be built in a West Bank settlement.

VIDEO - In defense of Carter...

Israelis have no moral right to fight the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The fate of hundreds of orphans is in the balance after Israel's army attacked their schools and residence, writes Khaled Amayreh in Hebron

President Jimmy Carter's sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women and children. Sadly, this is "business as usual" for the Palestinians.

The intensification of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip over the past couple of days is likely to be attributed to the Jewish state's inability to cope with Hamas's latest successful operation - two days ago, Palestinian fighters killed three Israeli soldiers and injured seven others.

The immediate Israeli knee-jerk reaction was of course to bomb the Gaza Strip continuously until it was deemed sufficient by Israeli leadership.

JVP: Support Jimmy Carter; US Needs to Talk to Hamas...

Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip is an "atrocity," former US president Jimmy Carter said after meeting with Hamas officials in Cairo. Carter also said he had asked Hamas officials to stop rocket attacks into Israel and defended his controversial meetings with the Palestinian terrorist group, saying it was necessary to talk to all parties to achieve peace.

Israel is not ready for such comparisons, even though the situation begs it. It is doubtful whether it is possible to complain when an outside observer, especially a former U.S. president who is well versed in international affairs, sees in the system of separate roads for Jews and Arabs, the lack of freedom of movement, Israel's control over Palestinian lands and their confiscation, and especially the continued settlement activity, which contravenes all promises Israel made and signed, a matter that cannot be accepted. The interim political situation in the territories has crystallized into a kind of apartheid that has been ongoing for 40 years. In Europe there is talk of the establishment of a binational state in order to overcome this anomaly. In the peace agreement with Egypt, 30 years ago, Israel agreed to "full autonomy" for the occupied territories, not to settle there.

Carter, defying Israel, meets Hamas ex-minister...

Despite renewed U.S. efforts to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement this year, popular views of the United States in the Arab world have actually worsened since 2006, according to a major new survey [.pdf] of public opinion in six Arab states.

The Israeli government announced plans on Friday to build 100 new homes in two Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move Palestinians condemned as another blow to U.S.-brokered peace talks.

The nazis herded the Jews of Poland into ghettos, the largest one being the Warsaw Ghetto. It had 400,000 inhabitants.

The zionists herded the Palestinians into ghettos, the largest one being the Gaza Strip. It HAS one and a half million inhabitants.

Two IOF artillery shells slammed into the Wafa'a hospital east of Gaza city at dawn Wednesday severely damaging the ground floor, X-ray department and the laboratory, the hospital administration said in a press release.

PHOTO JOURNAL OF ISRAEL'S LATEST ATTACK IN GAZA...

In a few weeks, Palestinians the world over will commemorate their Nakba (catastrophe) -- the loss of their homelands, their identity, dignity and their life.

Carter: Arafat fought for just causes...

For 60 years the State of Israel has treated it's Palestinian citizens with nothing less than contempt. For 60 years many of the Palestinian citizens of Israel referred to themselves as Israeli Arabs.

The 'times they are a changing!' Most Israeli Arabs now call themselves Palestinians... which is what they are. Israeli policies forced this issue to become the reality that it is by their treatment of this people... but now they are unable to cope with the 'monster' they created....

Uri Avnery, a former member of the Israeli Knesset has been one of the few Israelis, if not the only one, to publicly show his appreciation to the peace efforts promoted by Jimmy Carter. The following is an Open Letter which he sent to the President....

A man of peace determined to bring his message to the land of war... the ultimate challenge. He is scorned for his efforts yet he continues..... truly a man to be admired.

The interruption of fuel causes the sewage treatment plants and pumping stations to stop, thereby pushing the Strip towards an environmental disaster. This will particularly increase the flow of sewage water into the streets and alleys, particularly in Jabalia refugee camp, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahiya towns in north Gaza where a main treatment plant is located. The plant pumps the sewage water after collecting it in the northern basins from neighboring towns.

Gaza's beaches are witnessing high rates of pollution due to the pumping of untreated sewage water into the sea. This issue aggravates todays environmental and public health crisis that already suffers from an ongoing deterioration.

Ireported earlier about an 80 year old woman being attacked at a checkpoint in the Occupied West Bank yesterday.... it seems that is the newest 'game' for the Israeli soldiers.... Same checkpoint, most likely same soldier also beat up an 80 year old man. Big heroes these Israelis... pretty much the same abuse my grandparents experienced in Auschwitz.

"The terminal will remain closed for a few days to give us time to check and decide on measures to ensure security," Tzahi Hanegbi, the head of parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee, told military radio.

He added that "no strategic decision has been taken" to close the crossing indefinitely.

The Palestinians are not as nice as the Tibetans in the eyes of the world. But the Palestinian people deserve exactly the same rights as the occupied Tibetan people, even if their leaders are less enchanting, they have no scarlet robes and their fight is more violent. There is absolutely no connection between rights and the means of protest, and from that perspective, there is no difference between a Tibetan and a Palestinian - they both deserve the exact same freedom.

Moreover, in the first years of the Israeli occupation, most Palestinians accepted it submissively, with practically no violence. What did they get as a result? Nothing.

The Shin Bet security services on Sunday admitted to arresting relatives of individuals under interrogation to extract confessions from the prisoners.

The head of the Shin Bet's interrogration department told the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee: "Certainly we used this method, but only on one occasion.

When people learn that she speaks on the never-ending conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Alison Weir said at the beginning of her speech at the Greenwich Library on Thursday night, they want to know which side she's on. And, she said, she found that question off-putting because it's not a football game and it's not a matter of being on one side or the other but of being true to the facts and sensitive to injustice in whatever form.

AL-Watan pointed out that Olmert expressed Israel's readiness to fix a ceasefire deal with the Palestinians, provided that such a deal be confined to the Gaza Strip, stressing that the Palestinian authority should take control of Gaza's crossings. In the meantime, Olmert warned of any escalation from the Gaza Strip against Israel, saying that Israel's response then will be unprecedented.

What is the farce for? Each of the participants has his own reasons: Olmert needs an agenda to fill the void. George Bush, a lame duck who leaves behind him nothing but ruins in every field, wants to present at least one achievement, fictitious as it may be. Poor Mahmoud Abbas, whose continued existence depends on his ability to show some political achievement for his people, clings to this illusion with all his remaining strength. And so the farce goes on.

BUT ANYONE who believes that the government has no agenda, and that the State of Israel has no agenda, is quite wrong. There certainly is an agenda, but it is hidden. More precisely: it is unconscious.

Why were 46 Palestinians detained for 46 hours at a checkpoint for no reason by Israeli troops? Why were their tires punctured? Why were they denied access to available restrooms during their detention?

WHY ~~ WHY ~~ WHY ??? WHY DID ISRAEL TROOPS DO THIS???

Simply, BECAUSE THEY CAN!

As the old lady tried to cross, the soldier pushed her with excessive force and she fell to the ground suffering minor bruises. When she managed to stand up, she hit the soldier with her cane.

What is the 'P" word that sends Zionists and Likudnuts everywhere into a hysterical rage? The "P" word is Peace. Peace or rather the prospect of peace sends Zionists and Likudnuts into a frenzy, running away from that word or that prospect as if it was laden with a fresh batch of plague from the Israel Institute of Biological Research, near Tel Aviv.

This is the mindset of America's "only" friend in the ME, Israel. A mindset that is set on continuous war, as long as American money, weapons and in the case of Iraq, American troops are used to help prop up the racist and Apartheid State of Israel.

Preparations are under way in Israel for the biggest holiday on the Hebrew calendar, Passover. A time for families and friends to join together at a traditional feast known as the Seder, a time to remember the suffering, the humiliations, the bondage of the ancient Hebrews in a foreign land.

The shops are full of frantic shoppers buying special items for the special feast. Children are already out of school so they too can help in the preparations. Plans are being made for vacations, day trips, picnics... all the fun things associated with the Festival.... truly a Festival of Freedom, when all are finally free.

THE STREET URCHINS OF PALESTINE...

"I am bleeding uncontrollably, I need an ambulance." That was not a call to emergency services, it was an appeal broadcast live on radio in Gaza City.

Israel has launched a new PR Programme throughout Europe to promote tourism.... Come see this... Come see that....

BUT WE WON'T SHOW YOU THIS...

The MOST detailed mapping of Palestine ever via Google's Maps and Earth programs...

U.N. Teams With Google Earth To Track Refugees, Educate Public...

Celebrate 60 Years of...... Occupation, Genocide... see a holocaust live in process...

Take the new KafkaTour to Israel.

Palestine stands alone today, the world has literally closed their eyes to their desperate plight for Freedom. Palestine knows this and also feels that despite this, their God has not abandoned them and has kept them united as a community.

Investing in the treatment of children for psychological shocks that they have suffered as a result of shelling operations is truly justified since the condition is so common. Ibrahim Hawash, 42 years old, frequently calls his wife during his nightshift at work to make sure that she follows the prescribed treatment for their children’s involuntary urination condition. The family doctor confirmed that the four children, who are in primary school, have lost the ability to control their bladders as a result of the shock they suffered when Israeli army jets bombed a house close to their home in Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip during the Hot Winter military campaign.

You do the math: 1.5 million Gazans, half of them children, completely aware of their despicable lives under an Israeli occupation, most having lost one or more family members to death by the IOF - and you have a hard time understanding why rockets will continue to be launched at Israel (and any Israel supporting country?)

Israeli forces launched air strikes and a ground raid in the Gaza Strip Friday, trading fire with gunmen in clashes that killed seven Palestinians including a 12-year-old boy, Palestinians said.

Witnesses said that the tanks stormed the area and surrounded a group of farmers working their land then kidnapped at least five of them and took them to unknown locations. Meanwhile other Israeli forces attacked areas on the central Gaza/Israel borders and kidnappedat least three civilaians , local sources reported. On Wednesday the Israeli army attacked areas east of Gaza city killing five and injuring at ten others.

This is what Israel is doing to the children of Palestine, America, are you listening?

It was a happy moment when I heard the news that UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched in coordination with Google Earth, a new layer that focus on refugee camps around the world.

However, my happiness did not last for long when I discovered that NONE of the Palestinian refugee camps within the Occupied Palestinian Territories are published there (see map below). So, even if you "Sit in front of your computer", with a few clicks you can "see, hear and develop an emotional understanding of what it is like to be a refugee", but not the Palestinian refugees' experience. They don't exist!

The following essay deals with answering one particular question.... a very interesting one that sheds light on the superior attitudes of the Israelis in regard to the Palestinians.... Can anyone answer the following? .... Why do the Israelis always remember their past and we are asked to forget ours?

More killing by US Taxpayer Children injured and killed in Gaza by Israel using US made and paid for missiles...

A penalty of three years' imprisonment will be imposed on Israeli vehicle-owners who take their vehicles to mechanics in the West Bank under a law passed by the Knesset on Monday.

VIDEO - Why Murdering people to build homes for the chosen of god is racist and insane 101...

"Hey! Take your hands off me! Not you! You!!!"--the voice of a young woman in the darkened cinema, an old joke.

"Hey! Take your hands off Tibet!" the international chorus is crying out, "But not from Chechnya! Not from the Basque homeland! And certainly not from Palestine!" And that is not a joke.

This is not "self defense". According to a leading Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, the primitive rockets fired from Gaza have taken thirteen Israeli lives in the past four years. Yet Israeli forces have killed more than 1000 Palestinians in the occupied territories in the past two years alone. Almost half were civilians, including some 200 children.

That was little Adam's question for his mother when I came to visit their house, just before leaving the village of al-Tuwani for a brief trip home to the United States. Adam is three years old. His mother tells me that he wants his father to come home from jail and bring him ice cream. "Adam is upset," she says. Looking at her eyes, I can tell that she is too. So am I.

Can a bus driver miss seeing a 15 year old crossing a road on a donkey? The answer is yes if the child was a Palestinian and the driver was working for illegal settlers. The driver claims it was an accident.... but we know better.... IT WAS MURDER! There were witnesses.... all Palestinians.... Will their testemony be heard in a court of law? Again we know the answer...

When I came to learn of the fate that befell the Palestinians, I was shaken to the core and most particularly when I read eye-witness accounts of a massacre of Palestinian villagers that occurred a month before Israel's unilateral declaration of independence. This was at Deir Yassin, a quiet village just outside Jerusalem, which had the misfortune to lie by the road from Tel Aviv. On 9 April 1948, 254 men, women and children were butchered there by Zionist forces to secure the road. Because this was one of the few such episodes that received media attention in the West, the Zionist leadership did not deny it, but sought to label it an aberration by extremists. In fact, however, the atrocity was part of a broader plan designed by the Zionist High Command, led by Ben Gurion himself, which was aimed at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the British mandate territory and the seizure of as much land as possible for the intended Jewish state.

Palestinians hurl stones at bus carrying settlers near Nablus after it hits 15-year-old shepherd, who later dies in hospital. 'Bus intentionally veered from its lane,' Palestinians say

Every time the former Palestinian President sits down to dine with the Prime minister of Israel, whatever is left of Palestine gets even smaller. Settlements continue to grow on Palestinian lands, the wall of apartheid continues to be built on Palestinian land... a piece here.... a piece there.....