:icon_sadangel2: Palestine Peace a dream?

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Al Mezan Condemns Escalation of Israeli Aggression
Date : 23/11/2009 Time : 22:36

GAZA, November 23, 2009 (WAFA)- Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights condemned escalation of Israeli aggression represented by three air strikes against on Gaza Strip on Sunday, considering them as a violation to the rules of international humanitarian law.

Al Mezan emphasized that the silence of the international community and its failure to fulfill its obligations towards civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) encourage Israel to continue its violations of international law.

Israeli warplanes launched three air strikes in different locations in the Gaza Strip injuring 10 persons and destroying several Palestinian houses and other property.

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Syrian Actor Duraid Lahham Enters Gaza along with a group of actors and actresses
23.11.09 - 21:02
Duraid Lahham is probably considered one of the most prominent Arab actors to participate in breaking the siege on Gaza. The Syrian actor and satirist is perhaps the equivalent of Bob Hope, Larry David and Jon Stewart put in one.

Through his most famous character, Ghawar Attoshe, and for several decades, he provided the most stinging political satire and social commentary the Arab world has seen. His 1979 play Kasak Ya Watan, (written by Mohammed Al Maghoot) took Arabic political satire to its peak.

In another play where he makes a joke about his shoe being called an "Assad" (lion) , Duraid Lahham ended up in Hafez Asad’s (former Syrian President) infamous jails.

Prisons are not new to him. His own experience paled in comparison upon his arrival into Gaza, after Egyptian authorities tried to prevent him from entering for several days.

Other Syrian soap opera superstars joined Duraid Lahham in this visit to Gaza, as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The group of 12 includes Wafa Mousselie and Salim Kallas, who play leading characters on the hugely popular soap opera called Bab Al-Hara (Gate of the Neighborhood), played on Arab satallite TV stations during the holy month of Ramadan.

Watched by tens of millions across the Arab world, Bab Al-Hara is popular among Palestinians, particularly for its depictions of Syrian resisting French colonialism in the 1930s.

The delegation also included Jamal Suleiman ,Assad Eid, Rafiq Sbeie, Assad Fadda, Susan Najem Ad-Din, Radwan Aqili , Talhat Hamdi, Hadi Baqdunes, Hesham Hasbani and TV cameraman Ayman Salameh.


The group crossed to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, continuing their tour to areas where underground network smuggling tunnels are built or dug, after two and a half years of Israeli blockade on Gaza.

The group also visited families and homes that were demolished by the Israeli military force during the offensive on Gaza in December – January of last year that killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians.

Local officials and large numbers of crowds welcomed the group, who is expected to participate in a local play called “Shayata” in the city of Khan Younis.

PNN/wires.

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1000 Gaza pilgrims leave via Rafah tomorow

2009-11-22 11:56:07
Gaza-PalPress-Spokesman of Hamas ousted government Engineer Ehab Al Ghussein confirmed that that Egyptian authorities plan to open Rafah crossing tomorrow Monday for the travel of relatives of martyrs to Saudi Arabia to perform the pilgrimage ritual.

Al Ghussein said that 1000 pilgrims from Gaza strip who were granted honor from the Saudi King are planned to leave tomorrow via Rafah border crossing.

Minister of Awkaf and Religious Affairs Dr. Mahmoud Al Habash announced earlier that Saudi Arabia is hosting this year 2000 Palestinian pilgrims from Gaza Strip and the West Bank equally to perform pilgrimage.

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Israel threatens its soldiers with 'iron fist'
Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:20:14 GMT

Israel's military Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has declared that Israel's armed forces will have a zero-tolerance policy for insubordinate soldiers.

"We have no tolerance for this type of insubordination, no matter which side of the political spectrum the soldiers are on," Haaretz quoted Ashkenazi as saying on Monday.

The IDF chief made his comments after several combat soldiers from various units within the Kfir Brigade announced they would not evacuate unauthorized West Bank outposts.

"It is possible that during your service the army will need you for several of our missions, and those who will make the difference are the soldiers on the front line," said the IDF chief

On Saturday, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak had voiced his own pledge to crack down on soldiers who refuse to carry out orders, saying that Israel will not hesitate to crush such a phenomenon.

"A country that wishes to live must end refusal by the right and left with an iron fist," Barak said.

Earlier this month, the Israeli Army's chief rabbi had called on military students to "show no mercy" when they fight a war or they will be "damned."

"In times of war, whoever doesn't fight with all his heart and soul is damned, if he keeps his sword from bloodshed," he Israeli daily Haaretz had quoted Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki as saying.

All Israeli high school seniors, including women, are expected to serve in the military upon graduation; women for two years and men for three years. Refusal to serve carries a term in prison.

Nevertheless, more and more Israelis are now avoiding mandatory military service. According to army statistics, nearly half of Israeli men avoid their mandatory three-year military service.

Some high school seniors launched the Shministim, a conscientious objectors movement, in 2008 with the publication of an open letter announcing their refusal to serve with the Israeli military in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The signatories cite their reasons for refusing to serve IDF as the repressive measures used by the Israeli military in the Palestinian lands, including checkpoints, targeted assassinations, roads segregated for Jews only, and other measures that "serve the land-seizing policy, annex more occupied territories into Israel and trample on Palestinian human rights."

Israel's latest deadly offensive against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip killed more than 1400 people and injured many more, a large number of them women and children. A UN-ordered report has accused Israeli military and political authorities of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the military operation.

MGH/MP/MTM/DT

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Four killed in Israeli chopper crash
Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:55:03 GMT

An Israeli helicopter during a military exercise.
A helicopter goes down by the Israeli shore killing four passengers, reports say, as investigators look into the cause of the incident.

The civilian aircraft crashed into the eastern Mediterranean on Tuesday near the central Israeli city of Netanya after taking off from Tel Aviv, AFP reported.

"The bodies of two civilians were recovered from the water," read the rescue team's statement on the incident near the central Israeli city of Netanya. Two more bodies were found several hours later, it said.

Israeli news website Ynet quoted the rescue team as saying that the mortalities were tourists including an English national.

The cause of the crash is yet to be discovered.

HN/AKM

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Israeli warplanes attack Gaza again, 3 wounded
Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:14:20 GMT
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Israeli warplanes attacked an alleged weapons-making factory and two supply tunnels in the Gaza Strip early on Tuesday in what the military said was retaliation for Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel.

Medics and other witnesses said two of the air raids struck supply tunnels on the border between the blockaded coastal sliver and Egypt, whereas the strike in the eastern part of Gaza City targeted a weapons manufacturing facility. The aerial assaults wounded at least three people.

Gaza continues to suffer from the aftermath of a massive Israeli military offensive from December 2008 to January 2009. Over 1,400 Palestinians were killed during three weeks of Israeli land, sea, and air assaults in Operation Cast Lead. The offensive also inflicted $1.6 billion damage to the Gazan economy.

Most of the damage in Gaza has not been repaired due to an Israeli blockade that has prevented construction materials from entering the territory.

MP/HGL

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Israel may freeze settlement activities for 10 months
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:26:06 GMT
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Tel Aviv has agreed to freeze all settlement activities, except in Jerusalem Al-Quds, for 10 months in a bid to re-launch the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Israeli officials hope that the official declaration of a settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank will enable the renewal of the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which has refused to engage in peace talks until Israel implements such a measure.

Tel Aviv is currently under intense pressure from the international community to halt the illegal settlement construction in the West Bank. Israeli settlements are widely regarded as the main hurdle in the way of comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Under the 2002 Roadmap for Peace plan brokered by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia, Israel has to 'dismantle settlement outposts erected since 2001 and also freeze all settlement activities.'

There are currently 121 Israeli settlements and approximately 102 Israeli outposts built illegally on Palestinian land occupied by Israel in 1967. All of these settlements and outposts are illegal under international law and have been condemned by numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions.

These settlements and outposts are inhabited by a population of 462,000 Israeli settlers. Some 191,000 Israelis are living in settlements around Jerusalem Al-Quds and an additional 271,400 are spread throughout the West Bank.

MP/HGL

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UN urges united stance on Mideast crisis
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:09:27 GMT
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UN Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Haile Menkerios
The UN has called on the international community for "immediate actions on the ground" to resolve the "deep and worrying impasse" between Israel and the Palestinians.

"It is vital at this juncture that the international community takes a clear and united position," UN Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Haile Menkerios told the Security Council in its monthly briefing on the crisis on Tuesday.

He said Israel's refusal to freeze settlements was a key challenge to international peace efforts, adding that Tel Aviv's last month proposal to restrain rather than freeze settlement activity did not conform to the requirements of the Roadmap peace plan and a two-state solution.

The international community has been unanimously calling on Israel in the past months to halt its settlement expansion on the occupied Palestinian lands in the West Bank, including the illegally annexed East Jerusalem Al-Quds.

But Israel approved 900 more housing units to significantly expand Gilo settlement on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem Al-Quds while demolishing 17 Palestinian houses, which displaced 99 Palestinians, many of them children.

Menkerios also cited 45 recorded instances of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and olive trees, leading to 24 Palestinian injuries. He also reported 26 incidents of Palestinian clashes with Israelis in which seven settlers were injured.

During the past month, 73 Palestinians were injured and over 300 seized during the Israeli raids in the West Bank — an increase from the previous reporting period, he said.

The UN official criticized the Israeli blockade on Gaza, noting the crippling siege has continued 10 months after the end of Israel's deadly offensive on the region which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and devastated much of its infrastructure.

In the impoverished coastal sliver, half of whose 1.5-million strong population depend on food aid handouts, people now have resorted to underground tunnels across the border with Egypt to bring in food and other basic needs.

On a six-month old UN proposal to complete $77 million of stalled housing, school and health projects, Menkerios said the international body's efforts have not yet received an acceptable response from the Israeli side.

"It is completely unacceptable that no meaningful progress has been made in kick-starting UN civilian construction activities essential for the well-being and recovery of a war- and blockade-affected population, half of whom are children."

MRS/AKM

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Trainee Mossad spy arrested by police
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:03:10 GMT

A Mossad training operation has ended in a fiasco after a trainee spy for the secret service agency was arrested while trying to bomb a car.

The trainee was booked on Monday after a female passerby noticed him plant a fake bomb under a vehicle on a street in Tel Aviv and reported the suspicious behavior to the police.

Israeli authorities have refused to comment on the incident.

But Israeli media outlets have expressed their surprise at the incident, saying they hoped the agency's operatives were "more effective abroad".

Up to three Mossad employees were believed to have been suspended following the incident, Ynet reported.

The prime minister's office said it did "not respond to information about such activities undertaken by security agencies or attributed to them," the Israeli news website added.

Mossad does not inform local uniformed police about its training exercises.

MRS/AKM

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Abbas: Obama doing nothing to advance peace
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:50:37 GMT

Acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas has stated that President Obama is doing nothing to revive the 'peace process' between Israel and the Palestinians.

"For now he is doing nothing, but he has invited us to revive the peace process. I hope that in the future he can play a more important role," Abbas said in an interview with the Argentine daily Clarin on Tuesday during a visit to Argentina.

“The Palestinians expect the US to exert pressure on Israel to get it to show respect for international law and implement the Road Map plan. They can exert pressure on Israel so as to do two things; halting settlement activities and withdrawal from the Palestinian territories they occupied in 1967,” he further explained.

For her part, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez criticized Washington for doing too little to restart the 'peace talks' that were broken off in December 2008, when Israel launched a war on the Gaza Strip, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians.

Last week, Israel gave its approval for the construction of hundreds of new housing units in the illegally annexed East Jerusalem Al-Quds, drawing international criticism as it drove another stake into the heart of efforts to restart the so-called peace process.

Under the 2002 Roadmap for the 'Peace plan' brokered by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia, Israel has to dismantle settlement outposts erected since 2001 and also freeze all settlement activities.

There are currently 121 Israeli settlements and approximately 102 Israeli outposts built illegally on Palestinian land occupied by Israel in 1967. All of these settlements and outposts are illegal under the international law and have been condemned by numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions.

These settlements and outposts are inhabited by a population of 462,000 Israeli settlers. Some 191,000 Israelis are living in settlements around Jerusalem Al-Quds and an additional 271,400 are spread throughout the West Bank.

MP/MB