Israel’s crippling blockade of the coastal territory of Gaza is pushing desperate young Palestinians to ever more extreme measures in the search for livelihoods, despite an agreement granting Gazans greater access to their agricultural land. In search of work,...
“At least we are not treated like dogs and made to feel so uncomfortable,” Amjad Samara, 30, a labourer from Nablus in the northern West Bank told IPS as he and a group of Palestinians waited at the checkpoint near Qalqilia to cross into Israel for their day job....
The rumbling drone of a fleet of U.S. helicopters carrying security and administrative personnel could be heard long before the eight choppers came into view over the Ramallah horizon on their way to the Palestinian Authority (PA) presidential compound in the West...
HEBRON, Occupied West Bank — A new Palestinian group called the National Union Battalions (NUB), comprising Palestinians from across the political spectrum, has called for a third Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. Simultaneously, Israeli intelligence is warning that...
GAZA CITY — As Israel and Hamas separately celebrate the ceasefire and their “victory” over the other following Israel’s blistering eight-day military assault on the Gaza strip, civilians continue to pay the price. According to the Palestine Center for Human Rights...
CAIRO — The tranquil, green, upper-class Cairo suburb Maadi is a bubble of privilege separated from the city’s noisier, dirtier, overcrowded suburbs where working-class Egyptians struggle to make ends meet and where Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has established a...
CAIRO — Civilians in the town of Bani Walid, 170 km southeast of Tripoli, are facing a humanitarian crisis as Libyan security forces lay siege to the stronghold of Moammar Gadhafi supporters, cutting off water, food, and medical supplies. Local doctors told Amnesty...
Farrah Hamary looks the picture of despair as sweat trickles down his face in Tripoli’s heat and humidity. Hamary is too afraid to give his full name or to allow his picture to be taken. He shows IPS the scars criss-crossing his back, the cigarette burns on his...
CAIRO — It could be premature to believe that the storming of Islamist militia bases by Benghazi citizens on Friday could spell the end for Libya’s Islamist militants. Just as it was premature to claim when moderate Libyan political parties took the majority of votes...
TRIPOLI — The security situation in Libya remains tense as violence, by way of car bombings, political assassinations of high-ranking government and military officials, attacks on foreign diplomatic staff and NGOs, and young men sorting out minor disputes with AK-47s,...
