RAMALLAH – On a cool and overcast day, a procession of grim-faced people filed silently past pictures of heaps of skeletons piled high, of emaciated survivors with blank stares corralled behind barbed wire, barely clinging to life. The memorial and museum commemorating the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II could …
Continue reading “Palestinians Honor Holocaust Victims”
RAMALLAH – "I heard voices, I turned around to look, and saw a group of Israeli settlers assaulting my brother Hammad," says Abdallah Wahadin, 82, a Palestinian farmer from Beit Ummar near the southern West Bank city of Hebron. "Three of them surrounded me, while a fourth threw a rock at the back of my …
Continue reading “Humanitarian Crisis Deepens in West Bank”
RAMALLAH – While the U.S. appears to be optimistic about Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, inter-Palestinian rivalry, a recalcitrant Israeli government, and an international community with its own agenda could well scuttle a settlement. For the first time in decades the U.S., under President Barack Obama’s new administration, appears to be putting pressure on Israel through Prime …
Continue reading “Palestinians Scoring Own Goals”
GAZA CITY – The lives of hundreds of critically ill Gazans continue to be jeopardized by the power struggle between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah and political blackmail by Israel. Mohammed Zibdeh, 12, who has cancer of the brain, is waiting in Gaza City for a permit to travel to Israel for advanced treatment. …
Continue reading “Power Struggle Killing Gaza Patients”
Tension between Israelis and Palestinians is rising sharply as reflected in a number of increasingly bloody and violent confrontations since Israel’s devastating war in Gaza at the beginning of the year. While Gaza, which the Islamic organization Hamas controls, has been a powder-keg for several years, recent attacks in the West Bank, which is under …
Continue reading “West Bank a Time Bomb Waiting to Explode”
Mel Frykberg on a progressive play
RAMALLAH – By late Saturday afternoon hundreds of heavily armed Israeli security forces on horseback and on foot had arrested over 20 Palestinians, assaulted a handful of people, and prevented numerous festivities from taking place. Police in riot gear on horseback charged at groups of Palestinian youths in Salahadin Street, the major thoroughfare of Palestinian …
Continue reading “Israel Under Pressure Over Divided Jerusalem”
RAMALLAH – The critical wounding of a U.S. activist has highlighted the excessive use of force by Israeli forces. The activist, Tristan Anderson, 38, was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers during a protest against Israel’s separation barrier in the Palestinian West Bank last week. He remains in intensive care in Tel Hashomer Hospital …
Continue reading “Israelis Using ‘Excessive’ Force Against Protesters”
RAMALLAH – As environmental experts, NGOs and government officials gather in Istanbul this week to attend the Fifth World Water Forum, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has drawn attention to the critical water situation in Gaza. "ICRC teams are repairing water and sewage systems in Gaza that were badly damaged during the …
Continue reading “After War, Gazans Struggle for Clean Drinking Water”
RAMALLAH – Intensive unity talks are under way in Cairo as five Palestinian committees, representing 13 factions and independents, face each other across a table in a bid to form a new Palestinian unity government. But significant obstacles, differences in ideology, internal power struggles and manipulative proxy sponsors with competing geopolitical interests threaten to derail …
Continue reading “Palestinian Unity as Elusive as Deal With Israel” 
