”)
Chicago, IL - The streets of downtown Chicago were filled with chants of “Free, free Palestine! Democratic Palestine!” on Sunday, Sept. 29. More than 1200 activists took over city streets and rallied at the Federal Plaza to demand the right of return to Palestine for all Palestinian refugees.
Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ordered the Israeli army to intensify its attacks. The result – a wave of assassinations, armed incursions into Palestinian towns and villages and more operations to arrest activists in the Palestinian resistance. Using any means at hand to achieve these goals, Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’ serves as a pretext and cover. More than 17 Palestinians have been killed since Christmas, including three children under the age of 11 who were shot in the head.
The ‘Wall’ which the Israeli government began constructing in June of 2002, and which lies well within the borders of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, is devastating fertile Palestinian land, cutting off even more Palestinian water resources and destroying Palestinian villages – in some cases enclosing them on three sides. Israel is illegally, according to international law set out by the United Nations, snaking its apartheid Wall up to 3.8 miles inside the West Bank’s ‘Green Line,’ the internationally recognized borders for the West Bank.
New York, NY – Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, held its second international convention here April 16, entitled “Sustainable Struggle: The Road to Palestine.” Several hundred Palestinians and supporters, hailing from Canada, the U.S., Europe and Palestine, held a series of informational and strategy workshops aimed, in general, at advancing Palestinian rights, and, in particular, at the right of Palestinian refugees’ to return to their homeland.
Before the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Nov. 11, there had been an enormous amount of speculation raised, and analysis offered, concerning the issue of succession. And now that the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Rawhi Fattouh, has been named the interim president, the speculation will continue for at least 60 more days.
Oslo is dead. This is not much of a scoop, as analysts and pundits have been saying and writing these words for many years, at least since the Intifada of September 2000 began. But now that the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections of Jan. 25 are over, we can officially turn off the lights on the Oslo agreement that, along with the first U.S. invasion of Iraq in 1991, has led to, arguably, the most difficult period in the modern history of Palestinian and Arab world politics.
The Palestinian National Football (soccer) Team functions, or barely functions, under more difficult conditions than any other team in the world. Players from Gaza cannot travel to the West Bank or Jerusalem, West Bankers cannot travel to Jerusalem or Gaza and neither Gazans nor West Bankers can enter the 1948 Palestinian territories (now called ‘Israel’).
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in the United States and around the world, Jan. 25-26, to demand an immediate end to the Israeli siege of Gaza. Protesters gathered outside Israeli embassies and consulates, as well as at U.S. federal buildings, making it clear that the U.S. must stop aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes.
Israeli right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu, who stated that Israel did not “go far enough” in its 22-day invasion and massacre of 1400 Palestinians in Gaza earlier this year and who has never accepted even the possibility of an independent state for the Palestinians, is now the new prime minister. He was sworn in on April 1, after being asked in February by President Shimon Peres to form a coalition government.
Israel’s 22-day assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza, starting Dec. 27, 2008, ended when Israel acknowledged defeat – declaring a unilateral ‘ceasefire’ Jan. 17. Israel’s political and military goals were not met and, as in the summer of 2006, when the Lebanese resistance defeated Israel’s military, the Palestinians and their resistance emerged victorious.
