I am a member of a women’s human rights organization that monitors military checkpoints around the West Bank. We make an effort to increase the awareness of the Israeli and international public of what is happening there. I would like to tell you about what we saw lately at check-points in the Nablus area, and also to share with you some thoughts concerning the real objectives of Israel’s ‘closure policy’.

Sunday, December 7th, 2003 - 07:59pm GMT

A lot of “separating” can be achieved with 3,000 km (2,000 miles) of barbed-wire: separating livestock from its owners, olives from their harvesters, vines from their pickers, a doctor from his patients, a worker from his place of work, a teacher from his students. Especially the farmer from his land. One kind of separation will not be obtained by the thousands of barbed kilometres - separating the suicide-bomber from his victims.

Monday, December 1st, 2003 - 12:13am GMT

Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories passed through a profound transformation during the last several months, as the West Bank “security fence” gradually revealed itself to be the backbone of a comprehensive new system of land theft, imprisonment, collective punishment? and worse. The question is not whether it is a “political fence” or a “security fence,” but whether it is an engine of ethnic cleansing.

Includes link at the bottom to the latest and most comprehensive map of the apartheid wall

Saturday, November 29th, 2003 - 06:06pm GMT

President Bush’s recent speech, setting an agenda for democratisation of the Middle East, is still causing reverberations around the region.  After all, it features a momentous missionary call. With this in mind, this article takes as its starting point, the question of whether President Bush ever finds time to read some of the major books analyzing the course of empires throughout history.

Thursday, November 20th, 2003 - 04:57pm GMT

Have you ever heard people say that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. This article explodes that myth, as it explores the matrix of control used by Israel since its inception to control its Arab citizens, and it warns that a similar fate awaits the people of a Palestinian state emasculated behind the newly built apartheid wall.

Monday, November 17th, 2003 - 06:05pm GMT

Abdula Yusuf is too afraid to climb the rocky terraces beyond his village and see the damage for himself. “They’ll kill me,” he said, waving a hand at the container homes on the top of a neighbouring hill. “If they can do that thing to trees as old as the Roman times, they will not hesitate to do it to me.”

Friday, November 14th, 2003 - 09:35pm GMT

"It?s a kind of collective punishment,” sighs Abed, resigned to the mess. “The Israelis go slow so as to make our lives hell.” He estimates that of an average 1,500 would-be travellers a day, only 150 are let through. The rest are forced to return to their houses, or, if the Rafah-Gaza City road is closed, to find some relatives or acquaintances who can put them up locally.

Thursday, November 13th, 2003 - 10:03pm GMT

The Sharon goverment propaganda machine insists on telling the Israeli public that their soldiers killed by Palestinian resistance forces were “murdered”. These soldiers would have been surprised to learn that they were murdered. Perhaps they would have been insulted. After all, they were not helpless Jews in the ghetto who were killed during a pogrom by drunken Cossacks. They fell as soldiers in war.

Saturday, November 8th, 2003 - 02:43pm GMT

This is not a history lesson; thus, there won?t be a need to examine or re-examine the sinister role played out by certain world powers, a role that in many aspects invented the conflict, or to say the least, fashioned it to serve their imperial interests in the region. But one can hardly circumvent from divulging the most obvious fact of all, that while imperial agendas and “great games” invented and fuelled the conflict, apathy and silence forced its continuation.

Wednesday, November 5th, 2003 - 07:56pm GMT