24 July 2011 | The Guardian, Harriet Sherwood
Hani al-Asi, a fisherman since the age of 11 and a father with 12 mouths to feed, had just begun throwing his lines into the Mediterranean when an Israeli gunboat sped towards his traditional hasaka.
With a machine gun mounted at the rear and half a dozen armed soldiers on the bridge, the navy vessel repeatedly circled the small fishing boat. The rolling waves caused … Continue reading
11 July 2011 | The Guardian
The family of Rachel Corrie, the US activist killed in Gaza while protesting against house demolitions in 2003, on Monday claimed the Israeli military authorities withheld video evidence during the Corries’ civil lawsuit and misled US officials on crucial details.
Craig Corrie, Rachel’s father, told a press conference in Jerusalem that the footage from a surveillance camera near the scene of his daughter’s death submitted to the court was “incomplete”. Additional video material obtained by the family showed Rachel’s body in a different spot to the place identified by some military commanders, he said.
He also … Continue reading
3 June 2011 | The Guardian
Military experts say unidentified devices found in West Bank may have contained outlawed white phosphorus.
The Israeli army has been accused of leaving dangerous munitions near Palestinian homes after two boys were seriously burnt when they picked up a mysterious silver canister which exuded toxic white fumes.
A second canister, discovered nearby less than a week later, was destroyed by the army in a controlled explosion
The army does not deny leaving the devices, … Continue reading
18 May 2011 | Harriet Sherman Guardian
I was sent a link this week to a piece published in the Jewish Chronicle by historian Geoffrey Alderman, the opening sentence of which I found pretty shocking.
Under the headline This Was No Peace Activist, Alderman wrote:
“Few events – not even the execution of Osama bin Laden – have caused me greater pleasure in recent weeks than news of the death of the Italian so-called ‘peace activist’ Vittorio Arrigoni.”
Arrigoni, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was murdered in … Continue reading
20 October 2010 | The Guardian
The Israeli soldier at the controls of a bulldozer that crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie in Gaza in March 2003 is due to give evidence tomorrow in the civil lawsuit brought by the American activist’s family.
However the judge hearing the case in Haifa has ruled that, for security reasons, the soldier can testify anonymously from behind a screen, denying Cindy and Craig Corrie the opportunity to face the man who directly caused their daughter’s death.
Israel’s supreme court refused to … Continue reading
Rory McCarthy | The Guardian
23 February 2010
The family of the American activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago, is to bring a civil suit over her death against the Israeli defence ministry.
The case, which begins on 10 March in Haifa, northern Israel, is seen by her parents as an opportunity to put on public record the events that led to their daughter’s death in March 2003. Four key witnesses – three Britons and an American – who were at the scene … Continue reading
Sami Abdel-Shafi | The Guardian
29 December 2009
On my way to visit a friend in the Abed Rabbo district, north of the Gaza Strip, the taxi driver handed me a small pack of biscuits for change. There are nearly no copper coins left here so cab drivers barter a half Israeli shekel for biscuits brought in from the tunnels between the southern city of Rafah and Egypt’s northern Sinai. Some Gazans, who once earned a respectable living, resorted to melting coins and sold the copper for food supplies.
This was not the first time I was forced into arcane methods of … Continue reading
Neve Gordon | The Guardian
23 December 2009
Palestinians have a long history of nonviolent resistance but Israel has continuously deployed methods to destroy it
“Why,” I have often been asked, “haven’t the Palestinians established a peace movement like the Israeli Peace Now?”
The question itself is problematic, being based on many erroneous assumptions, such as the notion that there is symmetry between the two sides and that Peace Now has been a politically effective movement. Most important, though, is the false supposition that Palestinians have indeed failed to create a pro-peace popular movement.
In September 1967 – three months after the decisive … Continue reading
Jimmy Carter | The Guardian
19 December 2009
It is generally recognised that the Middle East peace process is in the doldrums, almost moribund. Israeli settlement expansion within Palestine continues, and PLO leaders refuse to join in renewed peace talks without a settlement freeze, knowing that no Arab or Islamic nation will accept any comprehensive agreement while Israel retains control of East Jerusalem.
US objections have impeded Egyptian efforts to resolve differences between Hamas and Fatah that could lead to 2010 elections. With this stalemate, PLO leaders have decided that President Mahmoud Abbas will continue in power until elections can be held … Continue reading
Rory McCarthy | The Guardian
24 August 2009
There is a hilltop east of Jerusalem with striking views down into Jericho, across the dry slopes of the West Bank and on to the Dead Sea. From the red ochre of the rock came the name Ma’ale Adumim, Hebrew for the Red Ascent.
Today it is a city of more than 30,000 people, with red-roofed apartment blocks, shopping malls, a public swimming pool and ancient olive trees sitting on neat roundabouts. A major highway runs down the hill, across the valley up into the centre of Jerusalem and beyond, connecting conveniently to Tel … Continue reading
