• Israeli PM says West Bank barrier there to stay

    AFP 22 July 2009 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel’s controversial separation barrier in the occupied West Bank would not be pulled down. “I hear today people who say that because the situation is calm in the West Bank we can dismantle the security barrier, but it is in fact because of…

  • 1948 no catastrophe says Israel, as term nakba banned from Arab children’s textbooks

    Ian Black | The Guardian 22 July 2009 Israel’s education ministry has ordered the removal of the word nakba – Arabic for the “catastrophe” of the 1948 war – from a school textbook for young Arab children, it has been announced. The decision – which will alter books aimed at eight- and nine-year-old Arab pupils…

  • Palestinian arrested after testifying in Geneva

    Ali Waked | YNet News 22 July 2009 Palestinian sources reported Wednesday that a resident of the West Bank village of Naalin was arrested upon returning from Geneva, where he testified before a UN committee charged with investigating the IDF offensive in Gaza earlier this year. Mohammad Srur, who was injured during a protest in…

  • Stolen Beauty: the struggle for a just peace in the Middle East coming to a store near you

    Code Pink 21 July 2009 As the dust settled on the destroyed homes, schools and lives in the aftermath of Israel’s assault on Gaza earlier this year, mainstream human rights groups from Amnesty International to Physicians for Human Rights/Israel issued reports condemning Israel’s attack and alleging that the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Forces…

  • ‘Want to read Harry Potter in Arabic? Not in Israel’

    Yuval Azoulay | Ha’aretz 22 July 2009 Books originating in Syria or Lebanon – the biggest publisher in the region of Arabic books – are illegal in Israel. The draft bill by MK Yuli Tamir (Labor), would change the embargo. But in the meantime, readers of Arabic in Israel will have to encounter roadblocks. Two…