Middle East Watch

475 Article

• A RENEWED ICAHD CALL FOR BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS

  10 February 2010,

  The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) was one of the first Israeli organizations to endorse a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, issuing its to the international community already in January, 2005. Over the past decade and a half ICAHD has played a key role in expanding the BDS campaign and working with groups around the world in identifying effective targets. This revised statement reaffirms ICAHD’s support for BDS as an instrument of Palestinian liberation (…)

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• Building international solidarity during Israeli Apartheid Week

  1 March 2010, by Ilaria Giglioli

  In March 2005, a group of activists from the Arab Student Collective at the University of Toronto launched the first Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). The aim of the week was two-fold. On one hand, it sought to break the wall of silence and misrepresentation around what was happening in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip at the time of the second Palestinian intifada. On the other hand, it aimed to situate direct military violence against Palestinians within the broader context of Israel’s (…)

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• Bil’in, cinq ans de résistance au mur

  22 février 2010, par Sophie Janel

  Vendredi 19 février. Le soleil brille au-dessus du village de Bil’in, dans les territoires palestiniens occupés. Sur les toits des maisons, des enfants agitent des drapeaux palestiniens. À l’ombre de son keffieh rouge et blanc, lunettes de vue sur le nez, Amjed explique que « tous les vendredis, nous manifestons pour dénoncer le mur, mais aussi les colonies illégales et les actions de l’armée israélienne contre les Palestiniens ». En face de lui, deux affiches habillent une maison. L’une (…)

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• The Tide Has Changed

  by Gilad Atzmon

  London is ‘angry’ over the use of stolen identities by the Dubai assassins and points its finger at the Jewish state and its notorious Mossad espionage agency. The Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, was summoned yesterday by the foreign minister to “share information”. In practice Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of involvement in the scandalous assassination, however to signal its displeasure the Foreign Office ignored an Israeli plea to keep the summons secret. (…)

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• Questioning the "Special Relationship" with Israel

  15 February 2010, by Stephanie Westbrook

  A "regional economic power." That’s how ANIMA, the Euro-Mediterranean Network of Investment Promotion Agencies encompassing 70 governmental agencies and international networks, described Israel in its January 2010 Mediterranean Investment Map. The report analyzed the economies of the 27 European Union countries as well as 9 "partner countries."
  And who can argue. Touting an annual GDP growth rate around 5% for the years 2004 to 2008, Israel was also ranked 27 out of 132 countries in the (…)

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• Israeli left needs to wake up before it’s too late

  31 January 2010, by Gideon Levy

  Looking at the way the right acts makes one go green with envy and want to learn from them. Four hundred criminal cases opened against opponents of the 2005 Gaza Strip disengagement, people who threw oil, acid, garbage and stones at soldiers and police, were closed last week and their criminal record expunged. Fifty-one MKs voted in favor of the closure, nine against. That is the true map of Israeli politics (and society). Only about seven percent of the lawmakers believed that this was a (…)

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• Israel upholds legality of Jews-only housing complex in Jaffa

  12 February 2010, by Ofra Edelman

  The Tel Aviv District Court rejected a petition this week against a decision to lease land in Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood for the exclusive use of members of the religious Zionist community.
  The petition, filed by Jaffa residents and human rights groups, challenged a decision by the Israel Lands Administration and the Tel Aviv municipality to lease the land in question to B’Emuna, a company specializing in housing complexes for the religious Zionist community. Its plan is to build three (…)

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• "The Inevitable Bi-national Regime"

  22 January 2010, by Meron Benvenisti

  Translated by Zalman Amit and Daphna Levitt.
  The occupation of the territories in 1967 resulted from military action, but the military element quickly became secondary, while the “civilian” component,-settlements,-became the dominant factor, subjugating the military to its needs and turning the security forces into a militia in the service of the Jewish ethnic group. Eventually, settlements themselves were no longer as meaningful as they once had been.
  In the 1970s and 1980s, the very (…)

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• Israeli report claims $2bn stolen from Palestinians

  4 February 2010, by Jonathan Cook

  Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than US$2 billion (Dh7.4bn) by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists revealed this week. A new report, “State Robbery”, says the “theft” continued even after the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 and part of the money was supposed to be transferred to a special fund on behalf of the workers. According to (…)

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• How surrendering Palestinian rights became the language of "peace"

  27 January 2010, by Joseph Massad

  The 1993 Oslo agreement did not only usher in a new era of Palestinian-Israeli relations but has had a much more lasting effect in transforming the very language through which these relations have been governed internationally and the way the Palestinian leadership viewed them. Not only was the Palestinian vocabulary of liberation, end of colonialism, resistance, fighting racism, ending Israeli violence and theft of the land, independence, the right of return, justice and international law (…)

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