Jeff Severns Guntzel, Electronic Iraq, 21 October 2008

DAMASCUS (IRIN) – Several hundred Iraqis returned home from Syria this week and last, but thousands more continue to register with the UN in Damascus to receive vital food aid, underscoring the hardship faced by the huge refugee community.

Some 150 Iraqi refugees flew back to Baghdad on 15 October on a flight paid for by the Iraqi government, the first such assisted return since November 2007, in a move officials said was made possible by improved security in Iraq.

But the latest figures from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), showed that in the three months to the end of September some 13,000 Iraqi refugees had newly registered with the agency, allowing them to receive financial and material support.

[Read the report]

The Gaza Strip, Palestine
October, 2008

Introduction

As the Gaza Strip enters its fifth month of “calm” with the Israelis, 80 percent of the population lives below the line of poverty. Palestinian Legislative Council member and Chairman of the Popular Committee Against the Siege(PCAS), Jamal N. El Khoudary says, “Now more than ever international institutions must take responsibility to hold the Israeli government accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian population.” The Committee’s Statistics Department has issued a report on the effects of the 16 month Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip. As of October, the strangling siege over the Gaza Strip reached its sixteenth month and the siege’s drastic results on all economic sectors of life in the Gaza Strip make it a catastrophic zone of the first degree, as 1.5 million citizens are living under the effect of the siege.

[Read the report]

Related:
European campaign to organize multinational parliamentary visit to Gaza

Palestine Center Information Brief No. 167 (15 October 2008)

By Ali Abunimah
Palestine Center Fellow

Acre, a mixed city of approximately 52,000 people in northern Israel, recently witnessed four days of violent clashes between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Israeli Jewish residents. While the facts and meaning of these events have been heavily contested, one of the underreported factors is the extent to which militant Israeli settlers from the West Bank, funded by donors in the United States, have instigated tension in Acre and other cities in an attempt to reduce their Arab populations. This brief will summarize the facts available from public sources and provide background and analysis.

Israeli leaders have presented the events in Acre as unfortunate intercommunal violence in an otherwise peaceful city. Palestinians have perceived them—correctly it would appear—as being related to efforts organized by Jewish extremists to force Arabs out of the city (Palestinians in Israel are citizens of the state and are often also referred to as “Arabs”).

[Read More]

By Samah A. Habeeb

Gaza Strip, 18, Oct, 2008– Gaza Strip, Palestine- Severe terror and traumas are de facto storms for children in the occupied territories, especially those who exist in the Gaza Strip.

The ongoing Israeli military operations and violent retaliation induce psychological maladies and wretched conditions. The recent CEASEFIRE in Gaza allows a temporary rest but not the cure for their fears and nightmares.

The summer of 2007 was a start of a mayhem for a poor Bedouin family of Sahar. Sahar Owaidat, 6, remains in state of shock or perhaps is exhibiting symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder ever since Israeli soldiers stormed her home and brutally beat her father and siblings while she and the rest of the family members helplessly observed.

[Read the article]

Mazin Qumsiyeh writes:

(please forward)

Below are
– Links to Videos of these events
– My brief write-up on the events at Ush Ghrab
– Links to other media sources on the events

Video Links
Part 1 http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bHpdc78xUvg
Part 2 http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=IjXsutlrHys

Brief report back

When our photographer friend was being wrestled to the ground and heavy boots stepping on his neck and his expensive camera being trashed, time seems to stand still.  It was actually a few seconds when several members attempted to help him (by pleading with the brutal settler police and border guards and in some case trying to shield him from brutal blows with their bodies) and six individual were “arrested” (I use this term in quotes because they were actually just kidnapped illegally and held hostage).  The events leading up to this event began with intents by racist colonial settlers (many of them with foreign passports) to take over this piece of Beit Sahour land that was for a while used by the Jordanian and later Israeli army. Christian and Muslim Palestinians in Beit Sahour (the Shepherds’ Field) and the surrounding towns and villages continue to actively use their land in Ush Ghrab in creative and positive ways despite attempts by settlers to take over.  We regularly join hands with International human rights activists to show the power of nonviolent resistance and affirmation of our rights.  Part of the land was already developed for a recreational area including children playgrounds.  Other areas are slated for a community garden, a nature walk, and a hospital.

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