Last week Palestinians marked the 1,000th day of the "siege" of the Gaza Strip. The continuing economic embargo, with its attendant social and economic effects on the more than 1.5 million Gazans, makes for a depressing story.

t's a strange feeling what i felt while crossing the west bank, the claustrophobic separation wall made me feel like into a cage, i felt stupid to be there as a tourist, while thousands of people actually live in that area, facing everyday problems that i simply touched on. So i …

Messages are flying between Hamas commanders deployed throughout the Middle East, expressing concern that local leaders are losing control over Gaza.

Israeli generals live a life of luxury and extravagance, mostly shaded from public scrutiny, while their soldiers enforce a brutal and criminal occupation upon the Palestinian people. Now they appropriately choose the Waldorf Astoria in New York to solicit more American money.

I agree with Israeli peace advocate Uri Avnery that George Mitchell, America's Middle East peace envoy, should stop wasting his time and our American taxpayers money. (see Uri's article below). As an Arab-American , I disagree on everything else with my friend Uri.

A Fatah conference held this week in Ramallah included a speech in praise of terrorists.

On Sunday, 21 February 2010, after the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) had denied him and the accompanying delegation access to the Gaza Strip, the Mayor of Geneva, Remy Pagani, and the delegation comprised of Kristen Lutas, Legal Advisor; Jacques Alfred Francois, Representative  …

From the article:

* On Thursday morning, 11 February 2010, IOF destroyed 6 wells and 5 neighboring rooms, which are close to the Annexation Wall in Ethna town, northwest of Hebron. They also confiscated electrical generators and water pumps.

With the help of a $4 m. grant, an Israeli professor hopes to bio-engineer remedies to save the world's beautiful coral species from the effects of global warming.

1. In the past year Israel has been subjected to harsh global criticism, which reached its peak with the Goldstone report that investigated Operation Cast Lead.

"Israeli volunteers have opened a makeshift school in Port-au-Prince, providing education and counseling for 800 of the city's traumatized children.

On 5 November 2009, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) voted to endorse the Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (the Goldstone Report). The adopted Resolution called upon the Government of Israel and the Palestinians to:

"Support for Israel is handed down by God and if the United States pulls back its support, America will cease to exist."

IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall inside West Bank territory.

"Can you tell me why I've been instructed to deny you entry into Israel today?" This was the question posed to James* by an Israeli official in September as James attempted to cross the border from Jordan into the Palestinian West Bank. James is a U.S.

Doubts have been cast on the Israeli rebuttal of the Goldstone Report, after it emerged last night that a bomb was defused last year at a Gaza flour mill that Israel had officially said did not come under air attack in the war.

Hamas threatened to attack Jews outside of Israel in retaliation for Israel's "changing the rules" and allegedly assassinating a Hamas co-founder and senior terrorist who was eliminated more than a week ago in Dubai.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi hinted in an interview published Sunday that the Gaza pullout ("Disengagement") was a mistake, noting that it ended in "burned synagogues" and missiles being fired into Israel.

Settlement Activities and Attacks by Settlers against Palestinian Civilians and Property IOF have continued settlement activities in the OPT in violation of international humanitarian law, and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.

JNF: 240 million trees planted since 1901

Jewish pride is being suspected of fometing racism.

IOF has recently escalated arbitrary measures against Palestinian civilians in East Jerusalem to pressure them to leave the city.

Military Intelligence Chief Major General Amos Yadlin offered an explanation Tuesday for the cooling of relations between Israel and Turkey.

Arab journalists are under growing pressure from the Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to avoid "hanging the dirty laundry in the open."

In a letter sent to Ehud Barak, Israeli Defence and Deputy Prime Minister on Thursday, Amnesty International expressed concern that Jamal Juma', Abdallah Abu Rahma and Mohammed Othman were prisoners of conscience, held for legitimately voicing their opposition to the fence/wall.

"Without Mossad director Meir Dagan, the Iranian nuclear program would have been successfully completed years ago, Egyptian daily Al-Ahram claimed in an op-ed published Saturday.

Each year, approximately 700 Palestinian children (under 18) from the West Bank are prosecuted through Israeli military courts after being arrested, interrogated and detained by the Israeli army. Since 2000, around 6,500 Palestinian children have been detained.

Israeli actions during the December/January 2009 offensive inflicted severe damage on the humanitarian, economic and social infrastructure of the Gaza Strip, including vital facilities upon which more than 1.5 million Palestinians depend.

According to a September 2009 report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), "living conditions and access to sources of livelihood in Gaza are currently at their worst since 1967, with poverty affecting 90 percent of the population." The World B …

A caller on a C-Span interview program Monday complained about "all these Jews" having "way too much power" in America and pushing the U.S. into wars with the Muslim world. He found his comments echoed and expanded upon by the studio guest.

The newest Israeli mobile missile and artillery defense system, dubbed Iron Dome, will soon be deployed in the field, according to an IDF announcement on Wednesday.

"Ingenuity, creativity, and guts have sustained this People longer than any other identifiable group of people in existence today. The only thing that may have outdone this is their sensitivity to needs of others.

Settlement Activities and Attacks by Settlers against Palestinian Civilians and Property

The United Nations and media suffer from "Obsessive Compulsive Israel Disorder (OCID)," says the British-born designer of the FreeMiddleEast.com, website which illustrates the anti-Israel agenda.

The famed Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) of NY is branching out, franchising its name overseas.

A new study by the Gaza-based Palestinian Women's Information and Media Center (PWIMC) has found that local women have suffered increased violence since June 2007, when the Hamas terrorist group seized control of the region.

A rancorous TV interview last week with an Arab Knesset Member that revealed his apparent desires to conquer Tel Aviv continues to make waves. Arutz Sheva's Hebrew site entitled its article on the topic, "The Israeli interviewer who did not forget that he is Jewish."

The ongoing demonstrations in Iran are testimony to the continued strength and resilience of Iranian civil society. They make a mockery of the Islamic Republic's ambition of offering a model for successful Muslim governance to the world.

What is the future of the Western democracy? A look at Britain over the last twelve months seems to provide some clues. In one way or another Islamism was a constant theme, although party politics were volatile by almost any standards.

"One of the many data points analysts are looking at is the fact that Christmas-day bomb plotter Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is reportedly the fourth president of a London area Islamic student society to face trial on terrorism related charges in the last three years.

Note: The researchers cited for this article are: Erin Galbraith and Curtis Harrison - Faculty Evaluators: Andy Merrifield, PhD, Cynthia Boaz, PhD, and David McCuan, PhD Sonoma State University.

For Netanyahu the threat of peace has passed.—Uri Avnery in Haaretz, Sept. 23, 2009.

Settlement Activities and Attacks by Settlers against Palestinian Civilians and Property Israel has continued settlement activities in the OPT in violation of international humanitarian law, and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.

On Saturday morning, 26 December 2009, Israeli occupation forces killed 6 Palestinians in two separate attacks in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Mona Eltahawy is a well known Egyptian writer and human rights activist.

During the latest Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip (27 December 2008 - 18 January 2009), Israeli occupation forces killed over 1,400 Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians, and wounded thousands more.

For years, the Egyptians have been strongly condemning Israel for erecting the security fence in the West Bank. But now Egypt is quietly building its own wall along its border with the Gaza Strip and does not want to hear any complaints.

Israel is willing to sit down for talks with the Palestinians, but with no preconditions or further gestures, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Thursday evening, stressing that the most recent overture was a tactical and temporary move.

In its largest reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan, the United States government has spent $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools and br …

Every three minutes a Christian is being tortured in the Muslim world, and in 2009 more than 165,000 Christians will have been killed because of their faith, most of them in Muslim countries, according to a human rights organization that is visiting Israel starting Sunday.

Many Palestinians who work with international or Israeli organizations whose job is to promote peace and coexistence in the Middle East are often afraid or reluctant to discuss the nature of their work, even though it is much more important to teach Palestinian children about coe …

"For many Palestinians, the norm is tight-quartered living with barely a garden in sight, no defined sidewalks and a poor water system. But this is about to change with an ambitious plan for a new way of living.

Once again, a targeted economic boycott against Israeli goods is directed against a Canadian business. This time, it's Mountain Equipment Co-op (well, this is actually the second time for MEC).

Settlement Activities and Attacks by Settlers against Palestinian Civilians and Property

Today, 25 November, 2009, the world celebrates the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women.

"A day after the security cabinet announced a 10-month moratorium on housing starts in the settlements, Defense Minister Ehud Barak moved swiftly on Thursday to order the most dramatic crackdown on Jewish West Bank construction in the history of the settlement movement.

Now it's official: the honeymoon between the Palestinians and the administration of President Barack Obama is over. It was a honeymoon that lasted for nearly one year.

"Thirty physicians, nurses and graduate nursing students from the West Bank visited Haifa's Rambam Medical Center this week for a day-long seminar on cancer treatment.

During the reporting period, the Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem issued orders to demolish more houses in Jerusalem and surrounding suburbs.

Settlement Activities: IOF have continued settlement activities in the OPT in violation of international humanitarian law and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.

An about-face in American liberal newspapers' views of the Middle East reached a new extreme Sunday with The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writing, "The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play." Friedman, who once equated Jewish residents in Jude …

"A series of controversial Israeli films are provoking outrage and plaudits in equal measure at the London Film Festival. The best documentary award has gone to one of the year's most controversial films."

Israel's harshest critics claim to champion the rights of Palestinians. So we're curious about the fallout, or lack thereof, from revelations that the Palestinian Authority regularly brutalizes its own in the West Bank while enjoying a steady flow of dollars and euros.

In the first incident, documented on 15 October by a volunteer in B'Tselem's camera distribution project, settlers are seen stealing olives from a grove belonging to a resident of al-Mughair village in Ramallah District, near which the Adey Ad illegal outpost has been established.

Measures Aimed at Creating a Jewish Majority in Occupied East Jerusalem

On Friday, 23 October 2009, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he was issuing a decree calling for free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections in the Palestinian National Authority to be held on Sunday, 24 January 2010.

Gaza Strip

"There is no doubt he is our friend," Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza.

"You might think Palestinian refugees would be welcomed by their Arab neighbours, yet they are denied basic rights and citizenship

The Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, was the most brutal and violent offensive in the history of both the occupation, and the Gaza Strip itself. It marked the culmination of a series of penal measures directed against Palestinian civilians.

On 1 October 2009, the Human Rights Council decided to defer consideration of the report by the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (‘Fact Finding Mission’) until its thirteenthsession in March 2010.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) welcomes Hamas' decision to endorse the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission (the Goldstone Report), and their commitment to conduct effective investigations into all alleged violations of international law committed i …

For the first time in history, some Moroccan citizens have tried to publicly disobey the law that forbids eating in public during the month of Ramadan.

""You are all dirty terrorists!" "Your soldiers are monsters! They wear uniforms that say – 'Kill Palestinians.'" "We have no water.

At approximately 08:00 on Sunday, 12 October 2009, a number of Israeli settlers living in a new settlement outpost in al-Barassin area in the southeast of Kufor Qaddoum village, east of Qalqilya, launched an arson attack against olive field in the area.

Some votes are eminently forgettable. Others are not.

Multiculturalism: California's educrats have put out new rules for teaching Islamic studies to seventh-graders in public schools, and they are as biased as ever.

Indisputable evidence now shows CAIR and other "mainstream" Islamic groups are acting as fronts for a well-funded conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood – the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas – to infiltrate and destroy the American system.

The United Kingdom became the first Western country with voting rights on the UN Human Rights Council to clearly state that it would not endorse the Goldstone Report or the draft resolution based on that report, which had been placed before the council's two-day special session t …

With so much (though not all) of the civilized world justly condemning (or ignoring) the Goldstone report for its distortion of the facts and its one-sided condemnation of Israel, Richard Goldstone himself now seems to be backing away from the report's conclusions—at least wh …

Ehav Ever is a blogger of mixed background. This video presents his own personal view on this subject. "

Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was "oversimplified" and the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice".

"The protests by Palestinians on Friday were not enough even to appear to be pathetic copies of the demonstrations during the first days of the two intifadas, in December 1987 and late September 2000.

"Women scientists say they want to be treated equally by their male colleagues and employers, but at the same time, special accommodations and grants would be welcome, as it is much more difficult for women to pursue their research careers without having a "wife" to back them up.

"One of several coexistence organizations in Israel, Windows of Peace has been bringing together Israeli and Palestinian teens since 1991. Through Windows, the teens get to know each other and work on different projects together.

"With the necessary skill and experience, Israelis are often first on the scene to help others in the aftermath of disaster, and Typhoon Parma is no exception.

"Now, instead of just noise pollution and air pollution, angst and frustration, heavy traffic can actually generate clean electricity.