From Occupied Palestine

Let's be Realists, let's demand the impossible!
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
In These Times, 30 August 2006

One of the most repulsive moments of the present Middle East conflict occurred after one of Hezbollah's rockets killed two Israeli-Arab children: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah pointedly apologized only for these deaths, thus making it clear that there is nothing to regret in the deaths of Israeli civilians. Doesn't this make clear the ethical difference between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), which always regret civilian casualties among the Lebanese, perceiving them as a necessary evil?

Can you really not see?
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 30 August 2006

Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because "God chose us." Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who knowingly jail an entire nation in pens surrounded by walls, fortified observation towers, machine guns, barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the ministers. All of these are not counted among the collaborators. These are the architects, the planners, the designers, the executioners.

Israeli siege leaves Gaza isolated and desperate
DOUG STRUCK
Washington Post, 28 August 2006, p. A1

GAZA CITY, Aug. 27 -- As the sun beat down on the city's central market, Khitam Shahleen, 37, glumly picked through a pile of cheap pencil sharpeners, searching for something -- anything -- she could afford to buy her two sons for the start of the new school year.

The occupier defines justice
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 23 August 2006

On Jerusalem's Jabotinsky Street, opposite the President's Residence, a medium-sized plaque is fixed on a locked gate, enclosing a broad building and a lovely garden: "This building was the location of the British Mandate Government's High Military Court, which held the trials of the Hebrew resistance fighters from the Haganah, Etzel and Lehi." The sign bears the emblems of the Jerusalem municipality and the three resistance organizations. It further notes: "The resistance fighters refused to acknowledge the authority of the court to judge them, and asked to be recognized as prisoners of war."

To Israel with hate

Nasrallah didn't mean to
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 16 August 2006

During the past month, Hezbollah's Katyushas killed 18 Israeli Arabs among the 41 Israeli civilians who died in the war. Clearly, Hassan Nasrallah didn't mean to kill them. But as someone who knows that many Arabs live in northern Israel, and as someone who knows that the launchers for his inaccurate Katyushas cannot choose the target they will hit - the fact that it was unintended is meaningless.

Awakening the resistance
JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN
Counterpunch, 10 August 2006

Thousands of Lebanese, Palestinians and others made a kind of pilgrimage to Fatima's gate in the summer of 2000 to celebrate the end of Israel

Olmert cannot remain in the prime minister's office
ARI SHAVIT
Ha'aretz, 11 August 2006

Ehud Olmert may decide to accept the French proposal for a cease-fire and unconditional surrender to Hezbollah. That is his privilege. Olmert is a prime minister whom journalists invented, journalists protected, and whose rule journalists preserved. Now the journalists are saying run away. That's legitimate. Unwise, but legitimate.

Almost half the fatalities in the Gaza Strip in July were civilians not taking part in the hostilities
B'Tselem Press release, 8 August 2006

In July, the Israeli military killed 163 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, 78 of whom (48 percent) were not taking part in the hostilities when they were killed. Thirty-six of the fatalities were minors, and 20 were women. In the West Bank, 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in July. The number of Palestinian fatalities in July was the highest in any month since April 2002.

Israeli planes bomb house in northern Gaza Strip
Ramatan News Agency, 7 August 2006

Beit Lahiya, Gaza -- An Israeli aeroplane fired at least one missile at a house in the northern Gaza Strip town of Bayt Lahiya on Monday pre-dawn and completely destroying it, RNA correspondent said.

The correspondent said that the residents of the two-story home received telephone call from the Israeli army urging them to leave the house before the aeroplanes struck it. The house owner, Muhammad al-Shurafa, told RNA correspondent that the Israeli army telephoned him and ordered him to leave the house with his family as the army will strike it. Shurafa added that he took his family out of the home but he thought that someone might be joking so he returned to the house few minutes later and immediately the telephone rang again "and it was again the Israeli army".