From Occupied Palestine

Israeli troops fire on women in mosque siege
RORY McCARTHY
Guardian, 4 November 2006

[ed. Photo - Israeli tanks open fire on Palestinian protest march]

Beit Hanoun -- Palestinian women described yesterday how they were shot and injured in the face and the legs by Israeli troops as they led a protest march into the scene of the biggest military incursion into Gaza in months.

Sisterhood of Hamas
HELENA COBBAN
Salon.com, 14 March 2006

Women fueled the rise of the Islamist party through their work in schools and hospitals that serve the Palestinian people.

Jabaliya, Gaza -- The preschool's iron gate clangs behind us, shutting out the dust and concrete-block ugliness of Jabaliya, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the world (population 120,000). In here, around the paved schoolyard, everything is clean, freshly painted and orderly. An energetic young woman in full Islamic coverup is leading two dozen 4-year-olds in some vigorous phys ed. Tiny voices echo out through the open classroom windows.

Amnesty International Report 2005
Covering events from January - December 2004

The Israeli army killed more than 700 Palestinians, including some 150 children. Most were killed unlawfully

Palestinian women 'have suffered most in intifada'
DONALD MacINTYRE
Independent, 31 March 2005

Jerusalem -- Palestinian women have borne the brunt of the pain inflicted by four-and-a-half years of conflict but their plight has been largely ignored, Amnesty International says.

The human rights group calls on both sides of the conflict to take "urgent steps" to alleviate the suffering of women in the occupied territories in a report which levels criticism at the Palestinian Authority as well as the Israeli military for failing to safeguard women's basic rights.

The illness: breast cancer; Cause of death: the occupation
AKIVA ELDAR
Ha'aretz, 3 March 2005

Fatma Barghout was only 26 when in April 2003 she discovered a suspicious lump in her breast. The accountancy student from Gaza immediately went to see a surgeon at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza. After he examined the X-ray and the biopsy, the doctor told Fatma that it was a benign tumor. However, the tumor continued to grow.

One out of every nine
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 26 September 2004

Everyone is only carrying out orders and they are going by the book. But a book that prevents medical treatment to dying patients, hassles them and humiliates them, is a wicked book, and a society in which only the metal detector speaks is a sick society.

Biddu: The struggle against the wall
TANYA REINHART
Yediot Aharonot, 20 April 2004

[Translated from Hebrew by Netta Van Vliet]

Biddu is a beautiful Palestinian village, surrounded with vines and fruit orchards, a few miles to the east of the Israeli border of 1967. In the last couple of months, the village, that has lived in peace with its Israeli neighbors even during the present Intifada, has become yet another symbol in the history of Israel/Palestine.

'She can go give birth with Arafat'
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 19 September 2003

This is a bad tale that ends well. This story began exactly like Rula Ashtiya's - the Kafr Salem woman in labor whose story was told here last Friday: another woman stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint on her way to the hospital. Rula Ashtiya testified that she gave birth on the ground at the checkpoint next to her village, while hiding like an animal from the soldiers behind a cement block. Suzanne Alann spent more than three hours navigating checkpoints last week, as border police refused her passage, time after time, until she gave birth in a checkpoint zone, in the back seat of the taxi she was riding in, in full view of whoever happened by.

Twilight Zone: Birth and death at the checkpoint
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 12 September 2003

Rula was in the last stages of labor. Daoud says the soldiers at the checkpoint wouldn't let them through, so his wife hid behind a concrete block and gave birth on the ground. A few minutes later, the baby girl died.

They wanted to call her Mira. All their children have names that begin with M, from Mohammed to Meida, their youngest daughter. They borrowed baby clothes from Rula's sister - their financial situation after three years of unemployment made buying new clothes out of the question - and they packed a bag to be ready for the birth. Now they are beside themselves with grief. Rula doesn't say a word and Daoud can't keep the words from pouring out.

Palestinian women suffer under occupation
PHYLLIS BENNIS
Progressive Media Project, 8 March 2001

Malake Kafishe lives in Hebron's Old City, and she was seven months pregnant last November when the Israeli military attacked. There was shooting, and then I heard the helicopter gunships coming in and my heart just stopped, she said. She began to bleed and then collapsed on the doorstep. Her family telephoned for an ambulance. Because of a curfew imposed on the 40,000 Palestinians in Hebron's Old City, it took an hour for an ambulance to arrive. In place of paramedics, two Israeli soldiers insisted on examining Kafishe.