From Occupied Palestine

UN: Israel violated truce 7 times in one week
ROI MANDEL
Ynet, 27 June 2008

Since it went into effect last week, at least eight violations of the new ceasefire agreement with Hamas and the Palestinian factions have been recorded, a UN source told Ynet on Thursday. According to the source, seven violations were committed by the IDF, while the Palestinians are responsible for just one.

UN committee: Israel should let Palestinians return to their land
YOAV STERN
Ha'aretz, 11 March 2007

A United Nations committee has called on Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their property and land in Israel and to ensure that the bodies responsible for distributing property, such as the Jewish National Fund, not discriminate against the Arab population.

War enters the classroom
JON ELMER
Inter Press Service, 6 February 2007

Gaza City (IPS) - The United Nations has indefinitely suspended elementary school classes for tens of thousands of Gaza City's children following a weekend of unprecedented factional violence, which turned this isolated enclave into a war zone and left at least 27 dead and 250 wounded.

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.

Funds cut, Gaza faces a plague of health woes
STEVEN ERLANGER
New York Times, 8 May 2006

Gaza -- Hanin al-Hilo was screaming at the nurses at the main Gaza hospital, Al Shifa: "If I called and said I was the son of Mr. Somebody, some big shot, I'd have a place!"

'A Dubai on the Mediterranean'
SARA ROY
London Review of Books, Vol. 27 No. 21, 3 November 2005

Last April President Bush said that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza would allow the establishment of 'a democratic state in the Gaza' and open the door for democracy in the Middle East. The columnist Thomas Friedman was more explicit, arguing that 'the issue for Palestinians is no longer about how they resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza, but whether they build a decent mini-state there

Israel's High Court rejects World Court ruling on barrier
JON ELMER
The NewStandard, 16 September 2005

[Map: click here]

Ramallah -- Israel's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state has the "authority in principle" to erect the separation barrier on occupied Palestinian territory inside the West Bank, once again rejecting the non-binding July 2004 International Court of Justice decision that the West Bank barrier is illegal under international law and must be dismantled.

Gaza Strip military occupation - Canadian government complicity
MOHAMMED OMAR and STEFAN CHRISTOFF
CKUT Radio in Montreal, 15 December 2004

Listen to the interview: click here

On December 1st 2004, at the United Nations General Assembly, the Canadian government voted "No" for the first time on a UN resolution regarding "the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people," which voices support for a UN committee working to back the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and against Israeli military occupation. The UN vote was issued one day after the Canadian Ambassador to the UN publicly criticized the UN General Assembly for delivering "one-sided condemnations" of Israel.

U.N.: Hundreds of Palestinians Homeless
LARA SUKHTIAN
The Associated Press, 22 October 2004

Jerusalem - Israel's recent 17-day military offensive in the northern Gaza Strip killed 107 Palestinians, left nearly 700 homeless and caused more than $3 million dollars in property damage, a U.N. aid agency said in a report Friday.

Operation "Days of Penitence" was launched Sept. 29 in response to rocket fire on Israeli towns that killed five Israelis in recent months.

'When we came back they had destroyed all the houses'
CHRIS McGREAL
Guardian, 18 October 2004

Jabaliya -- The Israeli general who commanded the destruction of the only Jewish settlement in the Sinai before it was returned to Egypt recently offered Ariel Sharon advice on how to carry out his pledge to remove settlers from the Gaza strip.