Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

There is a chance that the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will soon end and an independent Palestinian state will emerge.

The direct peace talks taking place in Washington are a necessary step towards that goal, but this is not the only option the Palestinians have.
Despite all the Palestinian opposition to direct Palestinian-Israeli talks (with the settlement freeze about to expire), there is hope in many quarters. Before leaving for Washington, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said

 

Imagine an anthropologist from Mars sent to earth to compile a report on Israeli political culture. His government is particularly interested in understanding why there is such a raging campaign against people who are called anti-Zionists and post-Zionists in Israel, and they want to understand what threat they constitute.

As a good Martian anthropologist, he first collects empirical material. He looks up the term ‘Zionism’ and finds out that it is a "Jewish political movement that, in the broadest sense calls for the self-determination of the Jewish people and a sovereign Jewish national homeland." He makes a note that he doesn’t understand why people should call themselves Zionists, when such a country already exists.

The great majority of top politicians in the US, UK, France, Germany and Australian know about ‘The Monster’, so powerful and so vicious, that they’re afraid to talk about it in the public. They know that it was ‘The Monster’ who was behind the assassination of Preident John F. Kennedy and his younger brother Robert Kennedy. They also know that it was the Monster who was really behind the September 11, 2001 terrorism and the earlier attack on USS Liberty. Some of them also know why so much fuss is being generated for the construction of the Islamic Community Center in the vacinity of ‘Ground Zero’ – where bars, porn shops and other anti-social stuff already exist or who is behind the Islamophobia campaign. However, they feel safe by closing their eyes and pretending that ‘The Monster’ doesn’t exist – at least not in front of them.

“The West Bank and Gaza are our bantustans (South Africa), reserves of labour for Israel but no freedom of labour,” professor Israel Shahak quoted in World must deny legitimacy to Israel.

“A racist, apartheid state, founded on terrorism, massacres and ethnic cleansing – it has no moral right to exist….. The liberals who called for the dismantling the state of South Africa because it was based on White supremacy need to explain their slavish devotion to the maintenance of a racially pure Israel,” William James Martin in The moral legitimacy of Israel.

On the eve of the silliest peace talks in history, the big question is this. What makes Obama’s envoy George Mitchell, a negotiator of high repute, say there is “no role” for Hamas?

The talks are silly because they seek to overturn what the United Nations has already decided for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict and drive a bulldozer through the building blocks of justice.

Nuri al-Uqbi’s small cinderblock home in a ramshackle neighbourhood of Hura, a Bedouin town in Israel’s Negev desert, hardly looks like the epicentre of a legal struggle that some observers say threatens Israel’s Jewish character.

Inside, the 68-year-old Bedouin activist has stacks of bulging folders of tattered and browning documents, many older than the state of Israel itself, that he hopes will overturn decades of harsh government policy towards the Negev’s 180,000 Bedouin.

 

Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel told his governing coalition that he did not promise an extension to the partial suspension in settlement construction when it expires in September (BTW, the suspension did not cover most of the settlement areas which are around Jerusalem and did not cover existing construction in other areas not infrastructure, schools, synagogue constructions etc.

In other words there was really no suspension.) Standing next to President Obama he simply emphasized that the topic to be discussed with Palestinians is how we can prevent attacks on illegal settlers in the West Bank.

 

It’s one of those regular days in the village, where as a foreign wife you stay home all day waiting for the Palestinian husband to come home.  Except sometimes such deep violent things happen that the day sort of takes you eight years back.

This is the problem with the Middle East, for every few steps that we take forward there are double those steps we take backwards when people decide to use violence as the answer.  It’s absolutely so frustrating to live without freedom and under harsh military occupation but still we cannot condone violent action.  After a long wait for the husband to come home, I understood it was going to be a long night since all the roads were closed  looking for the people who killed four Israeli settlers in the West Bank.  It’s the holy month of Ramadan in the Muslim world, why does anyone want to kill anyone during such a time?

 

Every dawn, 16 year old Madeliene Kalab, leaves her home and sails into the Mediterranean on a small boat her family owns.

In addition to Madeliene, her parents have two younger sons and live in Al Sudanyiah town in northern Gaza Strip. The young woman inherited the trade from her father, Abu Kayed, after he was diagnosed with a medical condition that forced him into early retirement.  Madeliene had to work to provide for her family after her dad could not work anymore.