Israel has made it known that it intends to push ahead with more settlements on the West Bank despite pressure from the US to end any further expansion plans. This from PIC Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Sunday that Israel’s persistence in the expansion of its settlements proves that US president Barack Obama failed to curb the occupation and lost his credibility regarding the settlement process in the region. In a press statement to the Palestinian information center (PIC), spokesman Abu Zuhri stressed that the peaceful settlement option is a term that only exists in the minds of those who wager on it, while Israel on the ground is persistent in judaizing the Palestinian lands. The spokesman also deplored, in another context, the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatuses for turning back Israeli settlers who mistakenly entered West Bank cities, saying that this behavior is the biggest example of the size of the security coordination between the PA and the Israeli occupation. T...

A Palestinian boy was killed by the IDF on Saturday . He was driving with his father to their field near the border town of Beit Hanoun. Israel is attempting to create a defacto buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the border which in effect puts yet more farmland out of reach of Palestinian farmers, unless they wish to risk death, as this latest incident shows. The IDF however claimed they were responding to mortar fire, although there was none at the time. 15-year-old Ghazi al-Za'aneen died from his severe wounds at the Shifa hospital.

PIC - Dr. Khalil Al-Haya, a member of Hamas's political bureau, said on Sunday that Cairo would table within a few days a new proposal ending all pending issues in the Palestinian dialog. He added in a statement to Safa news agency that in the event the proposal was endorsed then the Palestinian factions would be invited early next month to Cairo for a serious and in-depth dialog. The ball is now in Fatah's court if it really wanted reconciliation and an end to division, Haya said, adding that Fatah should not resort to "unrealistic pretexts". The Hamas leader denied knowledge of the content of the Egyptian proposal but said it would certainly build on what was agreed upon in previous rounds of national dialog. He said that his Movement was keen on success of the national reconciliation and was confident of the Egyptian determination to reach an agreement ending the internal Palestinian rift. A senior level Hamas delegation led by its political bureau chairman Khaled...

Israeli naval forces opened fire on Thursday midday at Palestinian fishermen boats off Gaza City shore. local sources reported. Palestinian sources said that some boats sustained damage but no injuries were reported. Last week such attack by the military left one Palestinian fisherman dead and another injured. Meanwhile Israeli tanks invaded on Thursday areas at the eastern border with Israel. Witnesses said that tanks and bulldozers stormed the area and destroyed farm lands. Palestinian fighters clashed with the invading troops and fire several home-made shells at their tanks. No injuries in both sides were reported. Israeli media sources announced on Thursday that two Palestinian home-made Qassam shells hit areas close to the northern Gaza borders with Israel. The sources said that the shells landed in open areas at the Palestinian side casing no damage or injuries. Thanks to the IMEMC

Israel today released nine Hamas-aligned members of the Palestinian Authority parliament. It's not clear whether this is linked to attempts by Israel to secure the release of their lone prisoner of war. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal is in Egypt this week for talks believed to be related to a possible prisoner swap. RAMALLAH, West Bank — A Hamas legislator in the West Bank says Israel has released nine other Hamas lawmakers from Israeli prisons. The legislator, Mahmoud Ramahi, says the men had all completed 40-month prison terms and their release Wednesday did not appear to be a gesture from Israel. Israeli officials had no comment. Israel rounded up more than 30 Hamas lawmakers in 2006 after Hamas militants captured an Israeli soldier, apparently as bargaining chips in efforts to free the soldier. He is still being held in Gaza. Ramahi says 23 of Hamas' 74 elected lawmakers remain in Israeli prisons. Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament in 2006. The next year, Hamas ov...

Israeli air strikes and shelling killed two Hamas fighters today Moawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza's emergency services, said on Tuesday "the two men were killed near Jabaliya by shells" fired from the Israeli side of the border. more at Al Jazeera

A Hamas-aligned cleric is reported (see the New York Times ) to have claimed that attempts by the UN Releif and Works Agency to introduce the teaching of the Holocaust int o gaza schools amounts to 'marketing a lie' are to be condemned. The anger is misdirected. All people should be taught about the barbarity of so called European civilisation. What should be condemned instead is the complete lack of teaching in Israeli schools of anything to do with historic Palestine and the people that lived there prior to the catastrophe that was 1948. Indeed there is a constant refrain of anti-Arab racism that is encouraged by the state and goes largely unchallenged in civil society. Also, there is no accurate teaching of the experiences of Jewish people in the Middle East, other than a distorted picture of relentless anti-semitism that hides a rich tradition in which Arab and Jews were able to live side by side for generations. When Palestinian are dying virtually on a daily basis at the ...

Despite the news of movement on the prisoner exchange front, Hamas says there is no indication on the ground that Israel has diluted its intransigence on freeing Hamas leaders. Reports surfaced last week that Germany was playing the role of intermediary in order to facilitate a deal with the Guardian among others, notably German news magazine Der Spiegel, claiming a deal might be near. According to the Jerusalem Post Hamas has warned of the 'excessive optimism' being expressed in the international media. Khaled Mashaal, Hamas leader in exile in Syria, is due to travel to Cairo later this week for more talks on the prisoner swap, and presumably on the stalled national reconciliation talks Egypt has been trying to restart.

Annual March and Rally in support of the Palestinians and all oppressed peoples of the World. - September 13th, 1:30pm at Marble Arch, the moving to Trafalgar Square for rally with Yvonne Ridley, Rabbi Ahron Cohen, Shaikh M.S. Bahmanpour, Taji Mustapha & more - Contact to see if a coach is leaving from you city - Phone: 442089044222 Email: meherun@ihrc.org You can confirm your intended attendance on the Facebook group below. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=131170156075 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48092381974#/event.php?eid=159720506728

NABLUS, ( PIC )-- Ex-detainee Sabrin Abu Amara, recently released from Hasharon prison, said that female prisoners in the jail are living in harsh incarceration conditions in the holy month of Ramadan. Abu Amara told the prisoners’ center for studies that the tension between the prisoners and the prison administration in Hasharon escalated after they prevented jailers from conducting a search in their section last week. She added that the prison administration banned prison visits during Ramadan especially for Hamas female prisoners who were not allowed to see their children and families. The ex-detainee also noted that there is no schedule for providing food during the month of Ramadan, adding that the food served is very poor and is not fit to eat. With regard to the 19-month-old child Yousuf Al-Zak, the ex-detainee said that the prison administration allowed the child and his mother Fatima to stay all day in the corridor outside the cell. Abu Amara had spent six consecutive years in...

THE HAGUE — A 15-year-old Palestinian girl who says Israeli troops killed her father and two siblings in Gaza in January, sought justice from the International Criminal Court on Monday. "I am here to lodge a complaint against the occupying army," Amira Alqerem told journalists in The Hague, seven months after her family was killed in an early-morning assault in the Tal Al Hawa neighbourhood that also left her severely injured. "I hope this complaint will succeed because it is the truth," the soft-spoken teenager said, seated next to her lawyer on his way to the ICC to file the complaint with the office of the prosecutor. In her court filing, Alqerem says her 67-year-old father Fathi, 16-year-old-sister Ismat, and 14-year-old brother Ala, were killed by Israeli army fire in the early hours of January 14. The three children were awoken by an explosion to find their father's body, covered in blood, next to a crater near their house, the document claims. Ismat and A...

RAMALLAH, ( PIC )-- Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu has said that Israel should learn from the holocaust that it would never secure peace through walls and guns. Tutu, speaking in an interview with Hebrew daily Ha'aretz published on Friday, said that the Palestinians were the ones paying the price for that holocaust, which was perpetrated by the West. Tutu, who visited the West Bank recently, said that the Israeli roadblocks in the West Bank reminded him of the Apartheid era in his country South Africa. However, he noted that the Apartheid regime did not impose collective punishment on the people and did not demolish homes at the pretext that one of the family members was suspected of "terrorism".

by Helena Cobban I've never met Dov Yermiya, a Jewish Israeli peace activist who is now 94 years old. But I read of course the book he published in 1983 in which he wrote with anguish about the torture and other gross mistreatment of civilians he witnessed directly during Israel's invasion of Lebanon the year before. I have it in my hand now. I just learned, in this open letter published today by Uri Avnery, that Yermiya, recently renounced the ideology and practice of Zionism with these stirring words: I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel, Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the...

Protest for Palestine at Spain versus Israel basketball match yesterday more (Spanish)

Nothing is sacred in occupied Palestine as far as the Zionists oppressors are concerned. By the way 'Israeli Arabs' are Palestinians although I appreciate Israel would like to wipe them off the map. 5 detained during Ramadan prayers at Temple Mount Some 90,000 Muslim worshippers attend prayer session in Jerusalem's Old City; beefed up security forces arrest five Palestinians and Israeli-Arabs, some of whom carried knives Five people were arrested during the first Friday prayers of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City. The detainees, Palestinians and Israeli-Arabs, were taken in for questioning by security personnel. more

Sixty-two rabbis from the liberal streams of American Judaism are participating in a monthly "Jewish Fast for Gaza" which, according to their manifesto (crafted by one of the project's coordinators, Rabbi Brant Rosen) "seeks to end the Jewish community's silence over Israel's collective punishment in Gaza that has resulted in a humanitarian crisis of overwhelming proportions. Why the fast? In Leviticus we read: "Do not stand idly by when your neighbor's blood is being spilled" (19:16). The other project coordinator, Rabbi Brian Walt, is pleased by the response in support of the Fast for Gaza, pretentiously named Ta'anit Tzedek. He writes: "It has been incredibly heartening to find so many rabbis willing to participate in this initiative. It takes a lot of courage. I hope that this is one small step in breaking the Jewish community's silence over what is happening in Gaza. more

Oxfam, Gaza City from Rob S on Vimeo . Oxfam’s Mohammed Ali reflects on his first weeks living in the UK after working under fire in his homeland for the past 2 years. The moment I left Gaza I felt like I’d been let out of prison. It’s like the feeling a bird must have when all of a sudden, after years of living in a cage, someone opens the door. It flies away into the world, finally able to go where it wants and explore new things. That is how I feel as I write these words from a desk in Oxford. I’ve now been here in the UK for nearly two weeks. It still feels like a dream! I waited two years to leave and I can’t believe I’m finally here. I keep thinking I’ll wake up back in Gaza, trapped, and unable to escape the misery we have all endured there since the Israeli blockade began two years ago. more

There has been another deadly tunnel collapse, this time resulting in the death of three people... and it's not just Israeli bombing that is to blame. Egypt, to its great shame, has been pumping sewage and gas into the tunnels and even throwing in explosives. more

The People's Daily Online reports that the Israel pirates, sometimes referred to as a navy, has killed another Gaza fisherman and seriously injured one other. Seafood is one of the few sources of high-protein food available to the blockaded people of Gaza and the Israelis are doing their best to choke off this supply, with the added aim of laying claim to the natural gas deposits in Gazan waters. A Palestinian fisherman was killed and another colleague was injured Thursday afternoon when Israeli navy fired shells and machinegun fire at their boat near the beach in northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya, witnesses said. The witnesses said Mohammed al-Attar, 25, was killed when the shell hit his wooden fishing boat a few minutes after it set sail. Medical sources said that the second fisherman suffered moderate wounds. Israeli gunboats monitor the shores of the Gaza Strip to prevent the Palestinian fishermen from sailing farther than two nautical miles though mutual accords set the...

Seems to be some movement going on regarding the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli prisoner of war Gilad Shalit. Twitter users will have noticed yesterday that Shilat was trending quite high as a result of a pro-Israel campaign highlighting his third year in captivity at the hands of 'Hamas terrorists'. No mention from these people about the thousands of innocent Palestinians being held illegally held in Israel's dungeons. If you want to provide a bit of balance to the tweets go here and reply to some of the posts demand the release of all Palestinian prisoners. GAZA, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) New international efforts are exerted to push forward the stalled prisoner exchange talks between Hamas and Israel, sources said on Wednesday. The United States, Germany and Egypt took part in bridging the gaps between Islamic Hamas movement and Israel to swap a number of Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier Hamas has been holding captive for more ...