Wheels of Justice

Territory is a central theme in all political conflicts in the world, as national borders across the globe have consistently shifted. EI contributor Stefan Christoff reviews Territories, a new feature documentary by Montreal filmmaker Mary Ellen Davis that explores the photographic work and global journeys of Larry Towell, of the world-renowned photo agency Magnum, who travels along the world's most conflicted border zones, from Latin America to the Middle East.

At approximately 9:15 am on 14 May 2008, 17-year-old Hamdi Salemeh Khader was riding his bicycle on al-Karama Road near a local cement factory in the northern Gaza Strip when he was shot twice (once in the shoulder and once in the upper right quadrant of the chest) by machine gun fire emanating from the tanks, killing him instantly. Hamdi's death is just one of many willful killings perpetrated by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.

On the afternoon of Friday 9 May 2008, five young Palestinian men and a 13-year-old boy set out to hunt birds in the hills of Deir Dibwan village, east of Ramallah city. Upon their arrival to the hills, they noticed a group of people, including young children, on an opposite hill, approximately 150 meters away. Based on testimony Al-Haq collected from the Palestinian men, they initially thought that this group was also Palestinian, and paid little attention to them.

One of the most difficult things to grasp in the modern history of Palestine and the Palestinians is the meaning of the Nakba. Is the Nakba to be seen as a discrete event that took place and ended in 1948, or is it something else? What are the political stakes in reifying the Nakba as a past event, in commemorating it annually, in bowing before its awesome symbolism? What are the effects of making the Nakba a finite historical episode that one bemoans but must ultimately accept as a fact of history? Joseph Massad comments.

Israel's Palestinian minority staged an alternative act of commemoration: a procession to one of more than 400 Palestinian villages erased by Israel in a monumental act of state vandalism after the fighting. In a sign of how far Israel still is from coming to terms with the circumstances of its birth, EI contributor Jonathan Cook reports that this year's march was forcibly broken up by the Israeli police who clubbed unarmed demonstrators with batons and fired tear gas and stun grenades into crowds of families that included young children.

"Born in Palestine. Died in Lebanon." "Born in Palestine. Died in Syria." "Born in Palestine. Died in Jordan." The camera pans across an endless row of white tombstones. Shadow of Absence takes death as its subject yet in doing so presents a powerful statement about Palestinian life. Isabelle Humphries reviews director Nasri Hajjaj's new documentary for EI.

"I am not sure what year I was born. But it was around 78 years ago, in Palestine." Handuma Rashid Najja Wishah sits on the patio overlooking her large garden, recalling the turbulent story of her long life. "I am a Palestinian from the village of Beit Affa" she says, tucking her long white scarf under her chin. "It was a beautiful village and we had a good life there. There was a small Jewish settlement nearby, called Negba, and we had a good relationship with the Jews.

This week on Crossing The Line: Former US President Jimmy Carter met with the political head of Hamas in Syria while insisting that Hamas must be included in any future Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The visit has drawn criticism from both the US and Israel which until now have refused to take part in any official negotiations with the Hamas government. What does Carter's meeting with Hamas mean? Is it as "historic" as some are calling it? Host Naji Ali speaks with author on Middle East issues, Phyllis Bennis about Carter's controversial visit to the Middle East.

GAZA CITY, 14 May (IPS) - The Israeli siege of Gaza that has restricted access to food, water and medicine is now beginning to hit unborn children and newborn babies. "Many babies are born suffering from anaemia that they have inherited from their mothers," Dr Salah al-Rantisi, head of the women's health department at the Palestinian ministry of health in Gaza told IPS. And the mothers are becoming anemic because they do not now get enough nutrition through pregnancy.

"There is, here, a timeless present, and here no one can find anyone. No one remembers how we went out the door like a gust of wind, and at what hour we fell from yesterday, and then yesterday shattered on the tiles in shards for others to reassemble into mirrors reflecting their image over ours." Adam Beach's photographs document life in the occupied territories.

To the People of Palestine, Whether you live within the "Green Line," in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, or in exile, you shall return, there is no doubt that you shall return. Today the skies will echo as you state with one united voice: "There can be no alternative to our return," all sounds will melt away as your voice rises to say "There can be no peace without our return to our original lands and homes."

As the grueling Gaza fuel crisis continues, so does the strain on local public transport services, including ambulances, across the Gaza Strip. Approximately 15 percent of local public services are operating across Gaza, whilst up to 90 percent of private cars remain off the roads, and all of Gaza's 450 fuel stations remain closed. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights speaks with medial professionals working under siege.

This month Israel marks the 60th anniversary of its founding. But amidst the festivities including visits by international celebrities and politicians there is deep unease -- Israel has skeletons in its closet that it has tried hard to hide, and anxieties about an uncertain future which make many Israelis question whether the state will celebrate an 80th birthday. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah comments.

Gaza's 1.5 million residents need at least 300 to 350 tons of cooking gas on a daily basis, yet according to al-Khozendar, Israel is important less than half the necessary fuel. The shortage of gas has further restricted the movement of Palestinians in Gaza throughout the region, causing motorists to improvise their means of fuel and paralyzing the transportation sector. Late January of this year Israeli Prime Minister stated that "We will not let the residents of Gaza lead a comfortable and pleasant life" so long as rockets are fired from the Strip, EI correspondent Rami Almeghari writes from Gaza.

There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forget the endless arguments about who offered what and who spurned whom and whether the Oslo peace process died when Yasser Arafat walked away from the bargaining table or whether it was Ariel Sharon's stroll through the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that did it in. Saree Makdisi comments.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the distention of three Palestinian journalists and a columnist by the Palestinian General Intelligence Service in Bethlehem and Qalqilya towns in the West Bank on Thursday, 8 May 2008. PCHR believes that such arrests constitute an attack on press freedoms and the right to freedom of expression, which are ensured by the Palestinian Basic Law and international human rights instruments.

With 400 hard-line religious settlers packed tightly amidst more than 160,000 Palestinians in the center of Hebron's Old City, violence is not a probability, it is a given. Add to that the nearly 2,000 Israeli troops assigned to "protect" the settlers and you can begin to understand how peace is a little more than a word in this part of the West Bank. Eddie Vassallo's pictures tell a story of occupied Hebron.

A new report from Arab Association for Human Rights documents the danger of eviction facing the Palestinian residents of the Ajami neighborhood in Jaffa and reveals the true motives behind this process. For these residents, ethnic cleansing did not end in 1948. It continues to this day, albeit by different means. The process being implemented in Jaffa (and in other locations in Israel) amounts to the "quiet transfer" of the Palestinian residents.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the killing of a mother in front of her children yesterday, during an Israeli incursion into New Abasan town, east of Khan Younes. PCHR investigations indicate that at approximately 14:30pm on Wednesday, 7 May, Israeli Occupation Forces troops raided the house of Majdi Abd al-Raziq al-Daghma during an incursion into New Abasan.

Israel at 60 is a more sophisticated, evolved and brutal form of apartheid than its South African predecessor, according to authoritative statements by South African anti-apartheid leaders, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the country's current government minister Ronnie Kasrils, who is Jewish. It therefore deserves from all people of conscience around the world, particularly those who opposed South African apartheid. Omar Barghouti comments for EI.