Peacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
An Israeli military court has found the leader of a West Bank protest movement guilty of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations.
In a move strongly criticized by the European Union, the court convicted Abdallah abu Rahmah of organizing weekly protests against the route of what Israel calls its security barrier and what Palestinians call the apartheid separation wall.
“The individual was convicted of incitement and participation in an illegal riot,” the Israeli military said.
But the organizers of the protest say it is a grass-roots nonviolent movement.
Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative, said the union considers abu Rahmah to be a “human rights defender” and she was “deeply concerned that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahma(h) is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a nonviolent manner.”
At a time when there are signs of hope emerging from the churches in the Middle East around the conflict in Palestine and Israel, a World Council of Churches delegation led by General Secretary the Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit will be travelling to the region to emphasise the need for a “just peace”.
Baroness Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, yesterday issued an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel over a military court’s conviction of a Palestinian activist prominent in unarmed protests against the West Bank separation barrier.
Filed under: Middle East files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 10:17 UTC
News source:
21 August 2010
Al Jazeera
Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians will resume next month after both sides accepted formal invitations from the United States to hold their first face-to-face negotiations for almost two years.
The quartet of Middle East peace negotiators – the UN, Russia, the EU and the US – said on Friday it had invited the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to attend direct talks in Washington on September 2.
Archbishop Elias Chacour, who is both a Palestinian and a citizen of Israel, has told a large gathering in Edinburgh that a just and peaceful future in Israel and Palestine depends upon education.
The average age in the area he lives, said the Archbishop, is 14 years, and many young people have been deeply shaped and scarred by the history of occupation and eviction. Transformation of lives and understanding is vital, he suggested.
Chacour is the Archbishop of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth and Galilee of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. Noted for his efforts to promote reconciliation, he is the author of two books about the experience of Palestinian people living in present-day Israel – including the best-seller Blood Brothers, which broke boundaries in the UK by being published by a major evangelical company.
Filed under: Middle East files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 12:44 UTC
News source:
20 August 2010
marcgopin.com
By Aziz Abu Sarah
A year ago, the Palestinians encountered unprecedented change in the U.S. and international community toward the Palestinian issue, as the international community noticeably increased pressure on the Israeli government to freeze settlements and accept the principle of a two-state solution for final settlement. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was able to evade the pressure by throwing the ball into the Palestinian court, demanding that the Palestinians return to direct negotiations.
By Ishmael Ben-Israel, A.M.A.L. Initiative for the Advancement of the Arabic Language in Israel
Israeli Arabs make up a large minority group (20%) within the general population of the country. This group suffers from discrimination at different levels of Israeli society, in the public as well as private sectors. Contemporary state initiated policies of affirmative action, have yet to be proven efficient tools in the struggle against ongoing Arab under-representation in Israel’s workforce and institutions of higher education…
So what can bridge the gaps and get the two communities to communicate with one another?
In the upcoming school year (2010-2011) a local grassroots initiative will challenge the traditional way we Israelis think of Arabs in general and our conception of the Arabic language in particular.
Filed under: Middle East files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 12:39 UTC
News source:
19 August 2010
AP
By ARON HELLER
JERUSALEM — Growing up in the West Bank, Mujahid Sarsur knew next to nothing about the Holocaust and saw little ground to sympathize with a people he saw as his occupier.
But thanks to an Israeli roommate overseas, the 21-year-old Palestinian student learned about the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews during World War II and discovered a new understanding of his Israeli neighbors.
Now he wants other Arabs to do the same. Sarsur heads one of a handful of Palestinian grass-roots groups seeking knowledge about the Holocaust.
Grassroots Palestinian boycott campaigns across the occupied West Bank to take Israeli settlement products off the shelves of local stores have made an impact on the Israeli settlement economy, to the unease of the Israeli government, noted the Israeli daily Haaretz this week (“Palestinians ‘adamant about continuing boycott on settlement goods‘,” 8 August 2010).
From the tightly-packed communities in refugee camps, to the sprawling urban areas in major cities, to the rural countryside, Palestinians have galvanized around campaigns to promote locally-made products and locally-harvested food instead of a myriad of items made in illegal settlement colonies on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank.
We've signed the Red Cross Code of Conduct saying we don't take sides; we provide aid based on need alone, regardless of nationality, race, religion or ethnicity. We don't carry guns.
By Melanie Brooks
Two years ago last week, Shirley Case, a humanitarian and one of my close friends, was shot and killed in an ambush by the Taliban along with three other aid workers. They were returning from a field visit to one of their schools outside of Kabul, where they were providing education to children with learning disabilities…
Today is World Humanitarian Day, a day where we remember colleagues who have died while trying to help others, and raise awareness of what we do and why it is so important we continue. The day was established by the United Nations in 2008, the same year Shirley died. That was also the most dangerous year on record for aid workers; along with Shirley, more than 260 were killed, kidnapped or injured in attacks that year, making aid work more dangerous than being a UN peacekeeper.
But aid workers aren’t peacekeepers, or soldiers. We’ve signed the Red Cross Code of Conduct saying we don’t take sides; we provide aid based on need alone, regardless of nationality, race, religion or ethnicity. We don’t carry guns.
Pakistan is a nation in crisis. Since the onset of torrential rains and floods two weeks ago, 1,600 people have died; two million are now homeless. The United Nations estimates that US$460-million is required for food, clean water, shelter and medical supplies. The country’s government pegs the cost of rebuilding housing and infrastructure at between US$10-billion and US$15-billion…
So why is that as the floods in Pakistan continue to claim more victims, the world seems comparatively hesitant to help…
Quite simply, there is grave suspicion that aid will end up in the wrong hands: those of the Taliban…
A 20-something named Austin Heap has found the perfect disguise for dissidents in their cyberwar against the world’s dictators.
By Jeremy and Claire Weiss
For Austin Heap, there was nothing particularly remarkable about June 14, 2009. The 25-year-old computer programmer was home in his San Francisco apartment, spending his evening the same way he spent much of his free time: playing videogames. “I was sitting at my computer, as I usually do, playing Warcraft,” recalls Heap. “My boyfriend asked if I was following what was going on in Iran, and I said no. I was busy killing dragons.”
Later that night, Heap logged on to his Twitter account. He read about the growing number of Iranians claiming that their votes had been stolen in the presidential election, and he saw people complaining that the government was censoring their cries of fraud and election rigging. For Heap—who says, “I am for human rights, the Internet, and I check out from there”—something clicked. At that moment, he decided to become involved in a battle more than 7,000 miles away in a country he admits he knew next to nothing about. “I remember literally saying, ‘OK, game on.’?”
The creation of an independent Palestine has been a dream dashed many times, but there may be a practical path forward emerging from a surprising place. I often heard the phrase ‘business is business’ growing up in the 1960s among gritty American Jewish immigrants; my father said it all the time. It reflected old Jewish instincts to do whatever it takes to survive and feed ‘the family’, even when it meant dealing with people who disliked you – a lot.
What floored me is when my Palestinian partner, Aziz Abu Sarah, with whom I recently founded MEJDI, a social enterprise (business designed for a social goal), told me exactly the same words from his father! Aziz’s family and mine are not involved in our new business venture, but every innovation has implications for the political situation in Palestine, and we seek advice and reactions. I have been shocked by the positive reception in my right wing family to the idea of honest business as a bridge.
Filed under: Middle East files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 07:02 UTC
News source:
12 August 2010
AP
By MARJORIE OLSTER
RAMADI, Iraq — Off a dusty street flanked by piles of rubble and bombed-out car skeletons, the Saleh family is rebuilding their home with American aid money they got because three family members were accidentally killed in crossfire between U.S. forces and insurgents.
In another neighborhood of the battleground city of Ramadi, a new boat motor and fishing nets are tucked into a corner of the Zeyadan family’s courtyard, bought with money from the same U.S. aid fund.
The aid for these families and hundreds of others like them came from a special fund earmarked by Congress for innocent civilians killed in U.S. military operations in Iraq. But recently, members of Congress asked the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad, which manages the fund, to explore having Iraq take over financing and management of the project…
Already some victims are worried they will never see the compensation if Iraqi authorities — seen as corrupt and inefficient — run the process.
This is an update about the first annual Muslim Jewish Conference in Vienna – a gathering of young professionals from 25 countries.
The Muslim Jewish Conference is a dream for interfaith dialogue that young students worked hard to realize. The size was right – sixty participants from Indonesia to Israel.
By Researched and writtern by Naama Baumgarten-Sharon. Edited by Yael Stein. Translated by Shaul Vardi. English editing by Michelle Bubis.
The army uses different legal means in order to prevent demonstrations. Although most of the efforts are directed at the Palestinian organizers, some are directed at Israeli and International activists. Some foreign activists participating in the demonstration have been deported. In addition, On February 2, 2010, OC Central Command signed two orders proclaiming a closed military zone imposed on the villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin. These orders are issued for six months at a time, and apply to all the land lying between the built-up areas of the villages and the Barrier. Every Friday, between 8 AM and 8 PM, in other villages that hold demonstrations, specific orders are issued declaring the area a closed military zone.
Against the Palestinians, since the beginning of 2010, the army has used another means: renewed use of Military Order 101, which prohibits demonstrations in the occupied Territories…
Following renewal of the Order, B’Tselem is now publishing a position paper [pdf: http://www.btselem.org/Download/20100715_right_to_demonstrate_Eng.pdf] in which it provides a theoretical analysis of the Order and the restrictions it imposes on the freedom of Palestinians in Areas B and C to demonstrate, in light of Israel ’s obligation to ensure freedom of speech under international law. The position paper also compares the statutory provisions applying to Israeli citizens who demonstrate anywhere, whether inside the state or in the West Bank.
Paul Jay interviews Carol Rosenberg, a senior journalist, currently with the McClatchy News Service. Rosenberg works at the Miami Herald, which has provided extensive coverage of the operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.
BlackBerry has “virtually” sealed a deal with Saudi Arabia on its encrypted messenger services to avert a ban on the smartphone, a Saudi telecoms company official told AFP on Saturday…
The Saudi-financed satellite television Al-Arabiya, citing unnamed Saudi sources, said BlackBerry’s Canadian makers have agreed in principle to grant access to Saudi authorities to decipher its messenger exchanges between users…
“A solution is in sight with the Canadian company,” the official said.
Only last week RIM founder and co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis, however, told the New York Times that letting governments monitor messages would imperil ties with clients, including major corporations and law enforcement agencies.
Stepping into the fray on Thursday, the US and Canadian governments said they would hold talks with those countries fearful of the security implications of BlackBerry usage.
KABUL – Former Deputy Health Minister Faizullah Kakar recently completed a study (published in Dari) indicating that rising numbers of women and girls aged 15-40 are attempting suicide in Afghanistan. His findings were presented at a news conference in Kabul on 31 July.
The study, based on Health Ministry records and hospital reports, said an estimated 2,300 women or girls were attempting suicide annually – mainly due to mental illness, domestic violence and/or socio-economic hardship. “This is a several-fold increase on three decades ago,” said Kakar, currently a health adviser to President Hamid Karzai.
Social disorder, loss of loved ones, displacement, food insecurity, poverty, illiteracy, drug addiction, and lack of access to healthcare services – all caused or aggravated by over three decades of war – also played their part, said Kakar.
I last wrote about pending legislation to ban burqas in Europe more than a year ago when France first proposed laws to make it illegal to wear the burqa in public. Proposed legislation is pending with a final vote set in September.
There is no argument that can persuade me that laws designed to bully women into abandoning their cultural traditions because it makes people uncomfortable are essential in a free society. If a woman chooses to wear the niqab who are we to pass judgment? Lawmakers who argue that banning the burqa is a blow against extremism are naïve and lazy. Band-Aid approaches to fighting extremism are rarely successful. It only serves to pander to the ignorance and unfounded fears of politicians’ constituents.
Yet I have grown to hate the burqa. I hate the burqa because it serves no logical purpose in Western society. The intent of the clothing is to draw attention away from the woman, but in the West it only attracts unwanted attention.
