Hassan Hader’s application for a permit to work in Israel has been rejected four times. Now waiting to hear back from the Israeli authorities on his latest attempt, the 52-year-old father of five said he has no choice but to keep applying.
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across the West Bank over the past week in protest against increasingly high living costs, and demanding major changes from the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership.
By mining natural resources from the occupied Palestinian territories for its own economic purposes, Israel is committing the war crime of pillage in the Dead Sea area, according to a report released Monday by Palestinian human rights group Al Haq.
On a sunny summer afternoon, kids start arriving with their parents at a park near Ein Rafa, a Palestinian village in the south of Jerusalem. The Arabic speaking kids stay in one cluster at first, and the Hebrew speaking kids chat among themselves. Soon a ball appears, and before long all the kids intermingle in a fast-paced game of Chinese football.
In a hamlet of the occupied West Bank, the testimony goes, Israeli troops chase a Palestinian child. “He was about two metres away – the company commander cocked his weapon in his face...The kid fell on the ground, crying and begging for his life.”
A year after their bid for statehood flopped in the United Nations’ Security Council, the Palestine Liberation Organisation is again planning to seek an upgrade in UN status. On Sep. 27, the PLO will approach the UN General Assembly in hopes of becoming a non-member observer state. If their bid is successful, the Palestinians will be eligible to join various UN agencies and will also be able to bring allegations of Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court.
After the brutal murder of a Palestinian woman in late July in a busy Bethlehem marketplace, local human rights groups are pushing for stronger reforms to stem violence against women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“With our spirit, with our blood, we’ll redeem you, O Noble Sanctuary!” the veiled teenagers fervently sing in unison in honour of the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan. Israeli police officers in uniform and full battle gear sit unimpressed under pine trees; others patrol the compound.
“It will collapse, and the collapse will be harder when it happens later,” says Tareq Sadeq, Palestinian economist and professor at Birzeit University, about the financial bubble building up in the Palestinian Authority government.
As Israel continues to build walls and fences along virtually each of its borders, analysts say the country’s isolationist
policies and unwillingness to deal with the Palestinians and other Arab neighbours through anything other than forceful means spells disaster.
A group of Palestinian Jerusalemites steps down from a crowded bus to let two Israeli soldiers climb aboard to check identity cards, below the aluminum roof of this newly operational checkpoint terminal.