Stories written by Mel Frykberg
Mel Frykberg began her journalism career reporting on unrest in black townships, including Soweto, in South Africa during the apartheid era. She later worked as a journalist in Sydney, Australia. Mel has worked as a journalist in the Middle East for over a decade. She has reported for a number of major international publications from Gaza, Jerusalem, Beirut, Cairo, and Amman where she has lived. Mel also edited local magazines and newspapers in the region and is a frequent commentator on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on National Public Radio in the United States. Frykberg studied journalism in the U.K.

Rumblings Rise Between Hezbollah and Israel

By Mel Frykberg
Israeli intelligence has warned that a new war with Hezbollah on Israel's northern border with Lebanon cannot be ruled out, following heightened tensions between United Nations peacekeeping forces and Hezbollah supporters in the south of Lebanon.
Fakhri Abu Diab Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Peace May Rest on the Future of 88 Houses

By Mel Frykberg
Frequent clashes and continuing tension in disputed East Jerusalem could portend a major outbreak of civil unrest, residents fear.
The family Ziad Julani left behind - Moira with her three daughters; Hannah 17, Mirage, 15, and Yasmin 7. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

Israelis Keep the Trigger Tight

By Mel Frykberg
"Where is my daddy? Why is he not coming home? I want my daddy," sobs seven- year-old Yasmin, her big blue eyes filling with tears. She wakes up crying every night.
Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset, Haneen Zoabi. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

Arab-Israeli Parliamentarian Fights Death Threats

By Mel Frykberg
"I stopped counting after I had received 50 death threats. I told my secretary not to tell me about them any more," Arab-Israeli Knesset (parliament) member, Haneen Zoabi told IPS.
Electricity and fuel shortages in Gaza affect the critically ill, like this man injured in an Israeli air raid. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

RIGHTS-MIDEAST: ‘Gaza Blockade Must Go’

By Mel Frykberg
Under intense international pressure Israel declared last week that it would ease its crippling blockade on Gaza by permitting an additional but limited number of daily items, including food, into the coastal enclave.

MIDEAST: Advantage Hamas After Flotilla Fiasco

By Mel Frykberg
Israel may allow soft drinks, juice, canned fruit, salads, biscuits and potato chips into the Gaza Strip from next week. What should be an unremarkable event is making news headlines and portends unseen consequences.
Huwaida Arraf Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

Q&A: ‘We’ll be Back – With Bigger Flotillas’

By Mel Frykberg
In an exclusive interview with IPS Huwaida Arraf, the chairwoman of the Free Gaza (FG) movement, which tried to break Israel’s crippling blockade on Gaza, explains what happened on the night of May 31 when Israeli commandos raided the FG humanitarian flotilla, shooting nine people dead and injuring dozens more.
Activists being deported from Ben Gurion airport flash the 'V' sign through the darkened windows of a bus. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MEDIA-ISRAEL: Beatings, Abuse, Doctored Evidence Emerge

By Mel Frykberg
Although Israel successfully controlled news of its deadly commando raid on the Free Gaza (FG) flotilla during the first crucial 48 hours of media coverage, emerging evidence from witnesses and survivors is challenging the Israeli government's version of events.
Free Gaza activists being marched away from a bus at the Ben Gurion International airport. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

Israel Censors News on Deadly Flotilla Raid

By Mel Frykberg
Attempts by media to interview some of the hundreds of Free Gaza (FG) members, who were being deported from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, Wednesday, were thwarted by Israeli authorities.
Demonstrations in Ramallah to condemn the Israeli commando raid on the Gaza aid flotilla. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

ISRAEL: Censure Follows Raid on Gaza Aid Flotilla

By Mel Frykberg
The Israeli government's spin machine has launched into full-throttle as the country faces yet another diplomatic crisis and harsh international criticism for Monday's raid on the Free Gaza (FG) humanitarian aid flotilla that left 19 people dead and about 50 injured.

MIDEAST: Israeli Navy Storms Humanitarian Flotilla

By Mel Frykberg
Israeli naval commandos shot dead at least 16 people and wounded over 30 on Monday morning, as they attacked an unarmed humanitarian and civilian flotilla - in international waters - trying to bring desperately needed aid to Gaza. The death toll was expected to rise.
Fighter from the Brej refugee camp in Gaza. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Hamas’ Turn to Demolish Palestinian Homes

By Mel Frykberg
On Sunday approximately 150 Palestinians from 20 families were driven out of their homes in Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip, by heavily armed police and soldiers who menaced them with clubs.
A road meant for Palestinians complete with checkpoint. The main highways are reserved for Israeli settlers. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: US Funds Apartheid Roads on West Bank

By Mel Frykberg
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is helping Israel to construct an apartheid road infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian West Bank by financing nearly a quarter of the segregated road system primarily for the benefit of Israeli settlers.
Posters in Ramallah mark 62 years of the 'Nakba' when Israel was established, causing Palestinians to flee. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Palestinian Economic Boycott Hits Israeli Settlers

By Mel Frykberg
Israeli settlers are beginning to feel the bite of an economic boycott campaign launched by the Palestinian Authority (PA) against goods produced in the illegal Israeli settlements dotting the occupied West Bank.
This Gazan family copes with life in the remains of a home bombed out by the Israelis. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Chomsky – Latest Jewish Thinker Savaged by Israel

By Mel Frykberg
When internationally renowned linguist, philosopher and political analyst Noam Chomsky was barred from entering the West Bank, he joined a chorus of Jewish intellectuals savaged by the Israeli government for outspoken criticism.
Palestinians and their Israeli and international supporters protest against the separation wall. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Is Israel Sliding Towards a Police State?

By Mel Frykberg
Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu has been sentenced to another three months imprisonment for allegedly refusing to perform community service in West Jerusalem.
The desecrated interior of Lubban Ash Sharqiya village mosque with Qurans piled alongside shoes. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Israeli Settlers Step Up Attacks on Palestinian Mosques

By Mel Frykberg
"There is immense anger as well as a feeling of vulnerability and fear when a place of sanctuary and holiness is subject to indiscriminate violence," says Issa Hussein.

MIDEAST: West Bankers Made Refugees in Their Own Country

By Mel Frykberg
Several Palestinians have set up a protest tent in no-man’s land in the northern Gaza Strip, near the Erez border crossing into Israel, as they protest their deportation from the Israeli occupied West Bank into Gaza where Hamas authorities have refused them entry.

MIDEAST: Hope Amidst Grim Prospects for Peace

By Mel Frykberg
Proximity peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, due to begin shortly after months of delay due to Israel’s continued settlement building on occupied Palestinian land, appear to have little chance of making a breakthrough.
Smuggling tunnel on Gaza's Rafah border with Egypt. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

MIDEAST: Egypt, Hamas Complicit in Israel’s Gaza Blockade

By Mel Frykberg
A convoy of boats laden with humanitarian goods and accompanied by hundreds of journalists, human rights activists and European parliamentarians, is due to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza at the end of May.
Vineyard in Beit Ummar village, flooded with sewage from nearby Israeli settlement. Credit: Palestine Solidarity Project.

MIDEAST: Settler Sewage Ruins Palestinian Crops, Drinking Water

By Mel Frykberg
Residents of this Palestinian village refuse to buy the idea that the flood of raw sewage from the adjacent Israeli settlement of Kfar Etzion, that destroyed vineyards and contaminated their drinking water, was an accident.
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