Video Now Available: George Bisharat - Ending the Palestinian Nakba:
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- Written by Will Seaman, pdxjustice Media Productions Will Seaman, pdxjustice Media Productions
- Published: 07 June 2008 07 June 2008
- Hits: 4163 4163
Commemorating Sixty Years of Palestinian Dispossession.
Dr. George Bisharat, University of California Hastings College of Law
Professor and former legal consultant to the Palestinian Authority, calls
for one secular democratic state for Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews as a
durable solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Dr. Bisharat offers his
legal perspective on how Israel may continue to be a home for the Jewish
people when the Palestinian right of return is implemented. The lecture was
part of a half-day program sponsored by Americans United for Palestinian
Human Rights of Portland, Oregon, to commemorate the Palestinian
dispossession and expulsion from what became Israel in 1948.
You can link to the lecture from the pdxjustice Media Productions website at
http://www.pdxjustice.org/#Bisharat_31May2008 or link directly to the
lecture and Q&A at the Google Video website:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3154068505725397334&hl=en
If you have any trouble getting to these programs, or if you have any
comments, criticisms or suggestions for improvements, please write to
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Will Seaman
pdxjustice Media Productions
The state department has reinstated Fulbright grants for seven Palestinians in Gaza to study in US
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 02 June 2008 02 June 2008
- Hits: 4035 4035
The state department has reinstated Fulbright grants for seven Palestinians in Gaza to study in the US.
This reverses a decision to withdraw the scholarships because Israel has not provided exit permits to the students.
Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza after Hamas seized power there a year ago, largely cutting off the territory from the outside world.
The US consulate in Jerusalem has told the students that it is working to get them out of the territory.
"We are working very closely with the government of Israel in order to secure its co-operation in this matter," an e-mail message to the students read.
'Complete horizon'
Dozens of Palestinian students from Gaza have been told they will not be able to take up university courses abroad because of the Israeli blockade.
Human right groups and some Israeli politicians have described the policy of not letting the students out as "collective punishment".
Israel says that as long as Palestinian militants fire rockets from Gaza at Israeli towns, nobody - apart from the most urgent of medical cases - can leave.
On Sunday, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said Israel would try to assist Palestinian students following a US request that the issue be looked into.
The prestigious Fulbright scholarships are run by the US state department.
On Friday US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has promised to investigate the withdrawal of the scholarships.
"If you cannot engage young people and give complete horizon to their expectations and to their dreams, then I don't know that there would be any future for Palestine or, frankly, since I believe the two-state solution is so important to Israelis and Palestinians, to the people of that region who want to have decent lives," Ms Rice said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7430846.stm
Published: 2008/06/02 08:47:53 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Israel to build over 800 new homes in East Jerusalem
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- Written by Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
- Published: 01 June 2008 01 June 2008
- Hits: 4315 4315
[No viable Palestinian State will be possible under these conditions. Nor does Israel intend for there to be a viable Palestinian state.]
Israel announced plans on Sunday to build more than 800 hundred new homes in eastern parts of the Jerusalem municipality, despite U.S. and Palestinian calls to halt settlement expansion.
The announcement was issued two days before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert embarks on a three-day visit to Washington.
The 2003 peace road map, reaffirmed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders at a conference hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush in November, requires a halt to all settlement activity on occupied land where Palestinians seek statehood.
Housing Minister Zeev Boim instructed his office to publish a tender to build an additional 763 housing units in Pisgat Zeev and 121 housing units at Har Homa, an area Palestinians refer to as Jabal Abu Ghneim.
Both sites are located on lands captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, and were incorporated into the municipal borders of Jerusalem in an act not recognised internationally.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Olmert's government "talks about peace while at the same time works on undermining the basis of peace by increasing settlement activity in Jerusalem and around it."
Read more: Israel to build over 800 new homes in East Jerusalem
Palestinian students have US Fulbright scholarships withdrawn
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
- Published: 30 May 2008 30 May 2008
- Hits: 4108 4108
The US state department has withdrawn its highly-coveted Fulbright scholarships awarded to seven Palestinian students from Gaza because they have been unable to obtain Israeli permission to leave the small strip of land.
The students were told in a letter from the US consulate general in Jerusalem, dated Thursday and seen by the Guardian, that the state department "will not be able to finalize your Fulbright Student Scholarship for 2008". {josquote}"If we are going to have a Palestinian state, then who is going to
build this state and help in the development of the Palestinian
community?"{/josquote}
No explanation was given, but the students were told to apply again next year when they would be given "priority consideration" but no guarantee that the scholarship would be awarded again.
Read more: Palestinian students have US Fulbright scholarships withdrawn
Source: Deal reached to ban cluster bombs (Except for Israel, U.S., China, and Russia)
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- Written by CNN CNN
- Published: 28 May 2008 28 May 2008
- Hits: 3742 3742
* NEW: Source tells CNN deal reached on treaty to ban cluster bombs
* Representatives of more than 100 nations in Ireland to discuss treaty
* U.S. not attending and does not expect to agree to banning cluster bombs
* They are controversial as they often don't explode but stay dangerous for civilians
(CNN) -- More than 100 nations meeting in Dublin, Ireland, agreed Wednesday on a treaty that would immediately ban all cluster bombs, a spokesman for the Cluster Munition Coalition told CNN.
The accord calls for a total, immediate ban of the weapons, strong standards to protect those injured by them, contaminated areas to be cleaned up as quickly as possible and for the weapons to be immediately destroyed, he said.
Thomas Nash, coordinator of the CMC campaigning organization, said: "This is a great achievement for everyone who has been working hard to see the end of 40 years of suffering from these weapons."
Though some of the biggest makers of cluster bombs, including the United States, Russia, China and Israel, were not involved in the talks and have not signed the accord, organizers predicted that those nations would nevertheless be pressured into compliance.
"Take the United States," Nash said. "Almost all of its allies are here. They've decided to ban these weapons. That's going to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to ever use these weapons again, either on its own or in joint operations."
The agreement requires the destruction of stockpiles of the weapons within eight years, he said.
Hours before the agreement was announced, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that his nation plans to take all its cluster bombs out of service.
"I look forward to other countries being able to take these cluster bombs out of service," Brown said. "I think this would be a big step forward to make the world a safer place."
Cluster munitions, which break apart in flight to scatter hundreds of smaller bomblets, are what the International Committee of the Red Cross calls a "persistent humanitarian problem."
Most of a cluster bomb's bomblets are meant to explode on impact, but many do not. Estimates show the weapons fail to explode on impact between 10 and 40 percent of the time, the Red Cross says.
That means unexploded bomblets lie scattered across a target area, often exploding only when handled or disturbed -- posing a serious risk to civilians.
Last week, Acting Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Stephen D. Mull called it "an absolute moral obligation" to rid a battlefield of unexploded ordnance after the battle.
But he also predicted that the United States would not agree to any ban.
"We think that it is going to be impossible to ban cluster munitions... because these are weapons that have a certain military utility and are of use," Mull said. "The United States relies on them as an important part of our own defense strategy."
Instead, he urged that the weapons be regulated "to take humanitarian considerations into account" and that "technological fixes" be pursued that would render them harmless after a battle.
During the 34-day war in Lebanon in 2006, the United Nations estimated that Israel dropped 4 million bomblets, 1 million of which may not have exploded, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
More than 250 civilians and bomb-disposal operators have been killed or injured by them in southern Lebanon since the war ended.
Cluster bombs were also used in the 1999 war in Kosovo. Lt. Col. Jim Burke, a military adviser to the Irish Defense Forces said they quickly became a major killer of civilians.
In more than 20 countries, according to the ICRC, cluster bombs have created lasting "no-go" areas, rendering them as dangerous as minefields.
Laos is the most affected country. Millions of bomblets dropped during the Vietnam War continue to kill civilians more than three decades later.
Still, militaries consider cluster bombs important for use against multiple targets dispersed over a wide area, such as tanks or military personnel moving across the landscape. A single bomb containing hundreds of submunitions can cover more than 18 square miles.
CNN's Jacqueline Clyne contributed to this report