A very good article about migrants crossing to Israel.

''Maybe [the kid is] blindfolded for him not to see the base and how we're working... But I believe maybe we put the blindfold because we don't want to see his eyes. You don't want him to look at us - you know, beg us to stop, or cry in front of us. It's a lot easier if we don't see his eyes.

Urghh

This paper will focus on some of the most traumatic factors faced by the average Palestinian child during times of war. Unlike most research, which limits the Palestinian child's experience in war to military-related traumatic events, in this paper I will attempt to illustrate the Palestinian child's internal and external experiences, using empirical studies, my own clinical experience and an analytic understanding of historical and present events, in addition to a case study. This includes the different sources of stress and trauma that face Palestinian children and which ultimately create a multi-traumatic environment. I will also compare the situation of Palestinian children during the first and the second Intifadas.

I have said before and I will repeat again that it is I believe Obama is a 3ars and this political masturbation is going no where. Obama mentions Gaza situation by the by and only in answer to one of the questions and as if nothing happened 5 months ago.

The rest of the time we listened to a bored police station employee (his exact job was unclear) hold forth on the press (“I read all the papers but trust [independent daily] El-Masry El-Youm most”) and press criticism of police violations (“Nobody is above criticism. Even doctors make mistakes and should be held to account”).

The reason we’ve never heard about any of this, apparently, is that the US is not advertising the operations, the al-Bashir regime in Khartoum has declared a media blackout, and Egypt is respecting the blackout but keeping a close eye since this involves major arms traffic (it’s an old route, once used by the French poet Rimbaud) going through its territory. Today al-Shorouk said that an Egyptian intelligence agent visited the area to verify the issue.

Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights, argued recently, any attempt to view the two sides as "equally responsible" is an absurdity: one is a lightly-armed militia, effectively operating underground in occupied territory – the other the most powerful army in the region, able to pinpoint and pulverise targets with some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the world.

وأنشئت شركة أير سيناء بعد توقيع معاهدة السلام المصرية الاسرائيلية عام 1979 لنقل الركاب بين البلدين منعا لتعرض شركة مصر للطيران للمقاطعة في أغلب العواصم العربية لو كانت نظمت رحلات الى اسرائيل

Chomsky on Gaza.

Absolutists who violently rejected offers of money or peace for sacred land were considerably more inclined to accept deals that involved their enemies making symbolic but difficult gestures. For example, Palestinian hard-liners were more willing to consider recognizing the right of Israel to exist if the Israelis simply offered an official apology for Palestinian suffering in the 1948 war. Similarly, Israeli respondents said they could live with a partition of Jerusalem and borders very close to those that existed before the 1967 war if Hamas and the other major Palestinian groups explicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist.

Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, a 55-year-old gynecologist who speaks Hebrew after training in two Israeli hospitals, sobbed as he reported the deaths [of his three daughters] shortly after an Israeli shell struck his home in the northern town of Jebaliya on Friday.

P. Rizk's blog.

The most poignant moment in the film — and its masterstroke — are scenes of a wedding party complete with guests, cake, music and bride. The only thing missing is the groom himself: he is studying in Spain and has not been permitted to reenter Gaza. The families decide to go ahead with the wedding anyway, an act of defiance and desperation. There is perhaps no more powerful symbol of Gaza's plight than this, the abandoned bride of Palestine sitting alone and surrounded by well-wishers unable to do a thing to help her.

Any Israeli soldiers accused of war crimes in the Gaza Strip will be given state protection from prosecution overseas, the country's PM has said.

Research by the Gaza Community Mental Health Project

According to Summerfield, half the population in Gaza have "basically spent some time in [Israeli] detention, some of them for years." The proportion of the Gazan adult male population interrogated and tortured, he adds, is probably higher than any population in the world.

Powerful organizations in Egyptian market not moved by public's pressure to impose trade boycott on Israel, say they cannot force members to do so, decision is a personal choice

What this is really about is international law. It's about accountability. It's about justice – something the Palestinians have never received – and it's about bringing criminals to trial. Arab war criminals, Israeli war criminals – the whole lot. And don't say it cannot be done. Wasn't that the message behind the Yugoslav tribunal? Didn't some of the murderers get their just deserts? Just leave the Second World War out of it.

Despite pictures from Gaza depicting massive destruction and a large number of wounded and killed, including women and children, 82 percent of the public believe that Israel has not "gone too far" with the military force it is exercising against Hamas.

There has also been a backlash to the backlash against Egypt prompted by protests outside Egyptian embassies demonstrating against Egypt's policy in general, but its failure to open its border in particular. Funnily enough, many of the people I know who have taken umbrage at the attacks from abroad and are now banging the nationalist tub are the very same individuals who are most critical of the way that domestic issues are handled by the current regime.

Travelling into Palestine's West Bank and Gaza Strip, which I visited recently, is like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency.

Chavez's expulsion of Israeli ambassador is a nice gesture. But seems to be unsupported popularly, such bad execution will leave him looking more weird than he already is. He should have educated his own people on the reality of the conflict before kicking his eggcellency out. Chavez calling this a "gesture of dignity" makes me think he is a reincarnation of Nasser.

Israeli unmanned reconnaissance drones hovered over what appeared to be Egyptian airspace on Thursday near Rafah

اخيرا.. لا اعتقد ان الهجمة الاسرائيلية لها علاقة بالصواريخ التي يتم اطلاقها من القطاع وهل تم تطويرها مؤخرا ام لا، بل ان اسرائيل تحتاج الى “نصر ما” بعد هزيمتها في لبنان. وهي لا تهدف الي وقف الصواريخ بقدر ما تهدف الي القضاء على “فكرة المقاومة”.. واذا اردنا تضامنا عالميا من اجل قضية عادلة يجب ان نتوقف عن شعارات الخلافة الاسلامية مثل “خيبر خيبر يا يهود جيش محمد سوف يعود”.. يجب ان نميز بين اليهودية والصهيونية.. يجب ان نتبنى القضية الفلسطينية كقضية حقوقية وانسانية أولا قبل ان تكون دينية.. فحينها فقط سيقف معك من هم ليسوا على دينك.. والامر جدير بالتفكير.