Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Motasem A Dalloul
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The countdown begins for the death of UNRWA
After months of speculation about the contradictory remarks delivered by American officials and spokespersons about the White House’s intention to end the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA)’s mandate, America has announced that it is withholding all future payments to the organisation. “The administration has carefully reviewed...
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Israeli army committed war crimes on Black Friday
Chief Israeli Military Advocate General Major General Sharon Afek has decided to close the case on the Israeli aggressive attacks carried out against a number of Palestinian neighbourhoods in the east of Rafah, the southernmost city of the blockaded Gaza Strip on Friday 1 August 2014. Afek decided to close...
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Israel awaits outcome of talks before hitting Hamas leadership
To deter the ongoing Great March of Return protests that started on 30 March, Israel’s occupation army and Shin Bet intelligence agency prepared to assassinate senior Hamas leaders, Haaretz reported on Sunday. This was, apparently, preferable to a wide-scale offensive on the Gaza Strip, revealed an Israeli defence source. According...
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Israel’s siege of Gaza is anything but legal
On Sunday 29 July, Israeli commandos boarded a boat taking part in a Freedom Flotilla which was taking humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. The boat — Al-Awda (The Return) — was captured by Israel while sailing in international waters. If anyone else had conducted the raid, it...
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Israel wants to kill Palestinians silently
Early this week the Israeli Knesset approved the first reading of what is known the Facebook Bill which stipulates that Israeli authorities are entitled to request internet giants like Facebook, Google and others to delete content under the pretext of inciting terror. Then on Tuesday the Israeli Knesset passed a...
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Turkish-Israeli relations remain fragile
An Israeli military court charged Turkish citizen Ebru Ozkan, 27, on Sunday, claiming that she had smuggled hundreds of US dollars and expensive perfumes to Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories, local media reported. The lawyer, friends and relatives of the woman, who was arrested at Tel Aviv’s Ben...
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When peaceful protests and reporting are a crime
As a Palestinian whose father was displaced from Al-Ramla I consider taking part in the Great March of Return a duty. As a journalist, regardless of the dangers, reporting on Israeli crimes is my job....
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A refugee's journey from 1948 to the 2018 Great March of Return
Mustafa Abul-Qumsan was 10 years old when he woke up one morning to the sound of bombs destroying several facilities around his occupied village of Deir Isneed in the north of the Gaza Strip. After the explosions, he heard someone knocking at his door asking him and his family...
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Are Israeli snipers who shoot Palestinian protesters in Gaza really protecting their border?
Israeli snipers have been shooting Palestinian protesters within the Gaza Strip, claiming that, in doing so, they are protecting Israel’s borders and sovereignty. Is their claim genuine? Since 30 March, hundreds of Israeli soldiers, including a reported 100 snipers stationed along the eastern border of the Gaza Strip, have been...
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Will Palestine refugees really go back home?
Thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been marching near the nominal border fence for the fourth consecutive Friday with their eyes on their lands and homes which were occupied by Jewish militias in 1948. Up to 700,000 indigenous Palestinian residents were forced out of their villages, town...
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Bin Salman is heading to the Saudi throne along an Israeli path
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has created widespread speculation about the potentially controversial nature of his future Kingdom as and when he succeeds his father. Mohammad Bin Salman has attracted attention through a series of actions and comments that are seen by many as a coup against Saudi,...
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Why did Palestinians take part in the Great March of Return?
It was a surprising image: tens of thousands of peaceful and unarmed Palestinian civilians gathered just a few hundred metres from the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip where, according to advance Israeli media reports-cum-warnings, 100 army snipers were deployed in preparation for a crackdown on the popular protest. The...
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Britain can do much more than express platitudes about the ‘human rights priority’ of Israel’s treatment of children in detention
In the wake of Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi being sentenced to eight months in prison by an Israeli court for slapping an Israeli soldier who had entered her home, Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office issued a statement calling upon Israel to improve the treatment of Palestinian children in military...
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It is not Hamas, but Israel which incites violence
An Israeli propaganda group has claimed that the call by Hamas for the Palestinians to take part in a “Friday of Rage” demonstration was incitement to terrorism that led to the killing of two Israeli soldiers near an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin....
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What the residents of besieged Gaza will ask Prince William if he visits them
In the wake of the announcement that Britain’s Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, is going to visit the occupied West Bank, Israel and Jordan this summer, residents of the Gaza Strip, which is part of the occupied Palestinian territories, have expressed scepticism about his visit and asked whether...
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Palestine is no longer a priority for the Arab world
Media reports have recently published pictures and videos of a new Israeli military watchtower being set up at one of the most famous entrances of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Damascus Gate. “It is,” described the Israeli news website Ynet News, “a noticeable part of the landscape and an example of...
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Is Abbas serving the Palestinians or fooling them?
Earlier this month, the Palestinian Authority announced that it would start preparing a plan for full disengagement from the Israeli occupation. The decision was taken by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which held a three-hour meeting chaired by PA and Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas in his...
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Israel will never go to war with Syria or Iran
It was not easy to trust the news reports that Syrian air-defence missiles targeted an Israeli F16-fighter jet and downed it in response to Israel shooting down an Iranian drone that, according to the Israelis, had entered their airspace. This happened, though, and a wide-scale war in the region...
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Return us to our homes before closing UNRWA, say Palestinian refugees
When more than 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in historical Palestine by Jewish terror gangs in 1948, followed by the establishment of the state of Israel on their land, the UN General Assembly established the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East...
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Gazans cannot cope with ‘unprecedented’ economic crisis
Since October 2017, the knot around the neck of the Gaza Strip has been tightening due to the strict Israeli-Egyptian siege and the punitive measures imposed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), leading the coastal enclave to an inevitable economic collapse. One day before the start of the second semester, Ahmed,...
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Egypt is not an honest broker for Palestinian reconciliation
The Egyptian security forces shot dead a Palestinian fisherman on Saturday. Abdullah Zaidan, 33, was killed on board his boat while he was working off the Rafah coast in the south of the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian authorities claimed that Zaidan had strayed into Egypt’s territorial waters, but the...
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With PA delays and Israeli threats, Gaza is heading into the unknown
The two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, are behind the internal Palestinian division but together they signed a mutual reconciliation agreement brokered by Egypt on 12 October last year. The Palestinians in Gaza celebrated the deal, which was announced as the end of the 10-year Israeli, Palestinian Authority...
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The UN is another lost battle for the Palestinians
After the US used its veto at the UN Security Council to block the adoption of a resolution condemning President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Palestinian Authority (PA) immediately announced it would turn to the UN General Assembly to seek a vote on the same...
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Double amputee shot dead by Israel was an inspiration in Gaza
Hundreds of protesters made their way to the eastern border of Gaza to protest against Trump's decision ...