From Occupied Palestine

Parallel lives
DALIA KARPEL
Ha'aretz, 4 October 2007

When she was in fifth grade, her father took her to the Golan Heights and showed her where he had lost his best friends in the battle for the Tel Faher outpost on June 9, 1967. "For years, that battle was an inaccessible emotional zone for him," says Nufar Yishai-Karin, a clinical psychologist whose years in the shadow of her father's battle trauma shaped her consciousness and steered her to her profession.

30,000 attend Samhadana's funeral
ALI WAKED
YNet, [Yedioth Ahronoth] 9 June 2006

Rafah -- Some 30,000 Palestinians arrived in the Gaza town of Rafah Friday afternoon to attend the funeral of Popular Resistance Committees chief Jamal Abu Samhadana.

At the end of the funeral, a special prayer was expected to be held at the local soccer field. Dozens of gunmen deployed across the city ahead of the funeral.

Good night Battle of Britain, Good morning, Gaza
JON ELMER
Briarpatch Magazine, December 2005

Mustafa Barghouti: Palestinian Defiance
MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI and ERIC HAZAN
New Left Review 32, March-April 2005

The Ramallah doctor and activist, general secretary of the Al Mubadara coalition, on struggles against the Israeli Occupation, from the popular movement of the first Intifada to the tactical errors of the second, via the disaster of Oslo. As Abu Mazen is levered into place, what alternatives can combat both IDF stranglehold and the flyblown Palestinian Authority?

Parting shots
ARI SHAVIT
Ha'aretz Magazine, 3 June 2005

Will he return? My guess is that he will. I used to think he wouldn't. Not under any circumstances. That he would disappear in the Arava desert and be a school principal. That he would go back to the barn on his kibbutz and organize a volunteer project. But now things look different. Bogey's anger is subdued, but deep. His anxiety about Israel's corruption is almost existential.

Palestinian women 'have suffered most in intifada'
DONALD MacINTYRE
Independent, 31 March 2005

Jerusalem -- Palestinian women have borne the brunt of the pain inflicted by four-and-a-half years of conflict but their plight has been largely ignored, Amnesty International says.

The human rights group calls on both sides of the conflict to take "urgent steps" to alleviate the suffering of women in the occupied territories in a report which levels criticism at the Palestinian Authority as well as the Israeli military for failing to safeguard women's basic rights.

Tul Karm has been liberated?
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 23 March 2005

"Well, have you been liberated?" we asked a Tul Karm resident, aged 52.

"So they say," he replied.

This is how he describes the situation: "The kids [armed Fatah youngsters] are roaming the streets, shooting in the air and believing their own declarations that they have been set free. If and when the Israeli army wants to reenter the town, it will. What difference does it make to us that soldiers entered the town at night and left? None. They say the Anavta roadblock will be removed, but in our experience they will immediately place a mobile block in its place. And the roadblock at Shufa junction [at Tul Karm's southeastern exit] has not been removed.

He'll shoot and he won't weep
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 28 February 2005

The appointment of Major General Dan Halutz to chief of the General Staff is the appointment of the right man at the right time. The Israel Defense Forces deserves a man lacking moral inhibitions, after three years' service by a chief of staff whose actions were characterized by very few moral inhibitions.

IDF unit struck hard by Tel Aviv bomber
STAFF
Jerusalem Post.com, 26 February 2005 [updated 18:58]

Friday night's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv struck an IDF combat unit especially hard. The unit was all invited to celebrate a party for one of its soldiers, and stood at the entrance to the 'Stage' club when the bomber detonated his bomb-belt.

The platoon commander, Eran Cohen, told Army Radio, "There were 13 of us there. All the fatalities are from our unit. Many more were wounded."

Weary, guarded hope in Gaza
OMAR KARMI
Middle East Report Online, 8 February 2005

There is a bullet hole in the door of the Sufi family's diwan. The windows are newly replaced. Inside the clan's gathering place, a large rectangular room lined with cushions and small tables, there is further evidence of life on the front line in the Gaza Strip. At least eight more bullet holes add texture to the otherwise bare white walls. Family elder Humeid Ayed al-Sufi, 52, his wife and ten children live in the apartment upstairs. The apartment has four bedrooms, but for the past year the family has huddled together in the only one that does not overlook the street. "It's just not safe at night. There's too much shooting," said Sufi, a taxi driver.