Gaza.

Happy (almost) Anniversary

Mainstream media reports are thin on the ground but IMEMC and China’s Xinhua agency report on air strikes in Gaza on Sunday:

GAZA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) — At least 10 Palestinians were wounded in Israeli airstrikes on various targets in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, witnesses and medical sources said.

This comes in an eventful week where PCHR’s weekly report says: “1 child killed, 6 civilians wounded by Israeli forces”, strikes on the tunnels in Khan Younis, denials of a ceasefire from several Palestinian groups and rumours that Shalit will be free by Friday.

Plan-estinian?

A week after Israel ‘warned’ the Palestinian Authority over their request to the UN to recognise the Occupied Territories as an independent state, news leaks that Peres, the US, the PA and other Arab leaders have been discussing listening-to Israel’s plan.

AJE’s Inside Story (watch above) on the plan, with Barghouti:

.. it would include the establishment of a temporary Palestinian state in the West Bank. Eventually that state would cover an area equivalent to that of the West Bank and Gaza before the 1967 war. But is this just an attempt to buy time and draw attention away from the stalled peace process? Should the Palestinians accept the proposal as a step towards their ultimate goal?

One-State, Two-State, Six-State and now Temporary-State. Those goalposts keep moving while one side is playing tennis.

Hasn’t 60-years been all together too much ‘temporary’ already?

Rory Peck Awards 2009

Freelance cameraman Mahmoud El Ajrami was a finalist in the Rory Peck Award for News. Ajrami filmed the terrifying footage of the IDF’s white phosphorous attack on the UNRWA Beit Lahia School — clip and interview from BBC’s ‘The Firing Line’, above.

Channel 4’s Dispatches did well at the Awards having screened three of the nominees, the heart-rending Features Finalist “Congo’s Forgotten Children”; Features Winner “Orphans of Burma’s Cyclone” and Sony Professional Impact Winner “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” (2008) — return trip in ‘09.

RELATED
AJE’s Emmy-nominated documentary Shooting the Messenger uncovers the deliberate killing and intimidation of journalists in conflict zones. — Watch here…

WWJD?

via our Friends @readingpsc… as the Festive Season rolls ‘round, a modern view of a place that will feature in Nativity scenes, stories and plays around the World.

‘Bethlehem, Hidden from View’ by Honorary Canon of Jerusalem Garth Hewitt and the amos trust.

Surely worth a sermon or 2009… share it with your local Church(es).

HARDtalk: Mustafa Barghouti

The Independent Palestinian MP who lost to Mahmoud Abbas in the last presidential election, and may stand again in the next election, has long been involved in negotiations over the Palestinians’ future. The Palestinians will not enter talks with the Israelis unless they stop adding to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jersualem. The Israelis carry on building in both areas despite American protests. The high hopes raised amongst Palestinians by President Obama’s Cairo speech in June seem to be fading fast.

Barghouti seems like a good replacement for Abbas — hopefully averting doomsday.

AJE’s Inside Story discussed ‘Mahmoud Abbas’s dilemma’ a few weeks ago:

HARDtalk: Shlomo Sand

Shlomo Sand’s latest book [The Invention of the Jewish People] has unleashed a storm of controversy far beyond his homeland. His subject is the history of the Jews, and his conclusions reject the orthodoxies of Jewish history and modern day Zionism. If Sand is right then today’s Israeli state has been built on the foundations of myth and falsehood; but is he?

”.. devilish Shlomo Sand predicts…” — Mondoweiss.net [YouTube]

Book Review at electronic intifada

Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby

Peter Oborne’s Dispatches — UK viewers can watch here — report on the lobby groups concluded that there was nothing ‘faintly resembling a conspiracy’ but did find a ‘worrying lack of transparency’. Oborne and Opendemocracy.net have a report to accompany the show [pdf].

Here’s some commentary in the run up to, and after, the show from both ‘sides’:

Friends in high places — Peter Oborne at The Guardian’s Comment is Free

Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories - The Guardian

Melanie Philips in The Spectator — Before: Britain’s least effective lobby? & After: Everything is now illuminated

British TV program to examine UK’s ‘powerful Israel lobby’ — Jerusalem Post

Inside Channel 4’s Conspiracy Factory — CiFWatch

Although Oborne discussed BBC DG Mark Thompson in the report, he didn’t mention that in Nov 2005 Thompson met with PM Ariel Sharon for ‘peace talks’. A Freedom of Information request to the BBC for the minutes of that meeting was successful.