Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes. Israeli soldiers confirm the shoot-to-kill policy I documented.

Last October I published a review in the BMJ on the appalling human rights situation in the Israeli- occupied Palestinian Territories, providing detailed figures on civilian deaths (over 3000, including over 600 children, in only 4 years) which pointed unambiguously to a culture of impunity for Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers. I also pointed to the rapid rise in poverty and destitution as a direct and foreseen consequence of Israeli policies, with documented rises in child malnutrition, the blocking of food aid distribution, denial of access to medical facilities (including for those critically ill), the killing, wounding and harrassment of Palestinian health professionals on duty, and the destruction to the coherence of the Palestinian health system as a result of the apartheid Wall- all violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention. I was not recording a personal view: I was quoting documentation from the United Nations; Amnesty International; international aid agencies like Medecins Sans Frontieres; Johns Hopkins (USA) and Al Quds (Jerusalem) Universities; the Israeli human rights organisations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights; Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute (Ramallah), and the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (though these were not listed after the paper because the BMJ does not include references in this section of the journal). (1) More...

As ex-soldiers speak out about seeing Palestinian civilians being killed, Donald Macintyre talks to the victims' families

Still dressed in the loose sharwal trousers that he wears for his work as a gardener, the 22-year-old ex-soldier sits across the café table in a central Tel Aviv shopping mall, and says that when he joined the Israeli army he just "wanted to kill Arabs".

Like most of the other 300 ex-soldiers who have so far testified about their experiences to Breaking the Silence, an organisation formed a year ago by a group of young men who had done their military service in Hebron, the soldier doesn't want to give his real name. But he tells how his attitude gradually changed when he came into contact with Palestinians and Bedouin for the first time and saw the long delays, and sometimes harassment, faced by them at the checkpoints he manned in the Jordan valley. More...

Last update - 09:50 22/09/2005


A talent for destruction

By Amira Hass

"When you see something that looks like Rafah, you'll know that was a settlement." That's how people in Gaza are giving instructions to their friends who for the first time in their lives, or the first time in many years, entered the areas of the settlements. It's an exaggeration, of course, because there's no comparing the wildcat crushing of a house on 10 minutes' notice and sometimes without any notice at all, to the demolition padded with compensation and attention for a house that was a crime to build there in the first place. More...

Whistleblowers' testimony shows desire for revenge on Palestinians

rom a distance of 70 metres and through the sight of his machine gun, Assaf could tell that the Palestinian man was aged between 20 and 30, unarmed and trying to get away from an Israeli tank. But the details didn't matter much, because Assaf's orders were to "fire at anything that moved".

Assaf, a soldier in the Israeli army, pressed the trigger, firing scores of bullets as the body fell to the ground. "He ran and I started shooting for a few seconds. He fell. I was a machine. I fire. I leave and that's that. We never spoke about it afterwards." More...

The left-wing refusenik movement Courage to Refuse (Ometz Lessarev) shut down its offices Sunday and laid off its only paid employee. More...

No one knew until now what veteran television journalist Haim Yavin thought about the news he has been announcing for more than three decades, and he is so nonpartisan that one wondered whether he had an opinion of his own at all. Now, at 72, he is coming out of the closet: "Since 1967 we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people," he says in "Yoman Masa" ("Diary of a Journey"), which he filmed in the West Bank. More...

The scene is tragic and unnerving but it has become astonishingly routine -- the deadly routine that imposes ordinariness on the outrageous and unconscionable. More...

Palestine Report Online interviews Scott Leckie, Executive Director of COHRE, the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions, about the human rights group's conclusions, drawn from a new study entitled "Ruling Palestine: A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish/Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine", that a two-state solution is no longer viable. More...

The Israeli Ministry of Interior has issued another deportation
order against an international peace activist. More...

GAZA, May 8, 2005 (IPC + Agencies) - - The latest figures released by the Israeli army revealed that Israeli settlers have notably increased their attacks against Palestinians, especially in the cities and villages located near the illegal settlements of the West Bank. More...

For the first time since 1967, Israel has decided to transfer garbage beyond the Green Line and dump it in the West Bank.

The project was launched despite international treaties prohibiting an occupying state from making use of occupied territory unless it benefits the local population.

In addition, pollution experts say such use of the Kedumim quarry - located in an old Palestinian quarry between the Kedumim settlement and Nablus - will jeopardize Palestinian water sources. More...

TEL AVIV - The government is planning a construction boom in West Bank settlements that includes authorizing existing illegal outposts, Yediot Ahronot reported Friday.

Under the scheme, 120 unauthorized West Bank outposts, which the United States wants to see dismantled, would be retroactively approved, the newspaper said. More...