Inside Story - The Gaza blockade

Inside story - The Gaza blockade
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Activists arrive in the Gaza strip to stress the plight of the people in that area. Is this the beginning of a process to end the siege?

Inside Story - Mahmoud Darwish remembered

August 15, 2008
The life of the Arab world's most celebrated poet is over. We ask: How will all those touched by the work of Mahmoud Darwish remember him? In this day and age, Can the pen mobilize the conscious of the masses to pick up the sword? Mahmoud Darwish was, after all, a poet not a politician.


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The legacy of Mahmoud Darwish

August 14, 2008

Mahmoud Darwish composed his first poem at the age of 12, going on to publish more than 20 volumes of poetry throughout his lifetime, penning verse that became embedded into the Palestinian consciousness. He lived a life of resistance, jailed several times by the Israelis.

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Remembering Mahmoud Darwish

August 10, 2008

Mahmoud Darwish, the award-winning Palestinian poet, has died aged 67, after heart surgery in a Texas hospital.

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland takes a look at a man who widely loved man by Palestinians and poetry-lovers alike.

VIDEO: Al-Jazeera News - March 23, 2008

Talks between Hamas and Fatah and other news on Western Easter from Al-Jazeera English, recorded at 16:00 hrs on March 23, 2008.

Gaza's lost childhood

March 23, 2008
Gaza's children are loosing their childhood, according to at least one study that has outline a grim picture of what it is like growing up in there. Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports from Gaza.

Al Jazeera English: Jerusalem's new housing plans

March 12, 2008
Jerusalem remains a bone of contention between Israelis and Palestinians.

Now, new moves to consolidate the Jewish presence there are increasing tensions.

For the first time since 1967, Jewish owned buildings and properties in the Old City are being officially registered by the state.

Al Jazeera News - March 4, 2008

Alleged American plot to overthrow the Palestinian government and other news from Al-Jazeera English, recorded at 16:00 hrs UTC on March 4, 2008

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The Gaza Bombshell, David Rose, Vanity Fair
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

VIDEO: Israeli attacks continue in Gaza

Al Jazeera English : March 03, 2008
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says further military action is likely against Palestinians firing rockets from Gaza. This, just hours after the Israeli military confirmed its operation in the strip had wound down.

The apparent pause in the assault comes as the European Union and the United States send senior politicians to the region to try to put what is left of the Annapolis peace process back on track.

Al Jazeera English's Ayman Moyheldin has the latest from Jerusalem.

VIDEO: Anger explodes in West Bank over Israeli raids

March 02, 2008
Nour Odeh now looks at the protest against Israel's use of force and growing demands for Palestinian unity.

VIDEO: Inside Story - Attack on Gaza

Inside Story, Al Jazeera English : March 02, 2008
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has suspended peace talks with Israel, demanding that it ends its offensive on Gaza.

Israel's five-day offensive on the Gaza Strip has so far killed more than 100 Palestinians, many of them civilians.

Israel claims it is acting in self-defence in response to cross-border rocket attacks by Hamas.

But Israel has been strongly criticized by the European Union and United Nations, who have condemned its use of "excessive" and "disproportionate" force.

Inside Story, with presenter Sami Zeidan, examines the possible outcomes.

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Six-month-old baby killed by Israeli attacks

February 28, 2008

Israel's prime minister is vowing to make Hamas pay what he calls a "heavy price" for Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza.

More than 20 Palestinians have been killed in attacks since Wednesday, including Hamas fighters, civilians and children.

In Gaza City, one of those killed was a six month old baby.

Ashraf Amritti reports on a family grieving for the youngest casualty of Israeli airstrikes.

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Israeli missiles silence baby's laughter in Gaza
Sami Abu Salem writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 28 February 2008
The innocent laughter of six-month-old baby Mohammed al-Bor'i stopped forever on Wednesday night when shrapnel from an Israeli missile and rubble struck the infant in the head, minutes after he enjoyed his last meal.

"The baby sucked milk, he was playing with his mother; I was reading a book when a rocket hit the Ministry of Interior," said Nasser al-Bor'i, the baby's father.

With the first missile, the electricity was cut and darkness filled the ill-fated house. Stones and pieces of the asbestos ceiling fell onto the head of the laughing child. The explosions continued as two other missiles hit the building.

"I looked for my baby in the darkness between the rubble; I did not know where he was. When he cried once I followed the direction of his voice," Nasser al-Bor'i said. "My hands touched my baby who was breathing hard; I felt warm liquid on my two hands and realized that he was wounded."

Al-Bor'i carried his son to the nearby Shifa Hospital as the blood streamed from his tiny head. In the hospital, al-Bor'i became hysterical when he realized that his only child had been killed.

Tears poured from al-Bor'i's eyes when he saw Mohammed's shoes. "After five years of treatment for sterility, [my wife and] I had a baby. I can't imagine that I lost him in a second."

Toys, a plastic bike, a crib and clothes were covered by the heap of rubble inside Mohammed's bedroom. Cutout magazine pictures of laughing babies decorated the walls, a sad reminder of the joy lost in the strike.

Mohammed's mother sufered shock and fell unconscious when she realized that the child had died. She laid on a hospital bed while her baby was in the morgue. On Thursday morning she cried when she returned home from the hospital to see Mohammed's empty crib.

Mohammed al-Bor'i was not the only child to be killed in the series of Israeli air strikes across the Gaza strip on Wednesday. In the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabalia, three other children, Anas al-Manama, 10, Bilal Hijazi, 11, and Mohammed Hamada, 11, were also killed in an Israeli air strike, Palestinian medical sources reported.

At least 19 Palestinian civilians and militants were killed and dozens wounded by the continuing Israeli air strikes on Gaza in the last two days.

Sami Abu Salem lives in Jabalia Refugee Camp and works as an English news and features writer at the Palestine News Agency (WAFA). He has also worked at the International Press Center of the Palestinian Authority State Information Service, and works as a freelance writer for local newspapers, focusing on literature and arts. This article was originally published by Ramattan News Agency and is republished with the author's permission.

Related Links
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20 February, 2008

VIDEO: Inside Story - Bush wants peace in 2008

This episode of Inside Story aired on Thursday, January 10, 2008

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Ilan Pappe, 2001 : "Together with the Palestinian Intifada, the issue of the Palestinian right of return has effectively erased the Israeli left from the political map in this election. And this is because of the peculiar character of the left in Israel. For this is not a 'left' in the European sense, in the sense of being socialist or even social democratic in its economic, social or human policies.

"It is 'left' solely vis-à-vis the peace process with the Palestinians. It saw itself as the 'vanguard' of Israeli Jewish society. Its self-appointed task was to be the 'enlightened minority' that would help other Israelis cross the bridge from war to peace. Yet when that decisive moment came, between the failure of the Camp David meeting in July and the Palestinian uprising in October, the left betrayed its promise. And it did so precisely on the issue of the Palestinian right of return.

Fewer Jews are choosing to make Israel their home

December 29, 2007
This year nineteen thousand Jews immigrated to Israel. That's a drop of nearly 9.3 per cent from 2006. And it's a fall of nearly 30 percent since the year 2000.

Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin looks at why fewer Jews are choosing to make Israel their home.

Palestinian donor talks in Paris

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Al Jazeera English - December 17, 2007
Ninety international donors have begun a one-day meeting in Paris to pledge funds to help lift the Palestinian economy and underpin the Middle East peace talks.

But is mobilising financial and political support for the Palestinian Authority enough to stop the worsening economic crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip?

The economic well-being of the Palestinians is widely seen as an essential pre-condition for the building of a viable and successful Palestinian state.

We explore the Paris conference and its chances of success, especially as the situation in the Gaza Strip continues to deteriorate.

The development plan presented by Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, has won the support of the World Bank, but it relies on the gradual shift to development projects under a scenario that has Israel easing restrictions and enabling the private sector to recover. Can the Paris conference kickstart this process?

Gazans pay the price of Israeli sanctions

December 04, 2007

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland finds that it is ordinary Palestinians that are being harmed by Israel's decision to cut back fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip.

Video: Settlers demonstrate to keep Israeli settlements

9 December, 2007

Palestinian refugees dream of home

November 28, 2007
One of many issues not on the agenda at Annapolis was the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.

Millions of Palestinians live outside the territories since they were forced out in 1948.

Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr went to meet some of the refugees in the Shatila camp in Lebanon's capital Beirut.


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November 27, 2007
One of the fundemental issues that Hamas believes will be sidelined at the Annapolis conference is the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.

As the conference begins Al Jazeera's David Chater looks at the forgotten refugees of Al-Jalazon Camp near Ramallah.

VIDEO: Walls of Shame: West Bank

November 20, 2007
A look at the most controversial wall in the world today. We look at the plight of Palestinian farmers whose land became inaccessible because of the wall, and the real intention of those who first drew its outlines.
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Arnon Soffer