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Gaza: Armed groups to form joint force (Ma'an news) - 04-sep-2010

September 3, 2010 - Twelve militant groups held a meeting in the Gaza Strip last week, and agreed to form a joint operations room to coordinate resistance activities, Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman told reporters Thursday. Speaking shortly before US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell delivered an update on the peace talks in Washington, Abu Obeida, flanked by representatives of the 12 groups, announced a "new phase of advanced joint efforts" for the resistance. The Al-Qassam Brigades claimed to have orchestrated and carried out two attacks on Israeli settlers in the West Bank over the past three days, the first killing four - two men, two women, one of the latter pregnant - near Hebron, and the second injuring two near Ramallah. In statements issued by the brigades, the attacks were said to have been acts of opposition to the decision of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah to return to peace talks with Israel against the wishes of Palestinians...

In Gaza - Patience you need - is Written on the Wall ! (By Hiyam Noir) - 04-sep-2010

September 3, 2010 - ... Life has changed drastically,in these days of unrest. She tell me, her husband was killed in the very first day of the Israelis war on Gaza. Like so many others here in Gaza, who lost family members, they have also lost their job and their income, she, the street vendor, simply does not have the money required to invest to expand her business. While I stand there, I can easy on one hand count the number of people whom stop by. They are them self trying hard every day to cope with the reality of life here in Gaza, where life is extremely difficult for everyone,it is a daily struggle to survive....

Guantanamo Guards Tortured 90-Year-Old Blind Man, Book Alleges (By SHERWOOD ROSS) - 04-sep-2010

September 3, 2010 - ...On another occasion, Kurnaz counted seven guards who were beating a prisoner with the butts of their rifles and kicking him with their boots until he died. At one point, Kurnaz was hung by chains with his arms behind his back for five days: Today I know that a lot of inmates died from treatment like this. When he was finally taken down and needed water, "they’d just pour the water over my head and laugh," Kurnaz wrote. The guards even tortured a blind man who was older than 90 "the same way the rest of us were," he wrote...

The Blair Bitch Project: But Behind the Savaging of Gordon Brown, Praise for George W. Bush, Defence of Iraq War and Guantánamo (Andy Worthington) - 04-sep-2010

September 2, 2010 - So what are Blair’s revelations about his decision to take Britain into an illegal war, one which, as various American friends have told me, was more crucial to swaying public opinion in America than most Brits realize?"I can’t regret the decision to go to war," he writes, although he adds, "I can say that never did I guess the nightmare that unfolded, and that too is part of the responsibility. The truth is we did not anticipate the role of al-Qaeda or Iran. Whether we should have is another matter; and if we had anticipated, what we would have done about it is another matter again." This is pretty pathetic, to be honest, as anyone remotely aware of history — rather than in an uninformed notion of the importance of "humanitarian intervention" (the so-called "Blair Doctrine," first formulated during the Kosovo war in 1999) — would have told Blair that, in post-Saddam Iraq, Iran would obviously benefit, and would also have been able to perceive that a "holy war" in Iraq’s post-Saddam vacuum was exactly what al-Qaeda wanted too...

Abuse of Palestinian children in detention: Palestinian and Israeli organisations write to Netanyahu (Defence for Children International - Palestine Section) - 03-sep-2010

September 2, 2010 - Today, DCI-Palestine, Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) have written a letter to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing deep concern over continued reports of ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children who are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. Each year, approximately 700 Palestinian children from the occupied West Bank are prosecuted in Israeli military courts, and reports of ill-treatment and torture are common place. Out of a sample of 100 sworn affidavits collected by lawyers from these children in 2009, 69 percent of the children reported being beaten and kicked, 49 percent reported being threatened, 14 percent were held in solitary confinement, 12 percent were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32 percent were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand...

Rwanda Crisis Could Expose U.S. Role in Congo Genocide (by BAR executive editor Glen Ford) - 03-sep-2010

September 2, 2010 - Left writers have been reporting for years that U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda bear primary responsibility for the deaths of as many as six million Congolese. Now a leaked United Nations report has confirmed that Rwanda’s crimes in Congo may rise to the level of genocide, since President Paul Kagame’s forces killed Hutu elderly, children and women without regard to nationality. Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s "mentors and funders in the U.S. government…must be held equally accountable." ...

Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (26 Aug. – 01 Sep. 2010) (The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)) - 03-sep-2010

September 2, 2010 - Summary : Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (26 August – 01 September 2010): Shooting: During the reporting period, 8 Palestinian civilian and an international human rights defender were wounded by IOF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, 7 civilians, including a photojournalist and an international human rights defender, were injured, when IOF used excessive force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to Israeli settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall. In the Gaza Strip, two Palestinian workers were wounded when IOF fired at a number of workers who were collecting raw construction materials in the northern Gaza Strip...

What does increased Palestinian political repression say about the prospects for peace? (By Yousef Munayyer) - 03-sep-2010

September 2, 2010 - In the late 1980s, Robert Putnam’s argument about multi-level games in international bargaining kicked off a rich debate over domestic constraints. The thesis, in essence, is that interlocutors in bargaining may chose to lend extra power to political opponents to argue that domestic constraints tie their hands and prevent them from making concessions beyond a certain, often minimal, limit. This is not unlike what Binyamin Netanyahu did when he was elected Israeli prime minister in 2009, shortly after the inauguration of President Barack Obama. As President Bush left office, it was clear that the field day Israel enjoyed as it violently repressed the second Palestinian uprising and increased settlements at a pace unrivaled since the Menachem Begin era was over...

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