Faten Habash’s father wept as he assured his daughter there would be no more beatings, no more threats to her life and that she was free to marry the man she loved, even if he was a Muslim. All he asked was that Faten return home. But the next weekend Faten, was bludgeoned to death with an iron bar. Her father was arrested for the murder.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw this week told Palestinian leaders in Ramallah that the creation of a Palestinian state was in their own hands, whatever the intentions of the Israeli government. Straw brushed aside a growing belief among Palestinian politicians that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has no desire to return to peace negotiations.
Haim Yavin, a revered anchor of Israel’s Channel One news programme for more than three decades, has made a documentary in which he concludes that Jewish settlements are endangering the country and that the occupation of Palestinian land is a crime.
In a shanty town, pupils achieve 100% pass rate. By CHRIS MCGREAL in Orange Farm MOEKETSI Molelekoa began turning potential pupils away from his school after the number of new applicants topped 300. The headmaster of Leshata secondary school had room for only half that number. There were places at other schools in the area […]
Education Minister Kader Asmal visited Soweto’s Meadowlands High on the first day of school … and came away ‘disappointed and shamed’. ON the first day of the new school year, Education Minister Kader Asmal descended on a Soweto school with one of the worst records in the country. Meadowlands high school had a 13% pass […]
Hatem Abu Eltayef has a vision for the future of his crowded and battered town once the Israelis have retreated from the sprawling settlement on the other side of the barbed wire and machine-gun posts.The town planner of Khan Yunis, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, foresees new homes for the dispossessed, shopping strips, and tourists rubbing shoulders with locals.
Even as a crane hoisted away the heavy concrete slabs around the Israeli army’s checkpoint into Jericho this week, soldiers were still waving down drivers for inspection. By the end of the day, the paraphernalia of the roadblock was gone, but the troops remained. Israel transferred responsibility for security in Jericho to the Palestinians in a largely symbolic step toward reviving the peace process.
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/ 5 February 2005
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, are to hold their first summit this week in Egypt, the highest-level talks between the two sides for more than four years. There is growing international pressure to secure a comprehensive ceasefire by Palestinian armed groups and an Israeli commitment to curtail its attacks.
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/ 21 January 2005
The Israeli Cabinet lifted its bar on contacts with the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday as the new Palestinian leadership appealed for cooperation with its attempts to curb attacks from the Gaza Strip. Israel also authorised a major military operation in the Gaza Strip if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas fails to win a truce from resistance groups.
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/ 17 December 2004
Sharif Omar has been waiting two years for the bulldozers, ever since Israel’s steel and barbed wire ”security fence” carved its way between his village and its land. Last week the excavators and diggers finally arrived on the outskirts of Jayyous to lay the foundations for an expansion of the nearby Jewish settlement of Zufim, fulfilling the fears and warnings of its Palestinian neighbours.