With the presidential race heating up ahead of the New York primary, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has joined right-wing proponents of Israeli violence in attacking Bernie Sanders for his criticism of Israel’s 2014 military assault on Gaza.
The American public has been shocked to discover that the people of Flint, including children, have been being poisoned with lead by their municipal water supply since April of 2014. The questions of who took the decision to draw water from the heavily polluted Flint River, and why, have been fiercely debated in recent months. But one thing seems clear. The Flint public was deprived of an effective voice and had difficulty being heard. In essence, Flint’s population was under colonial rule because its local democratic institutions were sidelined by the state. For similar reasons, the population of Gaza, under Israeli occupation and blockade, is facing a severe water crisis. In both places, local people have been deprived of autonomy, and they face a severe public-health crisis as a result.
By Zeina Azzam
A recent article about Palestinian schoolteachers up for a global teaching award showed a photograph of one of their classrooms: the teacher and all the children in this West Bank school were wearing their coats and jackets inside. This is perhaps because many of these schools are not heated well, if at all, making the harsh winter cold a constant reality, both indoors and outdoors.
Four activists are attempting to make legal history by arguing that Israel attacked American territory when it raided a US-registered ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza six years ago. The group said they were shot with rubber bullets, Tasered and handcuffed by masked commandos during a “terrifying” midnight assault on their vessel, part of a flotilla seeking to break Israel’s naval blockade in 2010. One was injured by a stun grenade that exploded one foot from his head, he said, causing permanent partial loss of sight in one eye.
Palestinians say Israel has severely curtailed gas supplies to the occupied Gaza Strip this winter, fueling a major disruption to ordinary life for most families and exacerbating the harsh impact of the cold weather. Tholfikar Sweirjo, a member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s committee in Gaza, told Al Jazeera the amount of gas entering Gaza has been decreased by at least 50 percent since early December.
My family and I were saddened on Thursday morning to learn of the death of Alan Rickman – too sad to write our feelings at the time. Alan, of course, is famous as an actor and director, both on stage and in film. But we first came to know him when, with Katharine Viner (now editor-in-chief of the Guardian), he edited our daughter Rachel’s writing into the play My Name is Rachel Corrie. The care Alan took for our family, his courage to take on this particular project and, most of all, the respect he showed for Rachel and her writing, impress me still as truly extraordinary.
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The World Bank on Monday announced $5 million worth of funding to go toward job creation across the occupied Palestinian territory. The international finance institution said in a statement that the money would go toward the ‘Development Impact Bonds’ project, aimed at providing private sector skills in Palestinian youth aged 18 to 29 years old. “Jobs are among the most pressing issues in Palestine,” said Steen Lau Jorgensen, the World Bank’s country director for the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
The Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem (OPT), is rich in oil, gas a shale oil resources, al-Haq claims in its 2015 report, Annexing Energy. If these resources were to be developed, Palestine would be economically self-sufficient and relieved from dependence on international aid. However, as expected, Israel has a history of systematically preventing Palestine’s development of oil and gas in the OPT. Since 1967, the OPT’s natural resources have been governed by Israel’s government, allowing Israel to manage its natural resources to the benefit of Israeli citizens and corporations – not the local population.
Gaza Strip – More than a year since Israel’s deadly onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, the United Nations refugee agency (UNRWA) estimates that 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza are preparing to spend a second winter in damaged homes and makeshift structures.
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