By Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange, and Raed Jarrar, director of the Iraq Project at Global Exchange.

27 June 2006

The Iraqi reconciliation plan unveiled by Prime Minister Al-Maliki on Sunday had the potential to mark a turning point the in the war. But thanks to U.S. interference, instead of a road map for peace, the plan that emerged looks more like a bump in Iraq’s torturous path to continued violence and suffering.

By Dr Ran HaCohen, literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth

26 June 2006

The history of occupation is not just that of Palestinian suffering and Israeli aggression; it is also the history of its ideology, the history of the fictions the Israeli society fabricates in order to justify its major colonial project which has just entered its 40th year.

By Jonathan Cook, author of "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State".

26 June 2006

The killing by Palestinian militants of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of a third from an army post close to the Gaza Strip set the scene for Israeli "reprisals" and "retaliation", according to the reports of BBC correspondents in Israel and Gaza yesterday.

The attack by the Palestinians, who sneaked through tunnels under the electronic fence surrounding Gaza, marked a "major escalation in cross-border tension" (Alan Johnston) that threatened to overturn "a week of progress on two fronts" (John Lyon): namely, the recent talks between Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan, and between rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas.

Thus, according to the BBC's analysis, this attack ends the immediate chances for "peace" negotiations and provides the context for the next round of the conflict between the Israeli army and the Palestinians of Gaza. We are left to infer that all the suffering the army inflicts in the coming days and weeks should be attributed to this moment of "escalation" by the Palestinians.

By Arab Media Watch correspondent Yasser Abu Moailek

24 June 2006

On weekdays, he brings a new generation of Jewish Israelis to life. On weekends, he goes back to his Palestinian patients at the packed Jabaliya refugee camp to try and help them get appointments and transfers to the more developed Israeli hospitals.

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, 51, gynecologist and obstetrician, is the first Palestinian doctor working at the Israeli Soroka University Hospital in the city of Beersheba.

By Patrick O'Connor, an activist with Palestine Media Watch and the International Solidarity Movement who is conducting a research project on the major US newspapers' coverage of Israel/Palestine.

23 June 2006

The Israeli military's shelling of a Gaza beach on June 9 and killing of eight Palestinian civilians focused world attention on Israel's intensive artillery campaign against Gaza. Since then, 14 more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli missiles. The US corporate media has highlighted dubious Israeli denials of responsibility for the Gaza beach killings, while providing much less space to Palestinian and third party assertions of Israeli responsibility. The privileging of the Israeli narrative fits into the general pattern of US corporate media coverage of Israel/Palestine. Indeed, a detailed examination of The New York Times, LA Times and Washington Post's coverage of Israel's shelling campaign against Gaza reveals that those newspapers have neglected basic facts about Israel's aerial assault since it started on March 29, 2006.

The Palestinian strategy of negotiation and resistance is common to liberation movements. Attempts to foster splits will fail, writes Karma Nabulsi, Arab Media Watch advisor, a politics fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, and a former PLO representative.

14 June 2006
The Guardian