Zara

LAYOUTS AND MORE AT BLINKYOU.COM
Hi! Salams!Zara here, finally got around to creating my own Webspace..been threatening to do it for a while.Lol!Well, I love writing and feel very passionate about many issues, so I will be providing short articles(some written by myself)and commentary on all those thoughts and feelings that run through my mind..and probably yours!.Am currently studying to be a Freelance Jouranlist.Palestine in the news: Sunday,19th, November.GHANDI IN PALESTINE.Palestinians yesterday stopped Israel from destroying the home of two militants by surrounding it with a human shield.In the first incident of its kind, hundreds of neighbours surrounded the home of Mohammed Baroud and climbed on its roof after he received a call from the Israeli army informing him he had 30 minutes to vacate his home before it was destroyed by missiles.The Israeli airforce called off its strike because of the risk of killing a large number of civilians.It is the first time Palestinians have thwarted an Israeli air strike in this way. Israel has developed a strategy of telephoning its targets to ensure that nobody is inside when the homes are struck. Residents are given about half an hour to gather some clothes and escape. Neighbours are also contacted if the explosion is likely to be big enough to endanger them.Dozens of homes have been blown up on suspicion that they are the site for a smuggling tunnel or arms cache. It is likely that Israel will have to find a new way of destroying homes as yesterday's protest began to be copied elsewhere.Nizar Rayan, a Hamas member who led the Jabalya protest, said Palestinians would continue to rush into every house to be threatened by bombardment. "We will pay with our lives to protect the houses of the fighters so they can resist the enemy assured that their homes are being protected," he said.The home of Mr Baroud, a member of the Popular Resistance Committees in Beit Lahiya was the first to be saved. Mosques and Palestinian television sent out appeals and protesters gathered outside, chanting "Death to Israel. Death to America," and "We prefer martyrdom to surrender."Two hours later Israel warned Mohammed Nawajeh, a member of Hamas, that his house would be targeted and the same process occurred. Both men are accused by Israel of involvement in firing rockets at Israel.There was a sense of euphoria in Gaza that people had managed to stand up to the Israeli airforce but Israel proved its military muscle later yesterday when an aircraft fired a missile at a car in Gaza City, wounding nine, including two Hamas militants. Four were children, aged five, 13, 14 and 16, who suffered shrapnel injuries, hospital officials told Associated Press. Later an elderly man died of his wounds, they added.The military said the air strike target was a vehicle carrying senior members of the Hamas rocket-launching operation.Palestinians often avoid peaceful protest against Israel because they fear the army will treat them as if they were armed. However, during Israel's occupation of Beit Hanoun this month, a group of women managed to create a diversion to allow gunmen to flee a mosque, where they had been surrounded.Israel has been under added pressure to avoid killing civilians after 19 Palestinians were killed by shells in Beit Hanoun.Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian prime minister, visited Mr Baroud's home to offer his support to the protest yesterday."We are so proud of this national stand. It's the first step toward protecting our homes, the homes of our children," he said. "This strategy was decided by our people. [It] was decided by our leaders, who were here from all the factions ... and so long as this strategy is in the interest of our people we support this strategy."A spokesman for the Israeli army confirmed that the strike had been called off. "There was a building targeted last night but once civilians gathered on the roof we cancelled the attack," he said. "We will continue operating against the terrorist infrastructure despite their use of uninvolved civilians as human shields."Source: Guardian.com.SO WHAT HAS AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL SAID ABOUT ISRAEL NOW? Saturday, 25 November 2006ISRAEL/OT Human rights defenders in the Occupied TerritoriesHuman rights defenders working in the Occupied Territories are at risk of attack by Israeli settlers. Amnesty International is concerned at the latest such attack against those who seek through their presence to afford protection to Palestinians and to bear witness to the abuses perpetrated against them by Israeli settlers in the area.On 18 November, Tove Johannsson, a 19-year old Swedish human rights defender, was assaulted by Israeli settlers as she accompanied Palestinian school children through an Israeli army checkpoint near the Tel Rumeida Israeli settlement in the West Bank city of Hebron.The attack against Tove Johannsson, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a solidarity group of peace activists, was witnessed and documented by several other international human rights defenders. They reported that the group was surrounded by up to 100 Israeli settlers who spat at them, kicked and shoved them, while Israeli soldiers standing at the checkpoint nearby took no action to prevent the attack.Tove Johannsson was then hit in the face with a broken bottle by an Israeli settler, and sustained a broken cheekbone and a fracture near her eye. Her colleagues reported that as she fell to the ground, a group of settlers who were watching the attack clapped and cheered and some tried to take photos of themselves next to her bleeding face, giving the camera a ‘thumbs-up’ sign.Lorna from BICOM on "Why I'm Backing Israel": "There is never a wrong time to do the right thing and if, like me, you are convinced of Israel's cause, then why not support Israel and why not now?"According to the ISM, one of the human rights defenders who witnessed the attack identified three of the assailants to the police but, after detaining them briefly, police released the three settlers, and threatened to arrest the remaining human rights activists if they did not leave the area immediately. Tove Johannsson filed a complaint with the Israeli police and her colleagues gave witness statements, but none of the assailants are known to have been arrested. On 21 November, the Swedish Foreign Ministry expressed concern over the assault.This latest attack is one of many perpetrated by Israeli settlers against international human rights defenders in recent months and years, seemingly in an attempt to discourage and eliminate the presence of international witnesses, thereby depriving the local Palestinian population of this limited form of protection.BACKGROUND INFORMATION In August 2006, a Swedish and an Austrian national working for the international organization, the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), were attacked by Israeli settlers in the Southern Hebron Hills area as they accompanied Palestinian shepherds to their land near Israeli settlements. CPT members have worked in the Hebron area for several years accompanying farmers to their land and monitoring the conduct of Israeli settlers in the area, and have themselves been frequently attacked by Israeli settlers. Amnesty International delegates were also assaulted and beaten with wooden clubs by Israeli settlers in the Southern Hebron Hills area in October 2004, as they were investigating repeated attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian children from isolated villages on their way to and from school.No investigations are known to have been carried out into the complaints lodged with the Israeli police by Amnesty International delegates and by dozens of International human rights defenders who have been attacked by Israeli settlers in recent years. The same is true for the complaints lodged by Palestinian victims of settlers’ attacks. The impunity enjoyed by the settlers responsible for such attacks has in turn encouraged further attacks.A detailed study published earlier this year by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights, which seeks to promote law enforcement in cases of settlers’ violence, found that 90 percent of complaints filed with the Israeli police against Israeli settlers’ attacks were closed without indictments being issued; and that in the rare cases when assailants were indicted and convicted for such attacks, the sentencing was not commensurate with the nature of the attacks (see: www.yesh-din.org/site/index.php?page=report&lang=en )Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the Israeli authorities to remove Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, which are illegal under international law. Source: palsolidarity.org