The Muslim Student Association @ UConn

By Bessy Reyna, at The Hartford Courant on May 16, 2008

Early this month, I attended a panel dealing with the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It was organized by the group "We Refuse To Be Enemies," composed of Jews, Muslims and Christians. This group's main goal is the promotion of a peaceful and just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In light of Israel's 60th anniversary, and the lack of progress in resolving the conflict, this is an ever more urgent issue.

The Sunday Morning Herald: THE Israeli Government has told a court that it does not want to reveal the true extent of Jewish settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories because the information would damage its image abroad, a local newspaper has reported.

By Omar Ahmad, on Wednesday, April 11, 2007. Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Imagine if Iran decided to build a museum on the site of a 1,000-year-old Jewish cemetery, or if the Egyptian government threatened to destroy an ancient Jewish temple. Both scenarios would likely be met with outrage. Members of Congress might make indignant speeches decrying anti-Semitism. They might even threaten to tighten the spigot on aid to Egypt. They would be right to protest such acts.

Yet both offenses against another religion are being committed today -- by Israel. And the outrage is conspicuously missing.

Israel fought Hezbollah in Lebanon in July and August

BBC News: Israel has for the first time admitted it used controversial phosphorous bombs during fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July and August.

Cabinet minister Jacob Edery confirmed the bombs were dropped "against military targets in open ground".

Israel had previously said the weapons were used only to mark targets.

Phosphorus weapons cause chemical burns and the Red Cross and human rights groups say they should be treated as chemical weapons.

"Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese territory, including Shebaa Farms, and release the Lebanese prisoners," Carter said.

CAIRO — Former US president Jimmy Carter believes there will be no genuine and durable peace for any peoples in the volatile Middle East as long as Israel continues to violate UN resolutions by occupying Arab lands.

"Traumatized Israelis cling to the false hope that their lives will be made safer by incremental unilateral withdrawals from occupied areas," Carter, a Nobel peace laureate, wrote Tuesday, August 1, in an editorial in The Washington Post.

"Palestinians see their remnant territories reduced to little more than human dumping grounds surrounded by a provocative 'security barrier' that embarrasses Israel's friends and that fails to bring safety or stability."

Israel is building a 700km-long Israeli separation barrier, a mix of electronic fences and concrete walls, that will eventually snake some 900 kilometers (540 miles) along the West Bank and leave even larger swathes of its territory on the Israeli side.

Palestinians see the wall as nothing other than a new land grab and an attempt to pre-empt the borders of their future state.

Israel has spurned a landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice and demand by the UN General Assembly to tear down the barrier and compensate the Palestinians affected.

The government maintains a "blacklist" of Palestinians who left the territories during the 1967 Six Day War, and have since been barred from coming back, lest they sue for the return of their land, the Defense Ministry admitted for the first time yesterday.

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/05/07/opinion/edcarter.php

By Mazin Qumsiyeh*