Now, it's official: Palestinian property in the West Bank no longer enjoys constitutional protection. This is what could be gleaned from Defense Minister Ehud Barak's decision, made casually but without any legal basis, that houses in the settlement of Ofra, which were built on stolen, private Palestinian land, in violation of both international and local law, will be permitted to remain in place. 

A West Bank checkpoint managed by a private security company is not allowing Palestinians to pass through with large water bottles and some food items. Machsom Watch discovered the policy, which Palestinian workers have also confirmed. The Defense Ministry stated in response that non-commercial quantities of food were not being limited. It made no reference to the issue of water. 

Twenty-one international human rights workers were seized by Israeli naval frigates in international waters Tuesday as their boat 'The Spirit of Humanity' tried to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza. The human rights workers, including former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Irish Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire, and nationals from 11 other countries were part of the Free Gaza Movement (FGM) efforts to break Israel's naval and border blockade of Gaza. 

Israel's watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture, Israeli human rights groups claim. The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) has ignored repeated requests to examine such evidence, the rights groups said, even though it has been presented with examples of Israeli doctors who have broken their legal and ethical duty towards Palestinians in their care. 

Israelis need to understand that Palestinians are coming from a position that is based entirely on international law. In other words, the Palestinian position cannot and will not veer from the specific rights that United Nations Security Council resolutions as well as international legality guarantee Palestinians. 

I recently returned from a literary festival that was to have opened and closed in Jerusalem; but which, to our surprise, opened in France and closed in the United Kingdom. You might well ask how a bunch of novelists and nonfiction writers could be so dangerous as to require a military-ordained ban in a democratic country. I can't tell you; except that our literary festival had the word "Palestine" in its title.  

Under a complex twin-pronged initiative from the U.S. and Egypt, Israel's hard-line government is moving towards backtracking on two major planks of its policy in the occupied territories - resisting demands for a blanket freeze on all settlement building in the West Bank, and acquiescing in the end of its tight siege of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. 

June 26, 2008 is a day I will never forget. That day I was detained, interrogated, strip searched, and tortured while attempting to return home from a European speaking tour, which culminated in independent American journalist Dahr Jamil and I sharing the Martha Gellhorn Journalism Prize in London - an award given to journalists who expose propaganda which often masks egregious human rights abuses.