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Israel acts on west bank wall order

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(source: Al Jazeera)

 antiwall

Anti-wall activists have for years held protests against the separation barrier [EPA]

Israel has begun rerouting a section of its controversial separation barrier near the West Bank village of Bilin following a two-and-a-half-year-old court ruling.

But activists and Bilin residents were expected to continue their protests against the barrier on Friday, despite the concession, which returns only about a third of the area claimed by the Palestinians.

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Virgin Palestine a myth

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By E Qasim

(source: BusinessDay, 7/5/2010)

With reference to Rhoda Kadalie’s most recent column (Complex crisis most analysts fail to explain, May 6), your correspondent is either a new historian or a critical sociologist for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, hell-bent on being disingenuous or misrepresenting the truth.

In 1945 Palestine was responsible for producing the following products:

·  210000 tons of grain — 193000 tons by Palestinian farmers and 16600 by Jewish farmers;
· 143000 tons of melons — 136000 tons by Palestinians and 7000 by Jewish farmers;
· 79000 tons of olives — 78000 tons by Palestinians and one ton by Jewish farmers; and
· 8000 tons of bananas — 60% of which were produced by Palestinian farmers.

That Palestine was virgin land was a myth, used by the colonisers to justify their occupation of Palestine.

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Social conflict in maghreb has international implications

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By Ann Talbot

(source: World Socialist WebSite)

Continuing protests in Tunisia and Algeria threaten to spread to the whole of the Maghreb region and, beyond that, to engulf the Middle East, where the same conditions of poverty and insecurity exist. Rising food prices are daily exacerbating social tensions caused by growing inequality and mass unemployment, especially among the young. The global financial crisis has set light to a tinderbox in North Africa and the Middle East.

This has provoked growing unease among the international ruling elite. Speaking in Doha, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience of government officials and businessmen, “In too many places, in too many ways, the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand.” She warned that the populations of the region had “grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order.”

In an attempt to placate popular anger, in Tunisia, President Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, a close US ally, went on television Thursday and promised to step down when his current term of office ends in 2014. He had previously sacked his interior minister, released some of those arrested in the recent protests and promised to create 300,000 new jobs. The Algerian government has reduced the price of oil and sugar by a total of 41 percent. This followed riots that were provoked by the removal of food subsidies. Even where no demonstrations have taken place, Libya has reduced taxes on wheat-based products, rice, vegetable oil, sugar and infant milk. Morocco has introduced subsidies on milling wheat. Jordan has cut taxes on fuel and some foods.

Both the US and the European Union have applied pressure to Tunisia in the face of reports that the police were overwhelmed by demonstrators in the capital, Tunis. French ministers have refrained from publicly criticising Ben Ali’s violent repression of demonstrators that have left scores dead in many town and cities. Only after a French citizen was killed did Paris voice concerns about the use of “disproportionate” violence.

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