1 September 2017

Middle East

• In a press release issued on 31 August, Peace Nowwarned about the potential implications of establishing a municipal services administration for Jewish settlers in   Hebron (“Official Status Granted to Hebron Settlers by Civil Administration”).
• On 29 August, Al Mezan Center for Human Rightsreported the death of two female cancer patients from Gaza who had been waiting for exit permits from the Israeli authorities in order to be able to access adequate medical treatment in East Jerusalem.

• On 27 August, Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) issued a press release demanding a response to their appeal against the closure of the investigation into the killing of four children during the 2014 Gaza war (“Israeli AG fails to respond – for two years – to appeals against closure of investigation into Bakr boys’ killings during 2014 Gaza war”).

• Starting in August, the 2017 Women’s Leadership Incubator, a project initiated by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor to strengthen the sensitivity of civil society to women’s rights and needs, will be implemented in the Gaza Strip in partnership with local NGOs.

Europe

• On 7 October, the National Education Union (NEU) and the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign are organizing in London a conference entitled “Balfour and Palestine100 Years of British Responsibility”.

• On 6 September, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign is hosting in Dublin a screening of the film “Epicly Palestine’d: The Birth of Skateboarding in the West Bank”.

• The UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign(PSC) has issued a fact sheet on Gaza, calling on the international community “to act to end the siege now”.

• In a letter dated 18 August, the Association of Academics for the Respect of International Law in Palestine called on colleagues to cancel their participation in the upcoming congress of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), scheduled to take place in Jerusalem from 10 to 14 September.

North America

• On 20 October, Prof. David Palumbo-Liu, Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, will deliver at The Jerusalem Fundin Washington, D.C. the 2017 Edward Said Memorial Lecture (“Literature, Empathy, and Rights”).

• Al Shabaka – The Palestinian Policy Network issued on 31 August “Focus On: PLO and Palestinian Representation” featuring pieces by different analysts, and on 27 August a policy brief by academics Andi Clarno and Haidar Eid entitled “Rethinking our Definition of Apartheid: Not Just a Political Regime”.

• On 29 August, Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, Director of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Programme at the United States Institute of Peace, shared her thoughts about “Two States – or Not – for Israelis and Palestinians?”

• On 29 August, Jewish Voice for Peace reported that prominent US writers, playwrights and publishers had issued statements in support of Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian citizen of Israel charged with incitement to violence, apparently over a poem she posted online with the title “Resist, My People, Resist Them”.

•     Churches for Middle East Peace contributed to the #Gaza51days campaign launched by Just World Educational an article entitled “The Christian Community in Gaza: Faith under Pressure”.

Latin America

• In its newsletter of 28 August, the Federación Palestina de Chile published an interview with Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad Al-Malki who visited Chile at the end of August.

United Nations

• While witnessing one of the most dramatic humanitarian crises he had seen in many years working with the United Nations, in his remarks to the press at an UNRWA school in Gaza, UN Secretary-GeneralAntónio Guterres stated on 30 August that “the solution for the problems of the people of Gaza is not humanitarian”.