Feature Archives

On June 15th, Hamas militants seized the Palestinian presidential compound in Gaza City and took full control of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has announced the dismissal of the Hamas-led government and declared a state of emergency. Abbas said he would now rule by presidential decree until the conditions were right for early elections. However, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya says his government will press on and impose law and order. The Occupied Territories have now been effectively split into two separate entities with Hamas in charge of Gaza and Fatah controlling the West Bank.

Following the killing of a senior Fatah leader on May 13th, violence erupted throughout the Gaza Strip. Two attempted ceasefires collapsed within hours and fighting between Fatah and Hamas has resulted in dozens of deaths, threatening to shatter the two factions' unity government. Israel is intervening in the factional strife with the explicit aim of eliminating Hamas as a military and political force; a senior Israeli cabinet official has even called for all Hamas leaders to be killed. Israeli air strikes have killed over thirty civilians in the past few days, with some of the attacks appearing to be assassination attempts.

Palestine Awareness Week is taking place at UC Santa Cruz from May 7th through May 10th and began with a Check Point established in the Baytree Plaza. At that check point, five Palestinians were being detained for no apparent reason while two Israeli soldiers mentally and physically abused the detainees and prevented them from leaving the prison cell. One Palestinian women plead over and over to be released because she was pregnant and worried should would lose her baby.

Feryal Abu Haikal and Mohammed Khatib live in communities that are immediately threatened with destruction and expulsion by the Israeli military and settlers. They will be in the Bay Area from February 25th through 28th to tell of their personal experiences mobilizing their communities to nonviolently resist these measures. Events will be held in Alameda, San Rafael, Moraga, San Jose, and Berkeley. Flyer Thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis are waging a grassroots, nonviolent campaign of resistance to Israel's apartheid system of military occupation and discrimination against Palestinians. Palestine-Related Events from Indybay's calendar

Scott Kennedy of the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz co-led a delegation to Israel and the West Bank of Palestine from November 4–18, 2006. Ken Carlson of Santa Cruz was also on the delegation which was cosponsored by the Washington, DC based Interfaith PeaceBuilders and the Middle East Program of the national American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Audio

In the past week, fighting between Hamas and Fatah has left more than 32 people dead and many more injured, bloody clashes that have pushed Palestinians one step closer to the brink of a civil war between Abbas and his Fatah faction on the one hand, and the Hamas-led government on the other.

Palestine has become another front in the Bush administration's Cold War against "Islamofascism." Mahmoud Abbas and Gaza warlord Muhammad Dahlan have become the willing proxies for the Palestine franchise of this wider project. Since October, eight truckloads of AK-47 rifles and machine guns and several million rounds of ammunition have entered Gaza from Israel. Abbas' Presidential Guard has also attacks against he Islamic University in Gaza, shelling, burning and destroying parts of it.

On December 15th, Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah president of the Palestinian Authority, announced that he will dissolve the recently elected parliament and call new presidential and parliamentary elections. Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo told Associated Press that the president would set the date within a week, and that new elections would be held within three months.

Many see the move as an unconstitutional attempt to unseat the Hamas-led government that threatens to precipitate a full-scale civil war between supporters of Hamas and Fatah. Clashes between the two groups has been increasing in recent weeks.