Date
Type

Guide: Gaza Under Blockade
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bbc News
by Heather Sharp - (Analysis) August 11, 2008 - 4:38pm

  The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade since the militant group Hamas seized control in June 2007. What gets in and out of Gaza, what has been the impact of the restrictions, and what has changed since the truce between Israel and Hamas in June 2008? OVERVIEW For the past year, Gaza's 1.5m people have been relying on, on average, less than a fifth of the volume of imported supplies they received in December 2005. Some weeks significantly less than that has arrived.  

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Palestinians Doubt Two-state Deal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bbc News
August 11, 2008 - 4:26pm

Israel's strategy in negotiations could force the Palestinians to abandon their goal of a two-state solution, a top Palestinian negotiator says. Ahmed Qurei says they may instead seek a binational solution, that is a single state for Israelis and Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Israel fears such a this would spell the end of the Jewish majority state. Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Its negotiators have always resisted full withdrawal from them.

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Darwish, Poet Of The Palestinian Cause, Dies After Surgery
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Mohammed Assadi - August 11, 2008 - 4:23pm

Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry encapsulated the Palestinian cause, is to get the equivalent of a state funeral in the West Bank following his death this weekend – an honour only previously accorded to the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Tributes for Darwish poured in yesterday, a day after he died, at the age of 67, from complications following heart surgery in a hospital in Houston, Texas.

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Mahmoud Darwish, respected Palestinian poet, dies after complications from heart surgery at the age of 67, and will be honored with an official funeral (1) (7). The BBC looks at life on the ground in blockaded Gaza (3). Eight Palestinians are killed as an underground smuggling tunnel collapses near the Egypt-Gaza border (5). Israel’s recent decision to build 447 new settler homes around Jerusalem draws criticism from the French EU Presidency (9). Three articles from Bitterlemons.org examine different scenarios for the Annapolis process (10) (11) (12).

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