Steve Clemons of The Washington Note recently interviewed Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, about the reality of the much-vaunted "Annapolis process":

Whoever scheduled Gordon Brown’s recent visit to Israel is surely out of a job. Brown’s dreary, etiolated performance – appropriate for a political corpse – was rendered even flatter by its proximity to Barack Obama’s headline-hogging whirlwind tour of Europe and the Middle East. Despite the differences in style, however, both politicians took to the podium in Israel with a similar message: one of support for the latter’s rejectionist expansionism.

A video published today by the B'Tselem human rights organisation shows an unarmed, handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian being shot by an Israeli soldier at very close range with a rubber-coated steel bullet (not, as some would have it, a "rubber bullet").

A UN report (.pdf) published last week concludes that the wall Israel is constructing in the occupied West Bank is creating severe "geographical and bureaucratic hardships for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians", "preventing and delaying Palestinians from accessing essential services and workplaces". Entire communities have been devastated. The densely populated Jerusalem neighbourhood of al-Ram is a typical example: since the annexation wall severed it from the rest of Jerusalem a third of businesses and "vast numbers" of residents have left, turning a once thriving area into "a virtual ghost town".

According to Israeli officials cited by Ha'aretz, Israel did:

'The mortar shells were fired [on Monday] by Hamas, although the group did not publicly take responsibility for the attack, which caused no injuries.

Israeli officials said the mortar fire appears to be a Hamas reaction to the wounding of a Palestinian civilian in northern Gaza on Monday, in a bid to show that Hamas will not stand by as Israel harms Palestinian civilians. The civilian, 68, appears to have been hurt by an errant IDF bullet.' (hat tip)

Amnesty International's 2008 annual human rights report has just been published. I haven't the time to do a proper post on it at the moment, but it is viewable online here. For now, here is a summary of the section on Israel/Palestine.

Norman Finkelstein spoke yesterday to Glenn Greenwald about, among other things, his recent arrest in and deportation from Israel en route to visit friends in the occupied West Bank. Listen to the interview here (.mp3).

(the audio quality is poor, but you can still make it out).

The "only democracy in the Middle East" once again resorts to force in order to silence dissent:

"[T]he American academic Norman Finkelstein has been arrested and ordered deported from Israel. Finkelstein arrived in Tel Aviv earlier today on his way to the Occupied Territories. He was immediately detained and told he is banned from Israel for ten years. He’s expected to be deported tomorrow. Finkelstein is known one of the most prominent  academic critics of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza."

Dahiat al-Barid, West Bank

'Yes - people live here.'

Last year B'Tselem, the Israeli centre for human rights in the Occupied Territories, distributed video cameras to Palestinians living in the West Bank to enable them to document the realities of life under military occupation. The returned footage illustrates vividly the systematic humiliation, intimidation and abuse suffered by Palestinians on a daily basis. When the media report of a period of "calm", they are referring only to a lull in overt acts of extreme violence, such as Palestinian suicide bombings or Israeli air-strikes. But even in such periods, the constant degredation and violence that is intrinsic to the occupation, as documented in the footage sampled below, grinds on.

First up, the Israeli assault on Gaza has had a predictable effect:

'Israel Defense Forces attacks in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have boosted the popularity of the Islamist group's leader Ismail Haniyeh among Palestinians in that territory and in the West Bank, according to a poll released Monday.

The survey by the West Bank-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that if new presidential elections were held, Haniyeh would receive 47 percent of the vote compared with 46 percent for President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah faction.

The figures represented a sharp strengthening of Haniyeh's popularity. He served as prime minister in the Hamas-led government Abbas dismissed after Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June.

Quote continues overleaf...

I've just returned home from the World Against War demo today in London. It was a fantastic event, with an excellent turnout (between 10-40,000, according to the BBC) and a great atmosphere. The march was called to mark five years since the invasion of Iraq, although Israel's recent crimes in Gaza were definitely on everyone's mind - which is excellent, of course. The march was convened by the Stop the War Coalition around three basic demands: troops out from Afghanistan and Iraq, no attack on Iran and an end to the siege of Gaza. On all three, as Tony Benn was sure to remind us, the marchers spoke for the majority of British and world public opinion.

A BBC World Service poll (.pdf) has found that "[s]upport for tough measures against Iran's nuclear program has fallen in 13 out of 21 countries."

Overall, out of more than 32,000 people questioned in 31 countries, "only 7% of those questioned...backed the idea of military strikes."

Al Jazeera's recent interview with Khaled Mesha'al, head of Hamas' political bureau and a traditional hard-liner within the movement, is well worth a watch.

The money quote: "Now we have a vision: we accept a state on the 1967 borders."

Life is grim in Gaza. According to a report (.pdf) published today by eight human rights NGOs based in the UK, including Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Save The Children UK, "[t]he situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967."

The latest escalation of violence in Gaza, sparked by the assassination of five Hamas militants, saw some of the fiercest fighting in the Occupied Territories for years. Between 27 February and 3 March, at least 106 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were wounded. According to B'Tselem, over half of those killed (including 25 children) were civilians who did not take part in the hostilities.

The British government admits to complicity in two cases of "extraordinary rendition", but claims they are an isolated case and promises that it "never uses torture for any purpose, including obtaining information, neither would we instigate actions by others to do so."