Suffering in solation: A report on life under occupation in the Mawasi areas in the Gaza Strip - Acrobat format
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights 8/2/2003
Full report in Acrobat (PDF) format 

Daniel Barenboim: Israel's future depends on Palestinian state
Ha'aretz 8/2/2003
Israeli musician Daniel Barenboim received a rapturous reception when he brought a program of Beethoven and Brahms - and a message of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation - to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday. The renowned pianist andconductor, a longtime critic of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, played a packed and sweltering auditorium at a Ramallah school, the scene of a visit last year that angered some Israelis.

Life emerges through art
Middle East Times 8/1/2003
In April 2001, six months after the start of the intifada, a group of Palestinian artists, poets and writers began an initiative to revive the popular nature of the resistance. The group decided to organize a different kind of march to the military checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. It was a march restricted to artists in which they carried the tools of their trade: a variety of musical instruments, paintings, books, pens and pencils, and cameras. The artists and intellectuals – about 500 in total - entered the military checkpoint from both sides. The scene was weird and confusing for the soldiers, who were used to other types of confrontation with the Palestinians during the preceding six months. In the middle of the confusion, groups of musicians, drummers, and photographers entered the checkpoint from both sides, merged together, and unleashed a wave of singing, chanting and music.

Homeland security at work
Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 31 July - 6 August 2003
Detention of a high-ranking Jordanian priest is seen as part of new American restrictions on Middle Easterners travelling to the land of the free -- In what turned out to be a humiliating and embarrassing ordeal, a high ranking Arab priest was detained and his visa revoked by US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) officials at the Toronto Airport on 20 July while he was on his way back to the United States from Canada. Father Emile Salayta, a Roman Catholic priest with the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem had just completed a three-day business trip to Toronto, where he met with Canadian church officials and appeared on a pre-scheduled TV talkshow.

War on Iraq impacts on press freedom in Middle East
Jang Group 8/2/2003
LONDON: The war in Iraq, war on terror and recent bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco have had a profound impact on press freedom in the Middle East, journalists and press watchdogs say. While advances in broadcast technology and a US push for more transparency by regional governments have spurred more open forms of expression, Middle Eastern regimes have launched periodic crackdowns on journalists who refuse to toe the government line, often through the exploitation of recently enacted "anti-terror" laws....The confidence Arab journalists gained during the war will impact the future of the region, according to Omar Abdul Razek, a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Arabic radio service.

Car Bomb Kills Hezbollah Member in Beirut
New York Times 8/2/2003
BEIRUT (Reuters) - A powerful car bomb killed a member of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group on Saturday in an attack in the Iranian and Syrian-backed group's stronghold of Beirut's southern suburbs that it blamed on Israel. Hizbollah called the dead man -- whom security sources have identified as a Lebanese driver for the Iranian embassy -- a martyr and one of its ``holy warriors,'' in accounts of the bombing on the group's television station.

U.S. suspends no-visa, air transit programs
Ha'aretz 8/2/2003
WASHINGTON - Two programs that allow foreigners to travel through U.S. airports on their way to other countries without a visa were suspended on Saturday because of security concerns, the Department of Homeland Security said.

Egypt urges Arab League reform
Middle East Times 8/1/2003
In the midst of steady speculation over the future viability of the Arab League, the Egyptian government has come forward with a series of recommendations to reform the 58-year-old organization. League officials acknowledge that the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq was a low point in the history of the 22-member league. Split by competing national agendas, the league's frantic pre-war maneuverings failed to produce anything resembling a coherent Arab stance. Instead, the enduring image was of a very public shouting match between Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.

US strengthens cultural hold over Iraq
Middle East Times 8/1/2003
The Baghdad Museum, recovering from a wave of looting that followed the downfall of Saddam Hussein, is to send some of its greatest treasures to the US for the first time, a cultural official said. They will include the so-called treasures of Nimrud, a collection of Assyrian jewelry dating back to the 8th century BC, which has never been shown abroad before, Pietro Cordone, an Italian envoy charged with overseeing Iraq's cultural activities, said.

Time to preach peace
Middle East Times 8/1/2003
A flaming cross shoved into the ground and set alight frightened students and teachers of Al Huda, a small Muslim school in College Park, Maryland, USA last week. Also in July, two Pakistani students were shot dead in the same county in an apparent hate crime. Worried at the larger implications of such attacks, Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders gathered at the University of Maryland University College last weekend for an inter-faith dialogue promoting peace.