News stories by Mel Frykberg, page 6

The execution of a Palestinian father and son by Hamas security forces in Gaza throws up a sharp difference over the death penalty between Gaza and the West Bank. In the West Bank a temporary moratorium in in place.

'I’m sick with worry about my daughter. I’m afraid of what they are doing to her. She has done nothing to deserve this. If they have anything against her why don’t they bring her to trial?' Yehiya Al Shalabi asked IPS rhetorically.

Leading members of the Palestinian Popular Committees in the West Bank plan massive civil unrest and disobedience against the Israeli occupation authorities come September when the Palestinians take their case for statehood to the UN.

Confused foreign tourists arriving at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Friday would be forgiven for thinking that a terrorist attack was about to take place.

It is a warm spring day as citizens go about their business. Colourful bougainvilleas climb the building housing the Yaffa Community Centre (YCC). Inside the centre’s kindergarten children play while older students attend a class at the media centre. A group of foreigners is touring the attractively decorated building and getting a brief introduction to its history.

It’s Thursday night, the beginning of the weekend in the Muslim world, and time to party and let one’s hair down in Ramallah, the occupied West Bank’s isolated bubble and de facto capital.

To many people Rabbi Arik Ascherman would appear to be a contradiction in terms. He is an ardent Zionist and religious Jew who believes that God made a covenant with the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. But the core of Ascherman’s Zionist ideology revolves around fighting for human rights, especially those of the Palestinians.

'Father please help me! Don’t let them take me away,' screamed 12-year-old Ahmed Siyam as approximately 50 heavily armed Israeli soldiers and police dragged the handcuffed and blindfolded boy away.

Israeli restrictions on the delivery of international aid to impoverished Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories are costing aid organisations nearly five million dollars annually, and European and U.S. tax payers are footing the bill.

The leader of Israel’s most right-wing government since the establishment of the Jewish state 63 years ago, has returned to Israel with his popularity surging since talks with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington.