On day five of the ceasefire between the Islamist group which controls Gaza, Hamas, and Israel, calm continued in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel, but there has been little visible change in the sanctions regime imposed on the Palestinian enclave.

A six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza was killed by Israeli fire on 12 June. "Medics say the girl was decapitated by a [tank] shell," Associated Press (AP) reported the next day. The Israeli military said the soldiers opened fire in retaliation against "militants launching rockets into Israel."

After one year of a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip, the residents of the beleaguered enclave have some reason for optimism, after a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel went into effect on 19 June at 6am local time.

On June 11, eight year old Hadeel Al-Sumairi was killed when her home in south eastern Gaza was shelled by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Less than a week earlier, eight year old Aya Hamdan Al-Najjar was killed by a rocket fired from an IOF helicopter.

It is customary to run into brazenly racist commentary coming out of the U.S. liberals and right-wingers alike, especially when it comes to the question of oil.

Five Palestinian landowners and human rights organizations Yesh Din and B'Tselem claim in first petition of its kind: Ofra is an illegal outpost built mostly on private land.

Hundreds of people Saturday, June 7 along Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard to Meir Garden to protest the 41st year of the Israeli occupation and the incessant rocket attacks on the country's southern region.

A group of Israeli human rights activists has begun a project to help Palestinians in the West Bank, who have in the past had land taken away by settlers, regain what they say are their property rights.

The generals, who form the hegemonic political-military think-tank in Israel’s perpetual state of emergency, are in the media, explaining that Israel as a matter of national survival must teach our enemies a lesson that they never will forget. Deterrence will thereby be restored.

The occupation of the Palestinian territories is exacting a high price from Israel, a local think-tank said. "The prolonged conflict with the Palestinians is a millstone around Israel's neck," Adva, a social justice NGO, said in a 4 June report, The cost of the occupation.

Prof. Gilbert Achcar of the School of Oriental and Asian Studies in London has made a unique contribution to the ongoing “one-state or two-states” debate in a recent wide ranging interview to Mesele, a progressive periodical in Turkey.

Three days ago, on 1 June, Hadeel Abu Kwaik was sitting in her computer lab at Al-Azhar University in Gaza looking worried, and perplexed. Today, having just been told her Fulbright scholarship has been reinstated, she says she is “Happy but still worried. I’m still not sure we will [all] be able to leave for the US.”

Mothers in Gaza hold a weekly vigil at the Red Cross, to highlight the number of Gazan men and women held in Israeli jails, and to demand the right to visit their jailed husbands, sons and daughters.

Firing home-made primitive rockets at Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip, the mass sweeping through the Palestinian – Egyptian border crossing of Rafah in January and the series of ongoing peaceful demonstrations at Gaza’s crossing points with Israel are not an aggressive demonstration of self-confidence.

Since the occupation began in 1967, Israel has exercised almost total control over the Palestinian population registry and has sole power to determine who is a Palestinian resident.

For the past several months I have been receiving TIME magazine. The subscription originally started as a gift from someone unknown, with my last name spelled wrong, lasted for a year. When it came up for renewal, I stalled until the price came down to fifty cents a copy, a much more reasonable price for the quality of the magazine.

The logic of established patterns of behavior creates a set of expectations. For example, when countries involved in a sustained conflict decide to commence peace talks, such an act suggests that they believe that there is some chance for success.

Nasser Jaber’s chicken farm was bulldozed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) ten days ago, in the early morning hours of May 16, while he was sleeping at home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. He still looks stunned.

PCHR expresses great condemnation over the developments of in the Khan Yunis Youth Club, and subsequent armed takeover of the Club by Hamas members last Wednesday.

JERUSALEM, 22 May 2008 (IRIN) - Ahmed al-Baghdadi's doctors said he must leave the Gaza Strip and travel to Israel to receive urgent life-saving medical care if he hopes to fight the tumours in his body.