Eye on Palestine: The Nakba
The Nakba: A crime watched, ignored and remembered
Author Ilan Pappe, professor of History and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, recounts the true history of the Nakba, an ethnic cleansing that carries on until this date. He describes the “intentional blindness” of the international community and how he is “preoccupied with the continued apathy and indifference of the Western political elite and media to the plight of the Palestine.ians”.”Even the horror of the Yarmuk camp did not associate in the minds of politicians and journalists alike the possible connection between saving the refugees there and their internationally recognised right of return to their homeland”. Read more
The architecture of violence
Eyal Weizman explains architecture’s key role in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the evolution of urban warfare. On a journey across the settlements and roads of the West Bank and along the Separation Wall, Israeli architect Eyal Weizman demonstrates how architecture is central to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
“Architecture and the built environment is a kind of a slow violence. The occupation is an environment that was conceived to strangulate Palestinian communities, villages and towns, to create an environment that would be unliveable for the people there,” says Weizman.
Local Israelis and Palestinians explain how it feels to live in a landscape where everything, from walls and roads, terraces and sewage, to settlements and surveillance are designed to ensure the separation of the two peoples, while simultaneously maintaining control. Read more
Vatican officially recognizes State of Palestine
The Vatican has officially recognized Palestine in a new treaty that switches the Holy See’s diplomatic relations from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.
NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli tells our Newscast unit the document still has to be signed.
The Vatican, in a statement , said the agreement had been concluded and will be “submitted to the respective authorities for approval ahead of setting a date in the near future for the signing.”
“Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman. Read more