It was the first time Hashem Al Azzeh could harvest his olives in five years. Living directly next door to the Tel Rumeida settlement, which like all West Bank settlements is illegal under international law, he has faced years of harassment and violence from some of Israel's most ideological settlers. But this year, having coordinated with the proper authorities, he planned to quickly and quietly harvest the few trees standing between his house and the caravans stacked on top of each other to form the Jewish enclave just up the hill. Accompanied by a handful of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteers,…

Since Rachel Corrie's death, the Israeli establishment has been losing patience with activists of any kind. (This op-ed was originally published in The Guardian on August 29 here and in the print edition here) The state of Israel is not to blame for the death of Rachel Corrie – this is the decision an Israeli court reached yesterday. The ruling, made by Judge Oded Gershon of the Haifa district court, may have come as a shock to some, but anyone following Israel's path on a slippery slope, particularly over the past decade, could hardly be surprised when the court literally blamed the victim…

An Israeli judge ruled Tuesday morning that the State of Israel is not to blame for the death of Rachel Corrie, an American who was killed on March 16, 2003 in the Gaza Strip when she she stood in front of an IDF bulldozer that crushed her.  The judge called her death a "regrettable accident." Rachel Corrie was in Rafah as an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, acting as a human shield to protest the demolition of Palestinian homes. She was 23 years old at the time of her death. She had arrived in Israel in January 2003 and spent two…

A video uploaded Tuesday by the International Solidarity movement shows a young Palestinian man being violently dragged from checkpoint 56 in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. The young men dragging him appear to be soldiers out of uniform during some sort of sport activity. I have requested comment from the IDF spokesperson and will update if I hear back. UPDATE: The IDF Spokesperson replied with this response: The video does not accurately depict the course of events that occurred yesterday. During routine activity in Hebron, a Palestinian individual refused to identify himself to soldiers following their request.…

Advocates for Israel often claim that the Palestinians run their own life. Yet again and again it appears that the West Bank has become their prison. Last week I posted here a criticism of Ambassador Michal Oren's Foreign Policy piece, titled "Israel's Resilient Democracy." One of Ambassador Oren's claims was that the fact that Palestinians in the West Bank are deprived of voting rights is not enough to question the nature of Israel as a democracy. The existence of partially democratic enclaves within a democratic system does not necessarily discredit it. Residents of Washington, D.C., are taxed without representation, while…