IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
Over the past eight days, tens of thousands of protesters in Gaza have breathed life into a place that is slowly being depleted of it. We have come together, chanting and singing a lullaby we’ve all longed for—“We will return”—bringing all that we have left to offer in an attempt to reclaim our right to live in freedom and justice.
on April 6, 2018
Fact Sheets
The policies of discrimination and displacement that Israel has implemented against Palestinians in the lands it has military occupied since the 1967 war are part of a larger program of dispossession of Palestinians dating to Israel’s establishment in 1948 and encompassing Palestinians citizens of Israel as well.
on June 8, 2017
Videos
“It was the worst scene ever when we were pushed out [by Zionist forces]. Only God knows how much I cried.” A Nakba survivor, 86-year-old Ibrahim lived through displacement in 1948 and has endured 50 years of Israeli occupation.
on June 6, 2017
On 6 February 2017, the Israeli Knesset (legislature) passed a law permitting the expropriation of housing built on private Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories. Under the legislation, referred to herein as the ‘Expropriation Law’ (but also described as the ‘Regularisation Law’ or simply the ‘Theft Law’) Palestinians from whom land was taken would have no right to claim it back ‘until there is a diplomatic resolution of the status of the territories.’
on March 3, 2017
Hunched over a white cooler box, Aziz al-Turi sifted through his most important possessions and pulled out an antique brass coffee pot. "You know how old this is? Fifty years old," he declared. "It came from Syria, via Jordan, here to Araqib." Along with pillows and carpets from Araqib's hospitality tent, the centre of social life in the village, these were the items that Turi rushed...
on July 3, 2016
A Palestinian family was able to regain control of the disputed Cliff Hotel in the occupied East Jerusalem village of Abu Dis, after a decades-long battle with Israeli authorities. The family’s lawyer Bassam Bahar, who also heads a local committee to defend Abu Dis lands, said the Ayyad family, which owns the hotel, was able to enter the hotel for the first time since Israeli forces occupied the hotel in 2003 and began using it as a watchtower, citing “security reasons.”
on March 24, 2016
Israel has appropriated large tracts of land in the occupied West Bank near the Dead Sea and the Palestinian city of Jericho, Israeli Army Radio said on Tuesday. Israel's Peace Now movement, which tracks and opposes Israeli settlement in territory captured in a 1967 war, said the reported seizure of 579 acres (234 hectares) represented the largest land confiscation in the West Bank in recent years.
on March 15, 2016
Fact Sheets
Earlier in March 2016 textbook publishing company McGraw-Hill destroyed all copies of its political science book, "Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World", following criticism of a map the book contained depicting Palestinian loss of land. The IMEU offers background on the censorship of the map in question.
on March 15, 2016
An Israeli court on Sunday ruled that the Bedouin community of Um al-Hiran in the Negev in southern Israel is illegal, on the grounds that the community settled on state lands, Israeli media reported. "The state is the owner of the lands in dispute," Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein as writing.
on March 7, 2016