IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
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
Ghassan al-Azzeh was detained by Israeli occupation forces and sent to prison when he was just 16 years old. As a young teen in an adult detention facility, al-Azzeh was lost until a group of older artists, also Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, took him in. Al-Azzeh was interested in art before he was arrested, but did not take the craft seriously until it became his only reprieve from the daily life of prison.
on June 11, 2016
In the Active Aging House of Burj Barajneh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, the Nakba is still a vivid memory. Some of the center-goers were in their childhood when, in 1948, the ‘catastrophe’ befell the Palestinians and more than 750,000 were ousted from their homelands. Around 110,000 took refuge in Lebanon that, due to the proximity, became one of the main hosts for the refugees.
on May 15, 2016
Abed Abu Sharefa's hand was on the front door of his home in Jalazone refugee camp as Israeli soldiers worked to break through from the other side and arrest him. The scar under his left eyebrow, where the metal door blew inwards, is still visible seven years on. Abu Sharefa, 25, told Al Jazeera that his right ear still hurts from the beatings he received at the hands of Israeli interrogators early in the 14-month detention that followed his violent arrest.
on April 5, 2016
The Israel Defense Forces employed the controversial 'Hannibal procedure' late Monday night after two soldiers were attacked after accidentally entering the Qalandiyah refugee camp, according to an initial IDF investigation. The so-called Hannibal procedure, which was last used in Rafah, Gaza, during the 2014 war, entails using massive force, irrespective of casualties, to prevent a soldier from falling into enemy hands.
on March 1, 2016
An Israeli military court in the Ofer prison extended the detention of a young Palestinian boy on Sunday, his family told Ma’an. Ahmad Omar al-Atrash, 13, from the al-Duheisha refugee camp near Bethlehem, will remain in Israeli prison custody until at least Thursday. Ahmad’s family said that his parents were initially prevented from visiting him, but that his lawyer interfered and allowed them to see him for a few minutes.
on January 24, 2016
“I had a homework assignment to do so I brought my books,” she says. It was 1948 and the newly declared state of Israel was at war with its neighbors. Aboud’s father thought it was better to head north for a few days and wait for the fighting to blow over. She was 9. The family crossed into Syria and waited.
on January 4, 2016
The Shati refugee camp in Gaza City has always been a symbol of poverty, a grey concrete jungle with 87,000 people packed into half a square kilometer, or about one fifth of a square mile. But now, overlooking the sewage-contaminated Mediterranean beachfront, the camp's houses are covered in vibrant colors.
on December 23, 2015
It was nearly Christmas, and some 200 children ran and competed with one another in bright sunshine as their parents watched the playground and chatted. The hosts of this holiday event were Palestinian Christian residents of a small, cramped refugee camp clinging to a rocky hillside here overlooking the Mediterranean Sea north of Beirut.
on December 22, 2015