12/6/11 Israel values all life. Israeli paramedics deliver at least one Palestinian Arab baby every single month.
12/6/11 Shh!…don’t tell the neighbours. New personal stories from the Israeli organisation “Save A Child’s Heart”. SACH performs nearly half its operations on Palestinian Arab children, whose parents can hardly believe it.
12/6/11 Let peace begin with water. Israelis, Palestinian Arabs and Jordanians build EcoCentres to make the most of scarce water supplies.
12/6/11 Environmental Impacts Know No Boundaries. Students from Israel, the PA, Malta, Lebanon, Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the UK are working together on a project to protect their unique shared ecosystem.
5/6/11 “Peace must begin among us.” A delegation of senior physicians and medical technicians from the Palestinian Authority arrived last week for a study program at the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa.
5/6/11 Abbas speaks the truth. News this week reveals that PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas admitted in an Arabic interview, that his family were forced to flee in 1948 due to threats by Arab leaders. Jews were not responsible.
29/5/11 Life goes on. Despite the signing of the agreement between Fatah and the Hamas terrorist organisation, Israel continues to co-operate with the Palestinian Authority and to help its economy grow.
22/5/11 Jews & Arabs play to Australian rules. A team of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs were narrowly beaten by an ex-pat Aussie team in a practice for the Australian Rules International Football Cup later this year.
15/5/11 Israeli company launches Arab talent show. Yagur Studios in Haifa is responsible for The Palestinian Arab equivalent of “A Star is Born” and “X-factor”. The program is even shown live on Saudi Arabian TV.
8/5/11 Save a Child’s Heart update. Currently 21 children are being treated; 7 from the Palestinian Authority.
1/5/11 Israelis are the best employers. This research report was produced by the Palestinian Arab news agency.
17/4/11 Big splash at Kalkilya zoo. Arab and Israeli vets navigated a six-year old 1.5-ton hippo into its new home in the Palestinian Arab city.
10/4/11 Don’t blind me with facts! Palestinian Arabs have one of the world’s highest percentages of home ownership – over 80% - even in Gaza. These are the PA’s own figures.
3/4/11 Israeli Kibbutz builds dairy farm for Hebron Arabs. Kibbutz Afikim is using its world-leading technology to combat the milk shortage in the Palestinian Authority controlled city of Hebron – where the world’s media only ever reports conflict.
3/4/11 Fun in the snow. You definitely won’t see this on the BBC. Israeli soldiers took Palestinian Arab children cancer sufferers and their families for a day-out, playing in the snow on Mount Hermon.
27/3/11 Jews & Arabs play as one. Two teams each containing both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs battled out the final of Israel Bowl 1V – Israel’s American football championship league.
20/4/11 Israel is a “good enemy”. This Palestinian Arab views Israel very favourably when compared to Arab states.
6/3/11 Selling together. Some 400 Palestinian Arab farmers joined thousands of Israelis at an international agricultural fair in Tel Aviv. They also received help from Israeli farming innovations.
6/3/11 Sitting down to peace talks? An Israeli plastics factory employs 50% Israelis and 50% Palestinian Arabs to manufacture (among other things) toilet seats. It gives another meaning to “low-level co-operation”.
27/2/11 Dissolving bitterness. Israel ran a week-long seminar on desalination technologies for thirty participants from Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, covering design, operation and maintenance of water desalination plants.
27/2/11 Humanity begins here. Whilst other countries have abandoned its citizens living in Libya, Israel has allowed 300 ex-pat Palestinian Arabs to return to the territories following a request from Mahmoud Abbas.
27/2/11 Brain Surgery in Israel saves Gaza toddler. Surgeons at Rambam hospital in Haifa removed a tumour the size of a large orange. The hospital has treated 200 Gazans in the last six months alone.
20/2/11 Football for all. Men and women in Arab countries may be demonstrating for basic human rights but in the Palestinian territories, Arab women celebrated the inauguration of the new women’s football league.
13/2/11 For Israelis, all life is sacred. Israeli soldiers successfully delivered a baby boy in a military ambulance when his Palestinian Arab mother went into labour in the Jordan valley. They then performed CPR to save his life.
6/2/11 We’re working together. Palestinian Arab software engineers at Asal Technologies in Ramallah are coding software as outsourcers for an Israeli life sciences software firm.
23/1/11 Arabs want Israeli citizenship. Arab residents of East Jerusalem are lining up to request Israeli citizenship.
16/1/11 East Jerusalem Arabs prefer Israel to Palestinian state! A poll of East Jerusalem Arabs, conducted by a joint American / Palestinian Arab organisation came out against PA control of East Jerusalem.
16/1/11 “Ramallah is like Europe”! Dubai journalist Maisun Azzam declares that the world’s media has completely distorted the image of life for Palestinian Arabs. She admits that bad news is newsworthy but good news isn’t!
16/1/11 Israel – where Palestinian Arabs are most welcome! Israel is the best country in the Middle East for Palestinian Arabs. So says Mudar Zahran – a Palestinian Arab, now living in London.
26/12/10 Israel and the Palestinian Authority are working together on a project to clean up sewage in Jordan Valley.
5/12/10 Quote by a Sudanese official in the Palestinian Arab press “Where is the siege? I don't see it in Gaza. I wish Sudan's residents could live under the conditions of the Gazan siege." (Oxfam, Amnesty and the rest of the 21 Israel-bashing NGOs probably got lost and wrote their recent usual biased report on the wrong place.)
28/11/10 A groundbreaking exhibition of selected paintings by 120 Israeli and Palestinian Arab children took place last week in the foyer of the Allsaraya Arabic-Hebrew theatre in Jaffa.
28/11/10 Israeli checkpoint prevents attack on Tel Aviv. Soldiers found a machine gun, ammunition, pipe bombs and other military gear in a Palestinian Arab vehicle trying to enter Israel.
28/11/10 Over the past year, 180,000 Arabs from the Palestinian-controlled territories were treated at Israeli hospitals.
28/11/10 Meanwhile, Gaza terrorists fire phosphorous shells into Israel. No response from the UN – surprise, surprise.
21/11/10 Israeli documentary "Precious Life" has been short-listed for an Academy award. It tells the story of a baby from Gaza who suffers from a life-threatening genetic disorder, being treated in an Israeli hospital.
14/11/10 Egyptian journalist and political analyst Nabil Sharaf Eldin urged fellow Arabs to visit Israel. “Failing to find a glimpse of hope across the greater Arab world, we must concede that Israel has become the only "safe haven" where one can be sure of his life and dignity.”
31/10/10 The number of Arab volunteers to National Service in Israel has increased six-fold in the past five years to a current total of 1,473. Of the volunteers, 92% are young women.
31/10/10 There are 325 million Arabs in 22 Middle Eastern countries and other lands, but the first and so far only registry for potential unrelated Arab donors of bone marrow or stem cells – which have the ability to cure cancers and other serious disorders – is at Hadassah University Medical Centre in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem
31/10/10 A Cambridge University motion that “Israel is a rogue state” was defeated by 74% of the thousands of delegates present. Even pro-Palestinian Arab supporters cheered Israel’s humanitarian activities.
31/10/10 It may be over the “green line” but Ariel University is extremely popular with hundreds of Arabs students. Joana Moussa, a 20-year-old behavioral sciences student from Abu Snan, an Arab village in the Galilee region, said "there is no racism here."
10/10/10 Two scientists, one from Israel and one from Nablus in the Palestinian Authority are working together to improve water purification for the region and beyond.
10/10/10 Israeli Jews join Arabs to celebrate annual Oktoberfest beer festival in the Christian enclave of the Palestinian Arab village of Taybeh.
3/10/10 New study shows that life expectancy of Jewish Israelis has increased significantly and is longer on average than in the OECD countries. Infant mortality of Israeli Arabs has improved even more dramatically and they now live noticeably longer on average than Americans. The lifespan of Jews and Arabs has increased by seven years since 1980.
3/10/10 The Peres Center for Peace marked the International Day of Peace with events at the Peres Peace House on Jaffa beach. Hundreds of Israeli Jewish and Arab families, children and young people, as well as Palestinian Arab families attended the events, which was open to the general public, free of charge.
3/10/10 An Israeli woman gave birth to a healthy baby boy by caesarean section within hours of a young couple being shot by Palestinian Arab terrorists in an attack on the same road where 4 Israelis were murdered on Aug 31st. The new baby’s father said "This was not how I planned to bring a child into the world".
26/9/10 In Jerusalem, a team of Israelis and Palestinian Arabs are putting aside their differences and teaming up on the sports field to chase a common goal.
26/9/10 The Gaza water park, so popular with affluent residents, was closed down by Hamas and then burned to the ground.
12/9/10 Israel's first NBA player, Omri Casspi, ran a basketball clinic for 100 Israeli and Palestinian Arab children in the annual event of the Twinned Peace Basketball Schools project.
12/9/10 Whilst Hamas tells the world that all Gazans are suffering, it's elite enjoy a riding club and a water park with chutes and slides. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/06/gaza-riding-club-faisal
12/9/10 An early Jewish New Year present from our Gaza “friends”. A mortar shell fired from Gaza Strip hit a kibbutz school building just 30 minutes before final lessons prior to the holiday.
29/8/10 Arab-Israeli Eco group (Friends of the Earth Middle East) has won the “Intercultural Dialogue for Ecological Sustainability” award. The group consisting of Jordanian, Palestinian Arabs, and Israeli environmentalists, seeks to advance “sustainable regional development and the creation of necessary conditions for lasting peace in our region”.
29/8/10 Wishing the Muslim residents of the capital, across Israel and throughout the world a "Ramadan Kareem", Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat fired-off a cannon heralding the end of the day's fast at the ancient Salah al-Din cemetery in east Jerusalem on Wednesday evening.
15/8/10 A wonderful supermarket has opened in the Territories, thrilling both Israeli and Arab shoppers. Palestinian Arab families and Israeli "settlers" mingle in the aisles - one checkout cashier was a Jewish woman from Kiryat Arba of Moroccan descent; on the cash register next to her was a blue-eyed Muslim woman from Halul, and on another register was a member of the Bnei Menashe tribe from India.
15/8/10 The Ramallah construction boom is one of the most obvious signs of economic growth in the Territories, estimated at an annual rate of 8 percent.
15/8/10 Celtic has a new Israeli Arab midfielder – Beram Kayal who has 14 caps for Israel: "What the television shows about Israel is totally different to what happens. The life between the Jews and the Arabs is very good. I'm an Arab and my agent is Jewish but we're like family. The Jews and the Arabs live together in Haifa, which is a mixed city. Maccabi Haifa has seven or eight Arab players and that's normal. The only difference is their religion, but there's no conflict." http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/celtic/celtic-s-new-israeli-midfielder-beram-kayal-will-find-similarities-between-glasgow-and-haifa-1.1045146
15/8/10 Salim Mansur: The ease with which I moved — alone and without restrictions — from the inner sanctum of the Muslim sanctuary to Judaism’s holiest site, embracing both, is a testimony to the openness of Israel as a Jewish state and democracy.
18/7/10 Rami Hariziat Hassan, a 20-year-old Palestinian Arab shepherd was saved by Border Police officers after being bitten by a viper on Sunday night. His friend Raja Talam Va’ada said ‘Suddenly, a snake bit him on the foot. We rushed to a local checkpoint and asked the soldiers for help. They really helped us,’ adding ‘He nearly died. He wasn’t breathing.’ We want to thank everyone – the border policemen and the hospital doctors,’ Va’ada said. ‘Well done to everyone’. Before Hassan was released from the hospital, Border Police officers came to check on his condition and bring him candy (sweets).
18/7/10 Following details of their Roots gourmet restaurant and the new Olympic size swimming pool, Gaza has just opened a luxury shopping mall. (Not much evidence of a shortage of building materials.)
There are still many complaints though – especially from the tunnel smugglers.
18/7/10 Finally, here perhaps are some surprising (although not to Israelis) statistics. Infant mortality in Gaza is 17.7 per thousand whereas in Turkey it is 24.8. Life expectancy figures are also better in Gaza.
(But since when have facts ever been important?)
