{IRA} The Gaza conflict in numbers

• After seven days of fighting between Hamas, the Palestinian Islamists who run Gaza, and Israel, a ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, is expected by the evening of November 20th. 
• Israel has not yet confirmed the ceasefire but has put plans for a ground invasion on hold. 
• Diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the bloodshed are intensifying. 

1. Ban Ki-moon, the UN's secretary-general, arrived in Israel on November 20th after meeting the head of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi, in Cairo. 
2. Hillary Clinton, America's secretary of state, is also set to arrive in Israel. 

• A ceasefire may bring an end to the violence, in which over 100 Palestinians and three Israelis have died since November 14th, but the challenge for both sides will be whether they can translate a renewed informal understanding into something more lasting.

Photic News: History Of Israel & Palestine: A 1897 – 2011 Timeline

MIDDLE-EAST: Israel & Palestine (Dialogue)

Zionism, Racism and Culture

• Israel will ignore Palestine’s membership of UNESCO, but Palestine can use this toehold to salvage its heritage.
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) voted overwhelmingly to admit Palestine as a full member.
• The US cut off all financial support and Israel announced plans to build a few thousand more dwelling units in occupied Palestinian land.
• Netanyahu accused the UN of having sanctified the “lie” that “the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest place” was ­“occupied Palestinian territory”.
• Palestine has been a battle about culture and antiquity since the first expropriations of the native population by Zionist settlers in the 1920s.
• And it is no coincidence that among the first major projects that Israel undertook in East Jerusalem, after it was seized in 1967, was an archaeological excavation to establish the area’s unbroken Jewish heritage.
• Archaeology has been a profoundly political discipline everywhere, but nowhere more explosively so than in Palestine.
• The Palestinian people though have gained a toehold within the institutional framework of multilateralism. They could use this limited opening to work towards salvaging their culture and heritage – as embodied in numerous sites of historic importance in the entire territory of historical Palestine – from the devouring myths of Zionism.