Dahiat al-Barid, West Bank

'Yes - people live here.'

Last year B'Tselem, the Israeli centre for human rights in the Occupied Territories, distributed video cameras to Palestinians living in the West Bank to enable them to document the realities of life under military occupation. The returned footage illustrates vividly the systematic humiliation, intimidation and abuse suffered by Palestinians on a daily basis. When the media report of a period of "calm", they are referring only to a lull in overt acts of extreme violence, such as Palestinian suicide bombings or Israeli air-strikes. But even in such periods, the constant degredation and violence that is intrinsic to the occupation, as documented in the footage sampled below, grinds on.

First up, the Israeli assault on Gaza has had a predictable effect:

'Israel Defense Forces attacks in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have boosted the popularity of the Islamist group's leader Ismail Haniyeh among Palestinians in that territory and in the West Bank, according to a poll released Monday.

The survey by the West Bank-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that if new presidential elections were held, Haniyeh would receive 47 percent of the vote compared with 46 percent for President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah faction.

The figures represented a sharp strengthening of Haniyeh's popularity. He served as prime minister in the Hamas-led government Abbas dismissed after Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June.

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I've just returned home from the World Against War demo today in London. It was a fantastic event, with an excellent turnout (between 10-40,000, according to the BBC) and a great atmosphere. The march was called to mark five years since the invasion of Iraq, although Israel's recent crimes in Gaza were definitely on everyone's mind - which is excellent, of course. The march was convened by the Stop the War Coalition around three basic demands: troops out from Afghanistan and Iraq, no attack on Iran and an end to the siege of Gaza. On all three, as Tony Benn was sure to remind us, the marchers spoke for the majority of British and world public opinion.

A BBC World Service poll (.pdf) has found that "[s]upport for tough measures against Iran's nuclear program has fallen in 13 out of 21 countries."

Overall, out of more than 32,000 people questioned in 31 countries, "only 7% of those questioned...backed the idea of military strikes."

Al Jazeera's recent interview with Khaled Mesha'al, head of Hamas' political bureau and a traditional hard-liner within the movement, is well worth a watch.

The money quote: "Now we have a vision: we accept a state on the 1967 borders."

Life is grim in Gaza. According to a report (.pdf) published today by eight human rights NGOs based in the UK, including Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Save The Children UK, "[t]he situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967."

The latest escalation of violence in Gaza, sparked by the assassination of five Hamas militants, saw some of the fiercest fighting in the Occupied Territories for years. Between 27 February and 3 March, at least 106 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were wounded. According to B'Tselem, over half of those killed (including 25 children) were civilians who did not take part in the hostilities.

The British government admits to complicity in two cases of "extraordinary rendition", but claims they are an isolated case and promises that it "never uses torture for any purpose, including obtaining information, neither would we instigate actions by others to do so."

Three Palestinian children aged 10, 12 and 14 were killed this evening in an Israeli air-strike in northern Gaza, bringing today's Palestinian death toll to 12. Five members of Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades were killed this morning in two targeted assassinations in Gaza, while this afternoon two Palestinian farmers were killed by Israeli tank fire.

Here's a nice Spitting Image sketch, from the 1980s/early 1990s:

(h/t to Jews sans frontieres)

I refer, of course, to the recent encounter between President Bush's derrière and Matt Frei, butt-kisser extraordinaire. Not for Frei are half-measures and almost-there's, like standard BBC reporting which, while undoubtedly deferrential to power, typically affects at least a pretense of concern about 'balance' and 'impartiality'. No: Frei is content with nothing less than total and utter servility to power, and by God no amount of ethical standards or (perish the thought!) residual journalistic integrity will stand in his way.

The Winograd Committee today released its full, 610-page investigation into Israel's political and military conduct during the 2006 Lebanon war. The interim report was published last May (I wrote about it here), and judging from reports in the Israeli press the complete version makes similar points.

Over half the population of the Gaza Strip has left for Egypt in the past three days, a stark illustration of the extent of the deprivation imposed on them by the Israeli government and the "international community". When Palestinians smashed through the wall separating Gaza from Egypt earlier this week, liberating themselves from Israel's brutal siege, the reactions around the world were quite interesting. Far from expressing joy and exhilaration at the sight of hundreds of thousands of starved Palestinians flooding out of the Gaza prison camp, enjoying what for many of them was the first taste of freedom in their lives, one could instead sense a tangible whiff of fear and even panic underlying much commentary on the breakout.

After being subjected to almost two years of relentless economic siege and vicious military assault, the 1.5 million residents of Gaza are on the brink of collapse. Israel is apparently determined to push them over the edge.

This being a brief round-up of several recent developments in the Middle East.

Firstly, a respected Israeli NGO published a report into the state's treatment of its Palestinian citizens during last year's Lebanon war. Readers will recall that, back in the summer of 2006, while Israel was busy destroying southern Lebanon killing close to 1,200 Lebanese civilians in the process, one of the main arguments used by its apologists to justify the atrocities was that the civilian deaths were the fault of Hizbullah, not the IDF, because the militia deliberately hid its fighters among the civilian population.

It's that time of year again: B'Tselem, the Israeli information centre for human rights in the Occupied Territories, has released its annual report summarising the developments of the past 12 months. As usual, it makes for grim reading.

Okay, so yesterday was Christmas and much merriment was had by all. Except, as the media were determined to remind us, by Palestinian Christians suffering persecution by Muslim extremists. While the persecution certainly exists, it is plainly a sideshow to the Israeli occupation, which not only persecutes but kills Palestinians of all religious persuasions. It's perfectly egalitarian in that sense: men, women, children, Muslims, Christians - no Palestinian is safe. But that story doesn't fit with the "evil Muslims taking away Christmas" or the "war on terra" memes, and has therefore been marginalised.