"The media today in fact is reporting that it’s a success and they’ve called off the operation and killed I think 125 insurgents and detained however many more but the reality is what I’ve learned from the ground from NGOs operating and from making phone calls into that area the whole thing is like a mini Fallujah – they didn’t let people leave the city, there’s probably hundreds of civilians casualties and many, many homes destroyed and many displaced people and of course none of this is being reported in the mainstream media. It typifies the whole situation in Iraq.”

Paul O'Hanlon travels around the Middle East, and sends regular political updates to Indymedia.
After participating in the Cairo conference [1 | 2 ] from March 24th to March 27th 2005 in which the relationship of Israel and Palestine was discussed, he moved on to the Egypt/Israeli border at Taba/Eilat before passing along further to Jordan.
From there his next report was filed from Amman, where he primarily researched the human rights and political situation. Reporting about a local demonstration in front of the US embassy and meeting Robert Fisk in Beirut, Lebanon, 11 days later, he travelled along to Istanbul, where he was denied a visa to Syria. Then he accounted his time spent at the border imigration and after a long wait, search and questioning actually in the West Bank and Israel. His latest update from Amman, Jordan, features an interview with the independent journalist Dahr Jamail, who spent a lot of time as an unembedded journalist in Iraq and reports about a "Mini Fallujah" situation of "Operation Matador (near the Syrian border)".