Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Amelia Smith
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The illusion of Hamas: what Israel got wrong
What Israel thinks Hamas is, and what the reality is, is more of an abyss than a gap, according to Gaza correspondent Shlomi Elder who reports for Channel 10 News in Israel. His book, ‘Getting to Know Hamas’, attempts to close this divide and explain the real thinking behind...
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Palestine and Netanyahu's bomb chart at the UN
The highlight of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech as he addressed the 67th United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York yesterday was by far and away his cartoon bomb chart. Complete with first, second and final stages (drawn within the outline), each marked a different point in Iran’s progress towards making...
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The EU accelerates trade with Israel, despite human rights abuses
The EU’s 500 million citizens account for about 60% of Israel’s total trade. Europe is Israel’s largest source of imports and its second biggest export market, second only to the United States. That’s a lot of bargaining potential when it comes to addressing Israel’s bullish behaviour in the Middle East....
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Morsi must ensure reform in new Egyptian constitution
Recently, secular parties and the Muslim Brotherhood have locked horns in a battle over Egypt’s future. The Constitutional Assembly’s draft constitution has sparked outrage amongst many parties and civilians who fear human and minority rights are being traded in exchange for President Morsi’s consolidation of power. The 20-month constitution vacuum...
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What do the ceasefire terms mean for the West Bank?
For the time being at least, there will be no ground invasion in Gaza. As the death toll reached over 150 Palestinians and 5 Israelis in Operation Pillar of Defence, last night an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire defused the situation and created a delicate peace in the country. In the aftermath of...
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France Pushes for Palestinian Statehood at the UN
For the second time in recent weeks, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has supported Palestine. First, was during Operation Pillar of Defence where he travelled to Jerusalem and opposed the Israeli ground incursion in Gaza. The second was on Tuesday when he announced that France, a permanent member of the...
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Is Israel losing its grip in Europe?
It was hard to read the delegates’ expressions as they squinted at the board in the United Nations, searching for confirmation of who had and hadn’t voted for Palestine. As the camera zoomed into the results, the red figures revealed 138 countries were in favour, nine against with 41...
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Europe opposes Netanyahu's new settlement plan
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is exerting all the political strength he can muster to sabotage peace for Palestine and Israel. On Monday, he authorised the construction of new illegal settlement units in the E1 area of the occupied West Bank which, when built, will split the region in half...
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On the road to the International Criminal Court
In 2004, 14 out of 15 judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) deemed that Israel’s “separation barrier” in the occupied West Bank was illegal. They found that its presence both protected and preserved the annexation of illegal settlements, restricted freedom of movement, and curtailed Palestinian self-determination. It...
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As winter bites, the plight of Syrian refugees shows no sign of improving
Inside Al-Zaatari Camp in the Jordanian desert, Syrian refugees are supposed to be escaping the bloody uprising next door; instead, young children are dying because of appalling conditions. “People have no shoes to wear,” Walid Safour, representative of the Syrian National Coalition in the UK tells me, “and only...
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Israel continues to breach the ceasefire agreement
In November, Egypt brokered an end to the eight-day offensive launched by Israel against the Gaza Strip, the so-called Operation Pillar of Defence. During the assault, 6 Israelis were killed, as were more than 160 Palestinians. As the ceasefire agreement was announced, Palestinians celebrated in the Strip with fireworks...
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What does a name bring? The battle for recognition in Occupied Palestine
Soon, ‘Palestinian National Authority’ will become a label reminiscent of the pre-General Assembly vote that saw Palestine upgraded at the United Nations to non-member observer status, if all goes ahead with President Mahmoud Abbas’ new plans. The Palestinian President has requested official documents – from stamps to passports –...
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Israel is a different place from the outside looking in
Imagine a Middle East where Naftali Bennett was Israel’s Prime Minister. Former settler leader and IT entrepreneur turned politician, his agenda is a lethal cocktail of pro-settlement, anti-Palestinian statehood rhetoric. Openly contesting a Palestinian state, if voted in, he has plans to swallow up much of what’s left of...
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Offering practical solutions to the bloody conflict in Syria
What can be done for a country whose death toll is close to 94,000; where 1.5 million refugees have fled the violence, executions are widespread, crimes are committed by both Assad and the rebels and bodies as young as 11 are being hauled out of the Queiq (Martyrs) River? One...
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A right royal Syrian mess
In 1916 Britain and France secretly devised a plot to carve up and share out the Middle East between them. Under the authority of the Skykes-Picot Agreement it was decided that if they were to defeat the Ottoman Empire in World War I Britain would appropriate Jordan, Southern Iraq...
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Reverse Psychology: Mordechai Kedar on Jerusalem
Mordechai Kedar wants to abolish Al-Jazeera; his motive? That the Emir of Qatar, who is the most influential person in Arabia, uses the channel as a medium to broadcast his personal, political agenda. According to Kedar, the station raises the profile of political Islamic movements and attempts to reduce...
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The treacherous path to Syria's 2014 elections
Imagine if Assad got voted out in the 2014 elections; and then he left, admitting that the elections were free and fair, that he had out stayed his welcome and it was time to go. “If I feel that the Syrian people do not want it…I will not stand,”...
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Sectarianism in the battle of Sidon
The escalation of fighting in Lebanon this weekend has for many entrenched their worst fears; that the conflict in Syria will spread across the border and engulf their neighbour. For the past year shockwaves from Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s bloody crackdown on activists have crept across the border, reaching...
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What's next for Egypt?
It’s hard to keep up with the latest developments in Egypt. Last night Tweeters gave second by second updates of the events leading up to the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi, who was democratically elected in Egypt’s first free and fair elections a year ago. On Monday the military declared...
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Ambiguity in the west over Egypt's derailed democracy
The US position on Morsi’s ouster from power last Wednesday appears to hinge on their supply of military funding to Egypt, which currently stands at around $1.5 billion a year. According to American state department and foreign operations law, in the event of a coup d’état funding should be...
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The Egyptian Auction
News that the affluent Gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait are set to pay out a combined sum of $12 billion to Egypt post Morsi makes the US’s $1.5 billion offering look miniscule. The highest bid currently goes to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter,...
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Egypt: a state within a state
As the military swept back into the public spotlight to overthrow Morsi last Wednesday, I’m sure Hosni Mubarak was rubbing his hands together with glee. After all, he’d long been telling his country that the Islamists were trouble makers and deserved nothing more than to languish in a prison...
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One man's revolution is another's military coup
A recent interview on RT news channel broadcast former head of the Arab League and prominent opposition member Amr Moussa pointing out that democracy is not just down to the polls. “It’s not enough to have the ballot box approving you and then you just sit and enjoy your...
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Another bloodbath in Cairo: but where are the British government?
This morning the world woke to a third massacre in Egypt. Twitter was flooded with photographs of bodies, bandages wrapped around their corpses, soaked with blood. At midday an eyewitness in Nasr City told MEMO he could hear machine gun fire every five minutes, and that the stench of...