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Middle East Monitor
 

David Hearst

davidahearst

David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief, European Correspondent, and Ireland Correspondent. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

 

Items by David Hearst

  • History did not start in Paris on Sunday

    A nation in trauma struggles to invest meaning in a national tragedy. The number of coffins demand it, but numbers alone can not do it. Upwards of 4 million people came out onto the streets of France to answer it, and the question still remains unanswered. What were the...

  • Keeping the Palesinian State a Virtual Reality

    Imagine for a moment that a Palestinian State did exist in the tunnels, and cuttings, and behind the walls and in the pockets of a land that lies between the settlement blocks and roads which Israel is allowed to keep. For over 20 years, we have been told that there...

  • The Alice in Wonderland World of the UN Veto

    The New Year will dawn to another U.S. veto at the UN security council — although, to its credit, not a French one. This ritual has become a fitting symbol of Washington’s loosening grip over the Middle East. It reveals power strong enough to interdict, but too weak to...

  • The Saudi King who fought the wrong wars

    There is one man for whom Hosni Mubarak’s acquittal will come as welcome relief: his friend and fellow potentate King Abdullah. Such was the Saudi King’s anxiety about Mubarak that he has nudged the Egyptian military to be more active on the former dictator’s behalf. Abdullah hinted several times that...

  • The battle for Jerusalem

    To be a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem is to suffer from a special form of statelessness. They are citizens neither of Israel nor of Palestine. They cannot vote. They have no official passports and cannot freely cross borders. They have the right to residency in Jerusalem, but it is a...

  • Defeat Could Turn Out an Advantage for Tunisia's Islamists

    Tunisia is a small country with a big audience. The process of electing a parliament and a president matters, not only because it keeps the democratic process alive, but also for the signals it sends the rest of the Arab world. Tunisia, the cradle of the revolution, keeps on...

  • Blowback in Yemen: Houthi advance is a Saudi nightmare

    Nothing illustrates the free-wheeling chaos of the Middle East better than what is going on in Yemen. A small Iranian-backed North Yemeni militia, modeled on Hezbollah and from an offshoot of Shia Islam, has walked into the capital Sanaa, taken over Hodeida, Yemen’s main port on the Red Sea, and...

  • The brakes come off in British Parliament's vote on Palestinian statehood

    At some point in the process that led to the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland, there was an audible snap, a break in the link between the mother ship, the British government, and Protestant Unionism which considers itself the last outpost of British Crown on the island...

  • Saudi Crapshoot in Yemen

    There is a sign on French level crossings for those who consider themselves to be vigilant. It reads “One train can hide another”. This is sound advice should be erected in Oval Office and Downing Street. Only it should read: “One intervention can hide another.” While all eyes are on...

  • Palestinian Unity Forged in Resistance

    Compare the statements Netanyahu and the IDF made at the start of his war on Gaza to the silence, thus far, about what they have achieved. The tunnels still exist. Hamas has not been demilitarized or defanged. Their rockets kept firing up to the last moment. There is not...

  • Gaza Is a Pandora's Box for Netanyahu

    Had Benyamin Netanyahu decided not to use the pretext of three murdered settler youths to launch a pogrom against Hamas in the West Bank and then attack Gaza, much of what Israel considers useful in the status quo would have been allowed to fester. The Fatah-Hamas unity government would...

  • Islamic State: The Monster Western Intervention Created

    Before Britain gets involved in another intervention against Sunni insurgents in Iraq, David Cameron should read the Koran. Verse 216, Chapter 2 says: “You may hate a thing which is good for you, and you may love a thing which is bad for you. God knows, while you do...

  • Sisi and the curse of Rabaa

    The King Abdulaziz necklace is the highest honour the Saudi Kingdom can bestow on international statesmen. It has graced the necks of such “men of high standing” as George W Bush, Vladimir Putin, and Bashar al-Assad. On Sunday, the Custodian of the Two Mosques placed the ultimate honour around...

  • Exclusive: Hamas pushes Abbas to join ICC

    Hamas has decided to demand that President Mahmoud Abbas sign the Rome Statute which will allow Palestine to join the International Criminal Court as a full member, even though the militant movement itself could be subject to prosecution, sources told the Middle East Eye. Hamas’s deputy chairman and chief...

  • Bitter Fruits of Egyptian Mediation

    International opinion is changing on the siege of Gaza. More leaders are publicly questioning the wisdom of squeezing Gaza to the point where it explodes. This much can be read into Barack Obama’s statement on Thursday that “long-term, there has to be a recognition that Gaza cannot sustain itself...

  • Netanyahu's Four Key Errors

    As the trickle of senior Israeli army officers talking up the military achievements of the last three weeks has turned into a stream, one can assume they have had enough of the carnage they have visited on Gaza and now want to disengage. Much of what they say is contradictory:...

  • Saudi crocodile tears over Gaza

    It is tough work being the Saudi ambassador to the UK. First, you have to stir yourself into action to deny the undeniable: The Israeli attack on Gaza comes with Saudi backing. That, in itself, is demeaning. But no sooner has your wrath been righteously expressed, than a colleague...

  • Mahmoud Abbas' epiphany over Gaza

    Mahmoud Abbas is having something of an epiphany. Only two short months ago, the Palestinian president said security co-operation with Israel in the West Bank was “sacred.” Now Abbas is quoting a Koranic verse which says” Permission has been given to those who are being fought, because...

  • Today's battered Palestinian child becomes tomorrow's fighter

    One child is being killed every hour in Gaza for the past two days. Shocking statistic, but they deserve it. They are guilty of being in their homes, shelters, ambulances, health centers or playing on the beach just as a shell is about to drop on their heads. Guilty...

  • Playing With Ceasefires

    So now we know. The Egyptian ceasefire initiative was neither an initiative in the sense that anyone had consulted one of the combatants. Nor was it Egyptian. According to Arabi21, the initiative was concocted by the Israelis and Tony Blair. Further, it was published, against US wishes, to stymie...

  • Israel's Operation Stone Age

    Summer Rains, Autumn Clouds, Hot Winter, Cast Lead, Returning Echo, Pillar of Defence and now Protective Edge. The names of Israel’s assaults on Gaza are a fantasy, an exercise in make believe. They buy Israel neither peace nor deterrence. They are however extremely effective. They are effective at raising yet...

  • Tony Blair and the Gulf Neocons

    A year on from the coup that brought Egypt’s encounter with democracy to a premature end, the country is locked into a state of crisis. The prisons are full. Egypt’s social fabric is being ripped apart, and the rents go right through into the family home. Fathers refuse to...

  • Israel has Egypt over a barrel

    It took the CIA 60 years to admit its involvement in the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadeq, Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister. The circumstances around the overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, may not take as long to come to light, regardless who is behind it. Mossadeq...

  • Rapprochement in the Gulf: who blinked first?

    So who won the diplomatic war of words that threatened to fragment the Gulf Cooperation Council, and make a nonsense of its name? Did the Saudis step back from the brink, or did Qatar back down? Who blinked first? In language which was creatively vague, the GCC agreed to adopt...