Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Hossam Shaker
-
Lama Khater’s imprisonment exposes Israel’s fear of words
Violent banging on the door at dawn frightened the children. Armed Israeli soldiers were at the door, wanting to raid the house and arrest the mother of the family. There is no need to ask why, as she is a well-known Palestinian writer, and the free pen in Palestine...
-
The Knesset: A parliamentary vote to occupy history and the future
The stone walls are meticulously sculpted so as to give those who sit in the seats of this parliament a special sense of its historical depth, and that there was no history for anyone else in this country; that no one exists but them. Some of these parliamentarians return in the evening with their automatic rifles to the settlements established in the West...
-
Israel’s demolition of Al-Khan Al-Ahmar is a mini-Nakba
An attempt to remove a great tree that has deep roots is perhaps the closest analogy of what took place on Wednesday in Al-Khan Al-Ahmar. This is a Palestinian Bedouin gathering, east of Jerusalem, which the Israeli occupation forces tried to destroy by expelling the people by force after...
-
Israel’s war on photographers and their images
Amid the ongoing killing of defenceless Palestinian demonstrators, the Israeli leadership is engaged in a fierce and multifaceted war on photographers, either by shooting at them or criminalising them. Israel’s occupation authorities fear that photographs and video images will expose their brutality on the ground, which may lead to...
-
Razan Al-Najjar: a white coat stained with blood
After the representatives of Western democracies issued successive statements asserting “Israel’s right to defend itself”, the Israeli army wasted no time in exercising this “right” in its own way. It killed a Palestinian paramedic wearing her white coat while she was busy tending to the wounded. What threat did this...
-
How will Europe act towards Palestine now?
The game that lasted for a quarter of a century is over and the international promises sold to the Palestinian people under the banner of the Middle East ‘peace process’ have evaporated. Who now can hope for an independent Palestinian through negotiations? What about Jerusalem, since Washington’s recent decision? While...
-
Yaser Murtaja’s camera has fallen, but his pictures remain
A new face from Palestine is catching the world’s attention. He did not carry a stone or a rifle, but the camera of a journalist. This was clearly considered by the Israeli army to be a dangerous weapon, as it documented their violations and provided the world with a...
-
The Gaza that has not sunk into the sea
The snipers lined themselves up on the hill and started to target the unarmed boys one by one. The scene looked like a hunting trip with automatic rifles, ending with the prey hitting the ground with bullets in their heads. Hundreds were injured in just a few hours, and...
-
End of the independent Palestinian state project
They do not want to recognise the truth. The project of an independent Palestinian state has ended forever, and any talk about a “Palestinian state” today remains a dead letter that does not go along with its meaning. This is what the Americans, Europeans, Israelis and the Palestinian Authority...
-
Israeli taboos must be broken for honest and open discussion
Palestine was never really there. A thousand years is just a worthless length of time, and all you see on the ground is a layer waiting to be stripped away completely. This is not my imagination speaking; it is what dominates the mindset of too many Israelis and their...
-
Some Jews aren’t welcome in the ‘Jewish state’
When he wrote his book The Jewish State in 1896, could Theodor Herzl have imagined that his ‘promised land’ would begin to deport some Jews or ban them from entering, and even impose restrictions on their organisations? What could be said to the father of political Zionism if he...
-
Ahed Tamimi: The symbol of the new defiant Palestinian generation
A girl has defied the occupation with unrivalled courage. Over the past years, the media has broadcasted videos of her daringly confronting the heavily armed occupation soldiers, face to face, and demanding that they leave the territories they are forcibly occupying, indifferent to their threats and attacks. This blond...
-
Palestine: What’s next after the collapse of the two-state project?
European foreign ministers spoke with unprecedented frankness in Brussels yesterday morning when they said Trump’s decision regarding Jerusalem and the negotiations is a blow to the peace process. What they still haven’t dared to say was that the two-state project has completely collapsed. The decision President Trump made on 6...
-
Trump has confirmed the death of the peace process, so what’s next?
The US President’s announcement not only had an effect within the boundary of Jerusalem, which he handed over with arrogance and audacity to Benjamin Netanyahu. Donald Trump appeared on television screens around the world yesterday and also confirmed the death of the so-called Middle East peace process, launched in...
-
The ‘deal of the century’ struck between reckless leaders
The “deal of the century” is the mystery phrase used amid the ongoing tension in the Middle East. It seems that this “deal” is so secretive that there are those who believe it is a delusion that will never get off the ground. Meanwhile, others confirm that arrangements have...
-
100 years since the Balfour Declaration: Symbolic humiliation and the creation of tragedy
Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930) was a prominent statesman in the eyes of his compatriots through his eminent positions. However, for the Palestinian people, he remains a clear embodiment of injustice and arrogance, being one of the major figures responsible for the Palestinian tragedy. The Palestinians did not hear Arthur Balfour...
-
The ‘Israelisation’ illusion and ‘Israeli Arabs’ propaganda
Once again, the Israeli authorities have thrown another Palestinian leader into prison. Once again that leader is Raed Salah, who has a defiant smile and whose life shares characteristics with liberation leaders known to the world through their civil, non-violent struggles, the price of which has been repeated imprisonment...
-
Why does Israel believe the world would be better without Al Jazeera?
According to the official Israeli perspective, the world was better without Al Jazeera, the network that occupied our eyes and ears when it launched a new media era in the Arab world in 1996. The Arabs were exposed to something else other than the monotonous official propaganda channels in...
-
Ask Europe what’s happening in Jerusalem
Unrest engulfs Al-Aqsa Mosque after Israel closed it for prayer ...
-
What the Palestinian people should forget
The Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu has celebrated the 50th anniversary of the occupation of East Jerusalem and large parts of the Palestinian territories. The scene looked like a party aboard a pirate ship as the cutthroats celebrated the theft of a precious treasure. We heard everything from...
-
Beautifying Israel's occupation on the red carpet
Appearing on an important, well-publicised platform may make you look great in the public eye. This is a conventional maxim that is rarely ignored by those seeking to mislead public opinion. The dress worn by the Israeli minister of culture on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival...
-
The limits of the crisis between Turkey and Europe
As a new crisis rears its head between Ankara and Europe, the usual inflammatory vocabulary is exchanged between the two sides, adding further to the doubts of whether Turkey would be accepted into the European family. The new tension occurred after the Turkish authorities detained a German-Turkish journalist in February. The...
-
Peres: The Nobel Peace Laureate who was far from peaceful
Peres colluded with the construction of the Apartheid Wall built by Israel on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, despite the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice against the construction of the structure...
-
A zoo inside a large, open-air prison
Lazeez the tiger may have been rescued from an appalling situation, but that is no thanks to Israel, which is responsible for creating that situation and those appalling conditions in the first place...
