Middle East Near You

In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes a vain emperor hires two tailors who claim to make the most beautiful clothes and convince him that they...

Just few days separated the American official recognition of the Israeli authority over the Syrian Golan Heights and the rocket that destroyed a house in Tel Aviv. In the...

On 4 March, the newly formed Israeli Blue and White party’s leaders, Gabi Ashkenazi, Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz and Moshe Ya’alon, declared that Israel will not pull out from...

Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi once said, “Friendship of the wise is good; a wise enemy is better than a foolish friend.” I don’t know if this applies to the current...

This week, the Palestinians won a moral victory. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) released a report that sheds light on the killing of peaceful Palestinian demonstrators in the...

The Israeli General Election in April will be interesting, not only because there is a good chance that the world will see the political end of Benjamin Netanyahu and...

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs has released a report called Terrorists in Suits: The Ties Between NGOs promoting BDS and Terrorist Organisations. The report has a sense of melodrama,...

Prologue For decades, Israeli leaders and media have insisted that Palestinians left their homes in the Nakba of 1948, leaving everything behind to become refugees of their own free...

General Benjamin (Benny) Gantz, the 20th Chief of General Staff of the Israeli army, was charged in March 2010 with illegally expanding his house onto public property. Upon his...

What was Sondos thinking as she huddled with her three children in their tent and set it on fire? Did the tears of her children not move her? Didn’t...

Two days ago, I attended to a seminar on the legal background and implications of the dissolution of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) by President Mahmoud Abbas. Two of...

On 22 December Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), dissolved the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). He did so despite the fact that the law does not...

On 16 December 2018, an Israeli court in the occupied city of Jerusalem sentenced Suzan Abu Ghannaam – the mother of 20-year-old Palestinian martyr Muhammad Abu Ghannaam – to...

About a month ago my wife asked me, “Have you seen that two-story house they demolished in the West Bank. Such a pity, it was such a beautiful house,...

The Trump administration has made Mahmoud Abbas do what no other ally has done before – renounce America’s role and turn his back. Mahmoud Abbas declared that the Americans...

What does it take to make someone wield a screwdriver and attack a fully armed, well-trained, well-protected soldier, knowing that if he got injured no ambulance would take him...

Is Israel a nuclear power? In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli former nuclear technician, revealed to the British media details of Israel’s nuclear power programme and was eventually jailed...

The result of the latest round of fighting in the besieged Gaza Strip, when the Israeli army tried to carry out a covert military operation even while the Egyptians...

One of the anomalies of political Zionism is that, while it was founded as a response to murderous pogroms against European and Russian Jews as a means to rescue...

Until Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultra-religious, right-wing party came into power, we Palestinians used to have a lot of difficulties convincing the rest of the world...

Recently, in another shocking incident, Israel’s Culture Minister Miri Regev was outraged by a Palestinian children’s novel written by Walid Dagga, a Palestinian prisoner who spent more than thirty...

If US President Donald Trump can be visualised as King Cyrus, then Benjamin Netanyahu is the prophet out to save the modern Israelites in a hostile environment. His message...

Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the 2018 conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), are key to an understanding of how Israel is run. The Israeli leader is...

There are many in the Arab world who fell about laughing when the US ambassador to the UN started to lecture them about how rich Arab countries did not...

The visit of Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan to Saudi Arabia last week raised many questions related to his country’s foreign policy and the changes that could be...

A few years after Arafat assumed the leadership of the Palestinian national movement he tried to tempt the West to offer him something in return for what he called...

“The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the...

The President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is on a four-day visit to Israel, the first such trip by any Filipino leader. Even though he declared during the 2016...

Few people in the Arab World and Palestine had heard of Darin Al-Tatur before last Tuesday. This Palestinian poet has rarely caught the attention of critics, or literary magazines,...

Does one crime justify another? Israeli officials seem to think so. Whenever they are criticised for committing crimes against humanity by wiping Palestinian neighbourhoods off the map; bombing hospitals,...

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland — the Nakba — by the Zionist Movement, which established the state of Israel...

Two incidents represent turning points in Malaysian support for Palestine: the Mavi Marmara “Freedom Flotilla” incident, and the visit of Prime Minister Najib Razak to the Gaza Strip. The...